The Ground Zero Mosque Is Not Like a Strip Club
In your latest for Forbes, Conor, you make a remarkable claim: Cordoba House -- you think "the Ground Zero Mosque" inapt -- should be analogized to New York Dolls, an establishment we are as little entitled to call the Ground Zero Strip Club for conducting business just two blocks away from the fallen Towers:
The closest strip club to Ground Zero happens to be two blocks away, a fact that has nothing to do with our reverence for the place where so many Americans were killed by terrorists. As you've probably noticed, it doesn't even make sense to call it The Ground Zero Strip Club. But it makes no less sense than naming an Islamic community center "The Ground Zero Mosque"--as much of the media have done--because it's going to be located a couple blocks away.
Yes, yes, only -- Cordoba House isn't called the Ground Zero Mosque because it's close to Ground Zero. It's called the Ground Zero Mosque -- I think -- because it's as close to Ground Zero as the Cordoba Initiative could possibly get, and because the Cordoba Initiative is building it as close to Ground Zero as it can get explicitly to advocate "for Islam" in a specifically "post-9/11 environment." The idea is simple, if controversial: there ought to be a very large building, very near to Ground Zero, full of people dedicated to helping Americans understand that they should think well of Islam and of Muslims, precisely because Ground Zero is currently such a painful and potent source and symbol of American ill will toward Muslims who, as a matter of religious doctrine, wish harm on America and death on Americans.
As I said, this more and less than a mosque. A house of worship, plain and simple, is not at all the goal of this project. The location of Cordoba House, the size of Cordoba House, and the goings-on to be conducted at Cordoba House are all, quite deliberately, of a piece. Indeed, if you accept the stated goals of the Cordoba Initiative, posted prominently on its website, you will agree with this characterization, because you will think, as its officials think, that it is a good and needful thing.
The only strip club that would be like the Cordoba House would be possibly the most wondrous strip club in the history of Man: a thirteen-story, sex-themed community center, dedicated to the practice and promotion of erotic dancing, constructed as a soberminded matter of high-stakes public relations in direct response and in closest attainable proximity to the scarred footprint of a collapsed living landmark destroyed on national television by a murderous, fanatical band of fundamentalist strippers, naughty girls in the grip of a kamikaze certainty that the truth about erotic dance is that innocent Americans, as many as you can kill, need to die a fiery, hideous death.
- Comment (42)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (5)
Comments :
Re: The Ground Zero Mosque Is Not Like a Strip Club
Conor wrote:
My logic doesn't seem to say anything like that. I'll repeat what I wrote:
I believe you and I are on the same side of this topic -- that the First Amendment guarantees the right of a group of Muslims to build a mosque near Ground Zero. But that doesn't mean that we must believe such a move is totally awesome and trust that it's all lollipops and butterflies. The meaning of this project to those in Muslim countries is likely very different than its meaning to First Amendment loyalists such as myself. Failing to acknowledge the history and context of the spread of Islam as we discuss these matters isn't wise.
Jul '10
Re: The Ground Zero Mosque Is Not Like a Strip Club
Conor Friedersdorf
There is nothing inherently wrong with being a Muslim, and that religion isn't incompatible with love of America and loyalty to it. Millions of loyal American Muslims live among us, many in NYC.
In other words, the analogy is extremely inapt.
I disagree completely with your assertion that the analogy is inapt. First, the person acting in this situation is the son of former Nazi, who has been raised with the experiences and education bestowed upon him by his father. The same is true for
Anam Feisal Abdul... whose father has known ties to terrorist groups and who himself has made anti-western statements.
As for nothing inherently wrong with being a Muslim, one could say the same thing about someone that considers themselves Aryan.