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The delusions of monotheists, or: The imam, the mosque and Ground Zero
The imam, the mosque and Ground Zero
Robert Zaller
By now, it is clear that all right-thinking people regard Park51, the plan to build an Islamic study center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, as an exercise in the freedom of worship that is nobody's business but the worshippers themselves. President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have said so. So have The New York Times, The Nation, and the president of the ACLU, to whom I've just sent my annual dues.
It seems, though, that the issue has caught me on the left side of my brain, because I don't find Park51 a happy idea; indeed, I find it rebarbative.
This is only partly because of my personal distaste for houses of worship in general, particularly those of a monotheistic persuasion. The idea that a branch of primates on a minor planet circling a mediocre sun on the rim of a mid-sized galaxy should be the special object of attention of a Universal Creator strikes me as absurd.
It was not always so, in the prehistory of the race before Copernicus and Darwin, but it is so now. I wouldn't regard it as preferable that a church or a synagogue arise near Ground Zero instead of a mosque— sorry, study center, although worship will take place in it— just as I'm not relieved to know that Barack Obama is a born-again Christian rather than a covert Muslim.
Hallowed soil?
Of course, property owners have the right to use their space for any lawful purpose, including absurd ones. That's not the issue. It's legal for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his followers to worship where they please and in whatever structure that local zoning regulations permit them to erect.
The question is whether it's appropriate. No, not all Muslims are fanatics; they're merely, like their fellow monotheists, deluded. But 9/11 did occur. Ground Zero is not, as some would have it, hallowed soil—the god that was worshipped there was Mammon— but it's not just any piece of real estate either. Like Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor, it's a site of national trauma.
It is also, through a combination of greed, incompetence and confusion, still a place of devastation, both the cause and the symbol of our deeply conflicted and tragically misguided response to the attack unleashed against us. It's true that not all Muslims are responsible for that attack, although some of us will recall Palestinians dancing in the streets on hearing the news of it. But the attackers were all Muslim, and it's idle to pretend that this fact can simply be set aside less than nine years later in the cause of interfaith conviviality.
Prayer in the Pentagon
It has been pointed out that Muslims worship in the Pentagon, which was also struck on 9/11. I'm not sure why anyone is praying in the Pentagon, or to whom— Ares, perhaps?— but apparently it's done in an interfaith chapel open to all.
The Park51 study center, by contrast, is designed for the use of one faith alone, and it's no modest structure like the little Greek Orthodox church of St. Nicholas that was destroyed on 9/11 but a 13-, or by some accounts a 15-storey behemoth that will dominate its neighborhood and therefore a part of Ground Zero itself.
You have to be utterly tone-deaf to the temper of this country and to the pain it still feels not to understand why this project is perceived by many as an act of triumphalism. It's not cynical or reactionary to feel so. It's simply human.
The wrong messenger
Apparently, Imam Rauf is tone-deaf. Right after 9/11, he gave an interview in which he said that, while the attack was a terrible thing, Americans needed to appreciate the extent to which they had brought it on themselves. This was a perfectly valid observation, for 9/11 was indeed blowback from a half-century of American mischief in the Middle East.
But the Imam was precisely the wrong person to deliver this home truth, and he chose precisely the wrong moment to do so. We don't attend funeral services to speak ill of the dead, and we don't lecture the victims of an atrocity on their responsibility for it, particularly while wearing the garb of their attackers.
Now, it seems, the Imam is touring the Middle East on the American taxpayer's dime to proclaim the virtues of "moderate" Islam, whatever that may be. I can think of lots better uses for my money. And speaking of the constitution— anybody ever hear of the separation of church and state?♦
To read responses, click here.
To read a response by Dan Rottenberg, click here.
It seems, though, that the issue has caught me on the left side of my brain, because I don't find Park51 a happy idea; indeed, I find it rebarbative.
This is only partly because of my personal distaste for houses of worship in general, particularly those of a monotheistic persuasion. The idea that a branch of primates on a minor planet circling a mediocre sun on the rim of a mid-sized galaxy should be the special object of attention of a Universal Creator strikes me as absurd.
It was not always so, in the prehistory of the race before Copernicus and Darwin, but it is so now. I wouldn't regard it as preferable that a church or a synagogue arise near Ground Zero instead of a mosque— sorry, study center, although worship will take place in it— just as I'm not relieved to know that Barack Obama is a born-again Christian rather than a covert Muslim.
Hallowed soil?
Of course, property owners have the right to use their space for any lawful purpose, including absurd ones. That's not the issue. It's legal for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his followers to worship where they please and in whatever structure that local zoning regulations permit them to erect.
The question is whether it's appropriate. No, not all Muslims are fanatics; they're merely, like their fellow monotheists, deluded. But 9/11 did occur. Ground Zero is not, as some would have it, hallowed soil—the god that was worshipped there was Mammon— but it's not just any piece of real estate either. Like Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor, it's a site of national trauma.
It is also, through a combination of greed, incompetence and confusion, still a place of devastation, both the cause and the symbol of our deeply conflicted and tragically misguided response to the attack unleashed against us. It's true that not all Muslims are responsible for that attack, although some of us will recall Palestinians dancing in the streets on hearing the news of it. But the attackers were all Muslim, and it's idle to pretend that this fact can simply be set aside less than nine years later in the cause of interfaith conviviality.
Prayer in the Pentagon
It has been pointed out that Muslims worship in the Pentagon, which was also struck on 9/11. I'm not sure why anyone is praying in the Pentagon, or to whom— Ares, perhaps?— but apparently it's done in an interfaith chapel open to all.
The Park51 study center, by contrast, is designed for the use of one faith alone, and it's no modest structure like the little Greek Orthodox church of St. Nicholas that was destroyed on 9/11 but a 13-, or by some accounts a 15-storey behemoth that will dominate its neighborhood and therefore a part of Ground Zero itself.
You have to be utterly tone-deaf to the temper of this country and to the pain it still feels not to understand why this project is perceived by many as an act of triumphalism. It's not cynical or reactionary to feel so. It's simply human.
The wrong messenger
Apparently, Imam Rauf is tone-deaf. Right after 9/11, he gave an interview in which he said that, while the attack was a terrible thing, Americans needed to appreciate the extent to which they had brought it on themselves. This was a perfectly valid observation, for 9/11 was indeed blowback from a half-century of American mischief in the Middle East.
But the Imam was precisely the wrong person to deliver this home truth, and he chose precisely the wrong moment to do so. We don't attend funeral services to speak ill of the dead, and we don't lecture the victims of an atrocity on their responsibility for it, particularly while wearing the garb of their attackers.
Now, it seems, the Imam is touring the Middle East on the American taxpayer's dime to proclaim the virtues of "moderate" Islam, whatever that may be. I can think of lots better uses for my money. And speaking of the constitution— anybody ever hear of the separation of church and state?♦
To read responses, click here.
To read a response by Dan Rottenberg, click here.
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