Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.
Rex Murphy: Testing America’s tolerance
Rex Murphy August 14, 2010 – 9:30 am
Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images
A woman protests the planned construction of an Islamic centre near the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan on Aug. 3.
On the matter of the Islamic centre set to be built near the site of the downed Twin Towers, I dismiss utterly what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg seems to fear — that Americans will carry the mark of intolerance unless they permit the building to go forward.
From 9/11 onwards, from the White House to main street, Americans have made it sunshine clear that the attacks of that day were not going to warp their country’s values, were not an occasion for raining abuse or vengeance upon America’s Muslim citizens. George W. Bush himself, with the full weight of his office (and, I’d add, at some political risk to himself) was without stint in proclaiming Islam a “religion of peace.” He even went to a Washington mosque to underline solidarity with American Muslims and their peaceful co-religionists all over the world.
Which strips all force from Bloomberg’s lukewarm pleadings that there is now, a near decade on, the need for a 13- or 15-storey homage to Islam but a shadow away from ground zero, to supply some sort of architectural instantiation or proof of that tolerance.
How tolerant America has been on this issue is further shown in the near insouciance and ease which which the proponents of the Ground Zero mosque (as it’s become known) make their proposal. They think it’s the most normal, casual thing in the world to propose such a building next door to the greatest terror operation ever unleashed in America, executed by Islamist fanatics in the dead heart of America’s greatest city, and involving the murder of thousands, the desolation of families, unspeakable mental and physical sacrifices by first-responding fire and police personnel — not to mention the cataclysmic financial repercussions the destruction was also designed to achieve.
It is an almost boundlessly tolerant city and society — New York and America. But we must make a note on this point: A tolerance is being, and has been, shown, toward Islam, which Islam emphatically does not show to other creeds in regions or countries where Islam is predominant. In some Muslim places, a mere Bible in a suitcase is an indictable offence.
What is the numerical gap, I wonder, between the number of mosques in Western, nominally Christian cities, and the number of Christian churches or cathedrals in predominantly Muslim ones? In New York alone, there already are at least a hundred mosques. How many Catholic cathedrals, Shinto shrines or Buddist temples in Saudia Arabia? On the subject of religious tolerance, that grand old rancid imperialist Kipling is still au courant: East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
Islam has a voracious appetite for tolerance when it is the suppliant; when it is, so to speak, a sojourner among the infidels. It is aggressively, even imaginatively, vigorous in availing of the democratic rights of societies to which some of its followers have migrated. It has acquired an admirable expertise in taking advantage of the institutions and practices of host societies, from politics and the media, to protests and the courts, which aid the full pursuit of those rights.
This commendable agility finds no mirror in most Muslim societies. Tolerance received or enjoyed by Muslims in the West does not seem to awaken a concordant impulse to afford a reciprocal tolerance from Muslims to other religions in countries where Islam is dominant. So, again, America has nothing to prove in this domain. And if New York authorities are going along with this proposal because they are afraid what people outside America might think, they are being, needlessly, both callow and cowardly.
But if the Islamic centre is built; and if it is to be, as professed, a bridge to understanding and reconciliation, there are a few tests we could apply — a few thoughts or suggestions for what might reasonably be found in such a strategically placed building, shadowed as it will forever be by the spectral dust of 2001.
For example, a mosque in deliberate proximity to the scene of the Ground Zero slaughter will surely — unavoidably — have a section, a room, or a display, perhaps a miniature museum, on the events of that horrible day — giving some interpretation on what happened and why: what that day said, and did not say about Islam.
Could there not be, for example, photographs of the 19 fanatic terrorists? They could be presented in some sort of stylized rogues gallery: Here are those who plotted and executed evil jihad against America. Underneath, there could be a statement of categorical condemnation: These were a band of betrayers and corrupters of Islam, who did perverse deeds in Islam’s name. We Americans, Muslims all, in this holy place condemn and scorn their deeds and motives.
Maybe this could be accompanied by some work of art to commemorate the dead — those who died in the attacks themselves, and those who died during the attempt to rescue people within the towers.
If it is to be in the vicinity of 9/11’s wreckage, it must pay respectful and felt homage to 9/11.
A mosque, that by its installations and presentations, derided the mischiefs done in Islam’s name, which in its declarations and stated understanding of 9 11 actually turned out to be a thorn in the side of fanatic Islamists everywhere, would be a worthy adjunct to the precincts of the now absent twin towers. It would be a work of understanding.
So, maybe the question now is not “Should it be built?” But, “What is to be built?” And if those who speak of understanding and reconciliation are serious, following a few of the suggestions here, or others from people much closer to this affair than I, could disarm all criticism and reproach. This should be, in this sense, if it goes ahead, the most American mosque ever.
If instead, it retains a purely claustrophobic Islamic character, if it is just an Islamic centre physically very close to where the towers once stood, but intellectually or civically remote and aloof from its all important site, it will be a failure. If it rejects any show of explicit condemnation or does not offer tokens of memorial, then I think the case of the critics will be immeasurable strengthened: that is, that this project is a none-too-subtle provocation, a tacit baiting of an already wounded America, and — worst of all, a kind of gaming of that precious tolerance to which it makes a spurious and offensive appeal.
National Post
Posted in: Full Comment, U.S. Politics Tags: Rex Murphy, Ground Zero Mosque
Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...#ixzz0wdd6Ca7t
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Originally Posted by Thomas Jefferson
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