Pols promoting bigotry

Dispatches

By: Hank Kalet
Opponents of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque in New York are painting their opposition as a defense of hallowed ground and the memory of the nearly 3,000 people killed during the terrorist attacks nine years ago.
But if you listen closely to the arguments, you realize that their opposition to the Park51 community center has little to do with sensitivity and everything to do with bigotry against Muslims.
First, let’s dispense with what appears to be a purposeful misrepresentation of the Park51 plan: The so-called Ground Zero Mosque is actually a community and recreational center. The New York Times website describes the project, which cleared the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission earlier this month, as a "tower of as many as 15 stories (that) will house a mosque, a 500-seat auditorium, and a pool. Its leaders say it will be modeled on the YMCA and Jewish Community Center in Manhattan."
Oh yeah, the project is two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center, a nearly three-minute walk as Christiane Amanpour pointed out Sunday on "This Week" on ABC.
The Park51 debate should have been a local zoning issue decided at the local level based on principles of sound planning, as the expansion of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey in South Brunswick, the construction of the Hindu Chinmaya Mission in Cranbury and the many church expansions were debated and decided at the local level.
That the debate over a mosque in downtown Manhattan has gone national and become such a divisive flashpoint is troubling, to say the least. That it’s grown more fiery and heated as we move toward the fall (and election season) makes it clear how this has come about.
National Republican leaders have been stoking the fires on this for several weeks, muddying the waters about the project and using it to paint Democrats as out of touch. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, considered among conservatism’s intellectual leaders, has likened the community center to Nazis putting up a sign adjacent to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, while Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) has continued to describe Park51 as "a mosque on the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as the result of a terrorist attack." (Fox News Sunday, Aug. 15)
Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for governor of New York, has been "making his vigorous opposition to the project a centerpiece of his candidacy, assailing it on the campaign trail, testifying against it at public hearings, denouncing it in television commercials and even creating an online petition demanding an investigation into the center and its organizers," according to the Times.
At least Mr. Lazio, a former member of the House of Representatives, is from New York. Others attempting to make hay from the issue are not. Elliott Maynard, a Republican running against incumbent Democrat House member Nick J. Rahall II in West Virginia, has called Ground Zero "hallowed ground to Americans."
"Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?"
The answer is no. But, then, the question is irrelevant. Saudi Arabia is a closed society, a religious monarchy that stands in stark contrast with the American concept of openness and religious freedom. And Mecca is more than a national symbol to Saudi Arabians; it is the holiest of religious sites for Muslims and is controlled by monarchy. We are not Saudi Arabia and Ground Zero is not a holy, religious place.
And even if it were, our constitutional prohibition against state-supported religion – and, by extension, the use of state power to discourage religious activity – offers a fairly strong argument against the sanctification of the former World Trade Center site.
But these constitutional niceties mean nothing to Park51 opponents, who have aggressively demonized the project and its developers (including a Sufi Muslim who has been among the most vocal critics of terrorism and religious extremism) and have gone out of their way to distort the debate by ignoring its basic facts.
In doing so – and by avoiding the questions of planning and zoning on which the community center should be reviewed – critics have made it clear that this is about Islam and that they are willing to incite hatred and create divisions to gain a few points in the polls.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post. E-mail, [email protected]www.kaletblog.comfacebook.com/hank.kalet.