The New York Times article on this rally describes similar incidents, including how a student who carried a sign that simply read "Religious tolerance is what makes America great" was threatened and told that "that if the police were not present, [he] would be in danger." Does anyone believe that their real agenda is simply to have Park51 move a few blocks away to less Sacred ground, or that they're amenable to some sort of Howard-Dean-envisioned compromise that accommodates everyone?
All of this underscores a point I've wanted to make for awhile. There's been a tendency, which I find increasingly irritating, to dismiss this whole Park51 debate as some sort of petty, inconsequential August "distraction" from what Really Matters. Here's Chuck Todd mocking the debate as a "shiny metal object alert" and lamenting "the waste of time" he believes it to be, while Katrina vanden Heuvel, in The Washington Post last week, condemned "pundits and politicians [who] are working themselves into hysteria over a mosque near Ground Zero" on the ground that it won't determine the outcome of the midterm elections. This impulse is understandable. If you chose to narrowly define the topic of the controversy as nothing more than the Manhattan address of Park 51, then obviously it pales in importance to the unemployment crisis, our ongoing wars, and countless other political issues.
But that's an artificially narrow and misguided way of understanding what this dispute is about. The intense animosity toward Muslims driving this campaign extends far beyond Ground Zero, and manifests in all sorts of significant and dangerous ways. In June, The New York Times reported on a vicious opposition campaign against a proposed mosque in Staten Island. Earlier this month, Associated Press documented that "Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation's heartland, far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive." And today, The Washington Post examines anti-mosque campaigns from communities around the nation and concludes that "the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida in recent months, raising questions about whether public attitudes toward Muslims have shifted."
To belittle this issue as though it's the equivalent of the media's August fixation on shark attacks or Chandra Levy -- or, worse, to want to ignore it because it's harmful to the Democrats' chances in November -- is profoundly irresponsible. The Park51 conflict is driven by, and reflective of, a pervasive animosity toward a religious minority -- one that has serious implications for how we conduct ourselves both domestically and internationally. Yesterday, ABC News' Christiane Amanpour decided to let Americans hear about this dispute from actual Muslims behind the project (compare that, as Jay Rosen suggested, to David Gregory's trite and typically homogeneous guest list of Rick Lazio and Jeffrey Goldberg and you see why there's so much upset caused by Amanpour). One of those project organizers, Daisy Kahn, said this during her ABC interview:
This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism. That's what we feel right now. It's not even Islamophobia; it's beyond Islamophobia. It's hate of Muslims, and we are deeply concerned.
Can anyone watch the video of that disgusting hate rally and dispute that? That's exactly why I've found this conflict so significant. If Park51 ends up moving or if opponents otherwise succeed in defeating it, it will seriously bolster and validate the ugly premises at the heart of this campaign: that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11, Terrorism justifies and even compels our restricting the equals rights and access of Americans Muslims, and more broadly, the animosity and suspicions towards Muslims generally are justified, or at least deserving of respect. As Aziz Poonawalla put it: "if the project does fail, then I think that the message that will be sent is that bigotry and fear of Muslims is not just permitted, it is effective."
That's exactly the message that will be sent, and that's what makes this conflict so significant. Obviously, not all opponents of Park51 are as overtly hateful as those in that video -- and not all opponents are themselves bigots -- but the position they've adopted is inherently bigoted, as it seeks to impose guilt and blame on a large demographic group for the aberrational acts of a small number of individual members. And one thing is certain: if this campaign succeeds, it will proliferate and the sentiments driving it will become even more potent. Hatemongers always become emboldened when they triumph.
Read more at www.salon.com
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