The manufactured controversy over what has ludicrously come to be called the “Ground Zero Mosque” has a lot of depressing aspects. But easily the most surprising and, for me, upsetting development is that the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish human rights organization, has sided with Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and the other opportunistic GOP pols who are exploiting this issue.
A couple weeks ago the ADL came out with a statement recommending that “a different location be found” for the Cordoba House, the Muslim community center, similar to the YMCA and JCC, that is being promoted by a Manhattan imam with a long record of ecumenicism and moderation. (One of his books is called “What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America.” Really.)
The ADL argued that “ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.” The principle at work here seems to be, “Whatever the victims of September 11th don’t like, isn’t right.” It reminds me of the idea that we should support the death penalty because the families of murder victims tend to want murderers executed.
What I found even more astounding was the ADL’s notion that this is “not a question of rights.” The group calls itself “the nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency,” and it’s sniffing at the idea that Muslims have a right to build mosques (not to mention swimming pools, restaurants, and the rest of the Cordoba House’s features) wherever they please. The ADL has argued in court against the use of zoning laws to restrict the construction of houses of worship, but apparently “sensitivity” is more important than religious freedom.
Don’t get me wrong, sensitivity is important. But in order to demand that one party be more sensitive, there has to be some rational basis for another party’s feeling offended. If I cursed loudly and deliberately in the vicinity of schoolchildren, you would say, I may have a right to do that, but I should have been more sensitive because there’s a legitimate interest in protecting children from dirty words. Maybe I believe that children don’t need to be protected from curse words, but still, sensitivity to the sincere beliefs of others requires me, morally if not legally, to hold my tongue.
The Cordoba House situation isn’t like that at all. The only reason to take offense at a Muslim community center built two blocks north of the World Trade Center is the assumption that all Muslims have some connection with, and responsibility for, the actions of the 9/11 terrorists. That’s why we have seen politicians and other commentators blur the difference between moderate and jihadist Muslims and imply that we are at war with Islam per se. Carl Paladino, a Republican running for NY governor, says the proposed community center would be a “monument to those who attacked our country.” Newt Gingrich points out that there are “no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” as if the center were sponsored by the Saudi government, not a moderate Sufi Muslim leader about as far, spiritually speaking, from radical Sunni Islam as any Jew or Christian. Pat Buchanan says building a mosque near Ground Zero would be like “building a Shinto shrine” at Pearl Harbor. Because, you see, we’re at war with Muslims just as we were at war with the Japanese. It really is that simple for them. But it’s wrong, not to mention painfully counter-productive, and the ADL should have so and left it at that.
As Peter Beinart says, “Would the ADL for one second suggest that sensitivity toward people victimized by members of a certain religion or race justifies discriminating against other, completely innocent, members of that religion or race? Of course not. But when it comes to Muslims, the standards are different.” Exactly, because they don’t see Muslims like Feisal Abdul Rauf as “completely innocent.” This is collective guilt, pure and simple.
The whole sad affair with the ADL reminds me of Beinart’s great article a couple months back about how American Jewish organizations have sacrificed their human-rights liberalism on the altar of Zionism, in the process losing the allegiance of many younger American Jews. Beinart wrote, “These groups would never say, as do some in Netanyahu’s coalition, that Israeli Arabs don’t deserve full citizenship and West Bank Palestinians don’t deserve human rights. But in practice, by defending virtually anything any Israeli government does, they make themselves intellectual bodyguards for Israeli leaders who threaten the very liberal values they profess to admire.”
Now the threat to liberal values has come to New York, and the ADL has blown a major opportunity to stand up for them.
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