A cross at Auschwitz and a mosque near Ground Zero
I have been aware of the controversy in the US about the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero but not following it all that closely. But a post by Maverick Philosopher has crystalised my thinking on the matter.
He cites a very useful analogy with Carmelite nuns taking over an abandoned building next to Auschwitz to pray for the souls. This was taken to be an attempt to Christianise a place of profound Jewish suffering. Pope John Paul II asked the nuns to move.
An even better analogy is the controversy over erecting a large cross as Auschwitz, a controversy that James Caroll considers at length in his book Constantine's Sword. Given that the Shoah is the end-point of centuries of Jews being killed for failing to follow Christ, the use of Christian symbols at the site is profoundly inappropriate, even offensive.
Yes, the Nazis killed Jews for racial rather than overtly religious reasons, nevertheless the Shoah is essentially a great big pogrom. One done by a modern European state with modern technology and organisational capacity to be sure, but it follows the pattern of a pogrom--it starts with vicious rhetoric and legal persecution of the Jews, the killings begin slowly, peak in an orgy of death when whole communities are wiped out but is erratic in its impact (in some areas, everyone is killed, other places they are driven away, or killings are sporadic and interwoven with theft and extraction of labour) and then drops away dramatically.
Nazi Jew-hatred was a secularisation of centuries of Catholic (and Orthodox) Churches preaching, extending back to the C4th based on the "wicked" failure of God's Chosen People to accept Christ. Indeed, under the accusation of Deicide, the cross was a symbol of Jewish "evil". To erect a cross as a marker at Auschwitz is simply monstrously inappropriate.
I fail to see how a mosque at Ground Zero is any relevantly different, particularly since 9/11 was an explicitly jihadi act, one done for explicitly religious reasons, so the connection between religious thought and history and mass murder is direct.
He cites a very useful analogy with Carmelite nuns taking over an abandoned building next to Auschwitz to pray for the souls. This was taken to be an attempt to Christianise a place of profound Jewish suffering. Pope John Paul II asked the nuns to move.
An even better analogy is the controversy over erecting a large cross as Auschwitz, a controversy that James Caroll considers at length in his book Constantine's Sword. Given that the Shoah is the end-point of centuries of Jews being killed for failing to follow Christ, the use of Christian symbols at the site is profoundly inappropriate, even offensive.
Yes, the Nazis killed Jews for racial rather than overtly religious reasons, nevertheless the Shoah is essentially a great big pogrom. One done by a modern European state with modern technology and organisational capacity to be sure, but it follows the pattern of a pogrom--it starts with vicious rhetoric and legal persecution of the Jews, the killings begin slowly, peak in an orgy of death when whole communities are wiped out but is erratic in its impact (in some areas, everyone is killed, other places they are driven away, or killings are sporadic and interwoven with theft and extraction of labour) and then drops away dramatically.
Nazi Jew-hatred was a secularisation of centuries of Catholic (and Orthodox) Churches preaching, extending back to the C4th based on the "wicked" failure of God's Chosen People to accept Christ. Indeed, under the accusation of Deicide, the cross was a symbol of Jewish "evil". To erect a cross as a marker at Auschwitz is simply monstrously inappropriate.
I fail to see how a mosque at Ground Zero is any relevantly different, particularly since 9/11 was an explicitly jihadi act, one done for explicitly religious reasons, so the connection between religious thought and history and mass murder is direct.