A cross at Auschwitz and a mosque near Ground Zero

[erudito]

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

Comments

[newredshoes]

Wow. This analogy is so far-fetched and ill conceived I almost don't know what to say. As someone who is a Jew, an American and someone whose sister worked across the street from one of the towers and happened not to be working that day, I need to tell you that this is wrong. For starters, not everything is like Auschwitz, not even if someone is building a Chinese restaurant and a nunnery in Guernica or the Killing Fields, Second, the community center and mosque is five blocks away from the site, and it's meant to be a site of interfaith learning and outreach. (Not to mention the fact that there already is a mosque near the site.) Third, vilifying Muslims, people who also died and were harmed by 9/11, and denying them space because of 19 assholes with boxcutters is vile and un-American. Fourth, this is a center dedicated to refuting the asshole hysteria that made 9/11 possible

Analogy

[erudito]

not everything is like Auschwitz
Well no, of course not. Analogies are rarely perfect. But they do not have to be. I don’t have to claim that 9/11 was the same as Auschwitz, merely that it is like it in sufficient ways to make the same points germane.

As for the proposed mosque, it is two blocks from the site, in buildings damaged in 9/11 and is rather bigger than an "interfaith centre": As Wikipedia puts it:
Cordoba House, also referred to as the "Ground Zero Mosque" and "Park51", is a proposed $100 million, 13-story, glass and steel Islamic cultural center and mosque that is in the planning stage.[4][5] The plan is to raze an existing 1850s Italianate building that was damaged in the September 11 attacks, and build the mosque in its place. It is to be built two blocks (less than 600 feet, or 180 meters) from Ground Zero in New York City. Groundbreaking is planned for late 2010.[6][5] It is anticipated that 1,000 to 2,000 Muslims will pray at the mosque every Friday, once it is built
The issue is not building a mosque, nor even

Re: Analogy

[newredshoes]

I still think this is absolutely bogus reasoning, and a distraction from the fact that conservatives in America tend not to care about New York and 9/11 unless they can use it as a source of outrage. It's much more convenient to let the spit fly about an unpopular group of brown people than it is to commit to giving health care to 9/11 aid workers who are still suffering ill effects from their brave work at the site.

Also, let me say it again: Muslims are Americans too. Muslims were harmed and killed on 9/11 too. Muslims were part of rescue and recovery efforts too. Muslims have every right to be there. This is a manufactured controversy rooted in nativist paranoia, and it infuriates me to see such willful ignorance and hatefulness taking cover behind a concern for "sensitivity."

Re: Analogy

[erudito]

I really do not care about internal American political games and it is very tiresome to reduce every contentious issue my "goodies and baddies" like that.

You might be interested in this piece where some Canadian Muslim writers say that the proposed mosque is a deliberate provocation. They have also come up with a striking analogy.

The point is not about "Muslims", the point is about being how inappropriate it is to build a mosque at the site which was a major jihadi attack.

[thorfinn]

FFS. Muslim does not equal Jihadi, just as German does not equal Nazi.

Not the point

[erudito]

Nor does Polish Catholic equal Nazi. A cross is not a Nazi symbol.

Re: Not the point

[catsidhe]

Nor is an outreach center a Mosque. Any more than a Memorial Hall is a church.

Nor is a building which was damaged from being in the near vicinity of the WTC, but still a block away, the same as “Ground Zero”. (FFS, the Tea Partiers and you make it sound like it's being built in the still smoking hole.)

How far away is too far away? A block? Two blocks? Not on Manhattan at all? Why not dedicate the whole damned city as a shrine and ban any Muslims going there at all?

Re: Not the point

[erudito]

It is being built on a site only available because the buildings were damaged by 9/11. That is pretty intimately connected.

I think it is possible to get a tactful distance away. And it is, in fact, a mosque which is part of the proposal.

[fizzyland]

There's a Shinto shrine just around the corner from the Pearl Harbor monument. I think your reasoning on this issue is questionable and I don't agree that it's fundamentally the same as Aushwitz nuns.

What arbitrary test would you like Muslims in America to pass before they can build a structure that is already legal for them to do so?

[findalexh]

Is it legal for me to do a wide range of very annoying and totally inconsiderate things? Absolutely. Maybe the test should then be just plain common courtesy

[catsidhe]

People who actually know and understand the history on this matter would like to call bullshit on the ‘Cordoba’ meme.

The summary of that link, in case you find it all a bit TL;DR:

The Cordoba mosque was built on the site of a church... several hundred years after the area was conquered by Muslims, the Christians were allowed full use of the site in the mean time, and the site was bought of them legally after that.

And the mosque was not meant to be a statement to Christians, it was meant to be a fuck-you to other Muslims.

And the church was built on the site of a Pagan temple in the first place. Why no concern for the feelings of Pagans?

Maybe the funding could be better used for a multi faith building where everyone of every religion can pray and remember the lost? Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist Seikh and atheist.

I thought they're already doing that. On the actual site of the WTC. At what distance from the epicenter does it stop being holy ground?

[findalexh]

Yeah, read that link before. So what? Cordoba should never have been chosen as the name. How about Manhatten Island Mosque? Who's going to take offence at a name of that nature?

The name is causing offence, the building is causing offence, the failure to divulge the sources of funding beyond what everybody suspects is causing offence and the failure by anyone associated with the project, or by Muslims in general, to universally condemn terrorism is causing offence.

Of course to do so would be to contradict the common reading of the Koran, so don't hold your breath waiting for that condemnation.

And all this is supposedly going to bring about peace? Interfaith dialogue?

Really?

Sorry, I'm just not buying that.

At what distance from the epicentre does it stop being holy ground?

At the distance that nobody will care. Probably a pretty big distance right now, give it a few years and see what happens, it's been less than 10 years. In a generation no one will care.