Aug 17th 2010
LIKE a doddery vicar meandering through a sermon, America’s politicians are groping their way toward a point of sorts about the proposed mosque near ground zero. The public, polls show, is against the idea, so they are too. But they are struggling to explain why.
A few, most notably Newt Gingrich and two Republican candidates for governor of New York, still maintain, in the face of all sound legal advice, that the backers of the Cordoba Islamic Center have no right to build it, in spite of the constitution’s protection of religious freedom and private property. Contrary to what Mr Gingrich says, in America, Nazis do have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington; a Japanese citizen could unfurl a banner of the rising sun at Pearl Harbor and so on.
The majority of pols, unwilling to bin the constitution, have fallen back instead on the notion that building the centre, while perfectly legally defensible, is "insensitive". Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sarah Palin—an unusual position for them both—when he took this stance yesterday. Barack Obama also seems to have arrived in much the same place, first saying on Friday that he supported the construction of the mosque and then explaining over the weekend that he was talking about constitutional rights, rather than tact.
But that simply invites the question of why building the mosque is so tactless. It certainly would be insensitive, to use Mr Gingrich’s terms, to wave swastikas by the Holocaust Museum. But for this analogy to work, a mosque must be to 9/11 what a swastika is to the Holocaust. Happily, however, most politicians are reluctant to suggest that mosques are symbols of terrorism, or that Muslims are all terrorists.
Instead, the complaint seems to boil down to a vague sense that doing Muslim stuff near ground zero is an unhappy reminder of terrorism, because the terrorists claimed to be acting in the name of Islam. That smacks of collective punishment: I doubt, somehow, that Mr Obama or Mrs Palin would consider it insensitive to build a church near the site, say, of a cross burning carried out by the Ku Klux Klan or an abortion clinic bombed by Christian fundamentalists. I doubt also that they would want, if they thought about it a bit harder, to accept the 9/11 attackers’ assertion that they were acting on behalf of their Muslim brothers.
Moreover, the call for sensitivity cuts both ways. Muslims, both inside and outside America, have worried since 9/11 that the attacks would spark widespread reprisals and discrimination. For some, the fuss about the mosque confirms their fears. It is impossible to be sensitive both to those who see the mosque as an affront and those who see opposition to it as proof of prejudice, which is why America has a constitution to adjudicate such disputes. And in this instance, the constitution comes down squarely on the side of the mosque-builders
LIKE a doddery vicar meandering through a sermon, America’s politicians are groping their way toward a point of sorts about the proposed mosque near ground zero. The public, polls show, is against the idea, so they are too. But they are struggling to explain why.
A few, most notably Newt Gingrich and two Republican candidates for governor of New York, still maintain, in the face of all sound legal advice, that the backers of the Cordoba Islamic Center have no right to build it, in spite of the constitution’s protection of religious freedom and private property. Contrary to what Mr Gingrich says, in America, Nazis do have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington; a Japanese citizen could unfurl a banner of the rising sun at Pearl Harbor and so on.
The majority of pols, unwilling to bin the constitution, have fallen back instead on the notion that building the centre, while perfectly legally defensible, is "insensitive". Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sarah Palin—an unusual position for them both—when he took this stance yesterday. Barack Obama also seems to have arrived in much the same place, first saying on Friday that he supported the construction of the mosque and then explaining over the weekend that he was talking about constitutional rights, rather than tact.
But that simply invites the question of why building the mosque is so tactless. It certainly would be insensitive, to use Mr Gingrich’s terms, to wave swastikas by the Holocaust Museum. But for this analogy to work, a mosque must be to 9/11 what a swastika is to the Holocaust. Happily, however, most politicians are reluctant to suggest that mosques are symbols of terrorism, or that Muslims are all terrorists.
Instead, the complaint seems to boil down to a vague sense that doing Muslim stuff near ground zero is an unhappy reminder of terrorism, because the terrorists claimed to be acting in the name of Islam. That smacks of collective punishment: I doubt, somehow, that Mr Obama or Mrs Palin would consider it insensitive to build a church near the site, say, of a cross burning carried out by the Ku Klux Klan or an abortion clinic bombed by Christian fundamentalists. I doubt also that they would want, if they thought about it a bit harder, to accept the 9/11 attackers’ assertion that they were acting on behalf of their Muslim brothers.
Moreover, the call for sensitivity cuts both ways. Muslims, both inside and outside America, have worried since 9/11 that the attacks would spark widespread reprisals and discrimination. For some, the fuss about the mosque confirms their fears. It is impossible to be sensitive both to those who see the mosque as an affront and those who see opposition to it as proof of prejudice, which is why America has a constitution to adjudicate such disputes. And in this instance, the constitution comes down squarely on the side of the mosque-builders
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