It is a strange day indeed when Kathleen Parker - one of the increasingly small number of sane conservatives - is in agreement with Maureen Dowd. But that is the reality in terms of their views on the manufactured controversy over the proposed construction of a Muslim community center a few blocks from "Ground Zero" in lower Manhattan. The real issue at hand is whether this country will continue to stand by religious freedom and equality for all religions under the law or whether islamophobes will subvert the law just as the Christianists seek to subvert the Constitution when it comes to LGBT equality. Parker and Dowd both realize the importance of not knuckling under to bigots and extremists with a mindset like that in the picture at right. First, some highlights from Parker's column in the Washington Post:*
This is why plans for the mosque near Ground Zero should be allowed to proceed, if that's what these Muslims want. We teach tolerance by being tolerant. We can't insist that our freedom of speech allows us to draw cartoons or produce plays that Muslims find offensive and then demand that they be more sensitive to our feelings.
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More to the point, the tolerance we urge the Muslim world to embrace as we exercise our right to free expression, and revel in the glory and the gift of irreverence, is the same we must embrace when Muslims seek to express themselves peacefully.
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Nobody ever said freedom would be easy. We are challenged every day to reconcile what is allowable and what is acceptable. Compromise, though sometimes maddening, is part of the bargain. Ultimately, when sensitivity becomes a cudgel against lawful expressions of speech or religious belief -- or disbelief -- we all lose.
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Taking a similar tact, Dowd also lays into Obama and other politicians who lack the backbone to support Constitutional freedoms and instead tremble when confronted by bigots. She also notes that Chimperator Bush in one of his exceedingly rare good moments recognized that the USA loses if it demonizes Islam and all Muslims. Here are some highlights from Dowd's New York Times op-ed:
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Maybe, for Barack Obama, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is. When the president skittered back from his grandiose declaration at an iftar celebration at the White House Friday that Muslims enjoy freedom of religion in America and have the right to build a mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan, he offered a Clintonesque parsing.
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Some critics have said the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers would be to allow a mosque to be built near ground zero. Actually, the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood. Our enemies struck at our heart, but did they also warp our identity?
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The war against the terrorists is not a war against Islam. In fact, you can’t have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam. George W. Bush understood this. And it is odd to see Barack Obama less clear about this matter than his predecessor. It’s time for W. to weigh in. This — along with immigration reform and AIDS in Africa — was one of his points of light.
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Have any of the screaming critics noticed that there already are two mosques in the same neighborhood — one four blocks away and one 12 blocks away.
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So look where we are. The progressive Democrat in the White House, the first president of the United States with Muslim roots, has been morally trumped by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, two moderate Republicans who have spoken bravely and lucidly about not demonizing and defaming an entire religion in the name of fighting its radicals.
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Interestingly, this morning I received an e-mail from a reader in fly-over country. The message dealt with the experience of a long partnered gay couple and their Muslim neighbors. It's a testament to what we all should be doing. Here are some highlights reprinted by permission:
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We first met our new neighbor in 2007 shaking of hands over the fence between our backyards. He was in the process of closing on the house and was showing off to a friend. Two things were obvious, his big smile showed the pride in the new house and English was not his first language. OK, I thought, an immigrant, hope he didn’t get taken with one of those crazy loans. We welcomed him to the neighborhood, gave him our land line number in case he needed anything during the move.
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A couple of days passed, his family moved in. After we helped him light the pilot on his gas water heater, he introduced his wife and children to us. His and his wife’s first names were generically ‘American,’ but the children’s names were Muslim.
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We attended his naturalization, enjoyed watching a different culture’s celebration of a wedding, played with the children and helped each other shovel snow. One of our other neighbors remarked we had gone out of our way to help them, I hope so.
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The past few weeks have been very hot, the weather and the political rhetoric. We haven’t been outside drinking a beer on our front porch or puttering in the yard. No chance to exchange friendly waves or a quick hug with the kids when you have retreated to the air conditioning. I wanted to do something to kind of check on them. Nothing heavy handed, besides it is Ramadan and this Lutheran pastor’s son doesn’t know all the rules.
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After a discussion about what we knew of the practice of not eating during the day and a meal at night, we hit on a small gesture. Mrs. Neighbor likes our homegrown habanera peppers, so we knocked on the door to give her a few. When the 8 year old saw it was us, he didn’t give it a second thought, told his mother who it was as he threw open the door. He only marveled on my newly grown beard. Normal. It’s going to be OK. We’ve been through this nonsense before.
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