Posted on 08/19/2010 12:52:53 AM PDT by neverdem
Almost everything about the proposed Ground Zero mosque was cynically brilliant.
Start with the notion of a “Cordoba Initiative.” In the elite modern Western mind, Cordoba has been transmogrified into a mythical Lala Land of interfaith tolerance. To invoke the city is to prove one’s ecumenical credentials. Just ask our president, who, in his June 2009 Cairo speech, fantastically claimed that the Muslim city taught us tolerance while Christians were launching the Inquisition (1478) — quite a feat two and a half centuries after most of the Muslims of Cordoba had fled, converted, or been cleansed during the city’s fall (1236) to the Christian forces of the Reconquista. But no matter, we got the president’s drift about who was supposedly tolerant and who was not.
In truth, apart from a brief cultural renaissance, Cordoba, during its five centuries of Islamic rule, was not especially tolerant of nonbelievers. And, like most medieval cities, it was plagued by coups, assassinations, and right-wing clerical intolerance; it was a place where books were both burned and written. But that is not the point of citing Cordoba. Surely Feisal Abdul Rauf knows all that and more: Cordoba is as much a mythical construct of a long-ago multicultural paradise so dear to elite liberals as it is a fantasy rallying cry to Islamists to reclaim the lost Al-Andalus.
So Cordoba is a two-birds-with-one-stone evocation: in the liberal West proof of one’s ecumenical bona fides; in the Middle East proof of one’s Islamist bona fides. It would be easy to find a city emblematic of interfaith outreach other than the Andalusian Cordoba — from Jerusalem to Ann Arbor — but then the irony would be lost.
Then we come to Imam Rauf himself. To his liberal defenders, he is a sort of respectable Deepak Chopra who at respectable places like Aspen mouths pop platitudes of interfaith tolerance — so much so that our own State Department has employed him, apparently for quite some time, for goodwill gallivanting abroad.
But to those in the Middle East, he is known equally well for doing what he can, as a Western liberal, to contextualize terrorism, bin Laden, and Islamic extremism within the tired Western postmodern tropes of cultural relativism: “The United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” on 9/11; “In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the U.S.A.”; “The U.S. and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end”; “The issue of terrorism is a very complex question”; “The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets” — blah, blah, blah, like all the thinkery that one hears in the faculty lounge.
If the now mysteriously absent Mr. Rauf were not cynical, he simply could do the Oprah/Katie Couric circuit and convince the public that all of the above is taken out of context and that the implications are belied by his longstanding efforts at interfaith outreach. But then he tried that once, on 60 Minutes, with disastrous consequences; and, anyway, the irony of speaking obliquely to two audiences would surely be imperiled.
Now we are fighting over how far the perimeter of Ground Zero extends, and where “hallowed” or “sacred” ground begins and ends. But again, the entire notion of a “Ground Zero mosque” was the brainchild of Imam Rauf himself. He grasped at once the brilliant cynicism involved: Here at home well-meaning liberals would applaud the audacity of hope in positioning a mosque near the 9/11 site in order to “commemorate” the “tragedy,” as a token of tolerance where all could come together and thus avoid another misunderstanding of the sort that sent two airliners crashing into two skyscrapers.
Abroad, the message would, of course, be interpreted quite differently: To the radical Islamists, a mosque rising near Ground Zero well before a new World Trade Center is constructed is a message of Islamic triumphalism — in the long tradition of minarets on the conquered Santa Sophia in Istanbul, the eighth-century Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem rising on the site of the destroyed Jewish Second Temple, and the great mosque at Cordoba retrofitted from the gutted Christian Church of St. Vincent. Again, there are thousands of sites in New York where another mosque could be built; but without the Ground Zero resonance, the irony would be lost.
Then we come to the funding of the supposed $100 million, 13-story Islamic center (“mosque” has become a right-wing defamation for a complex devoted to contemplation and meditation). Mr. Rauf is not engaged in a nationwide fundraising drive of the sort Americans are used to for preserving iconic ships or refurbishing the Statue of Liberty. Instead, he is apparently counting on petrodollars from the Middle East. Given the authoritarian, and religiously intolerant, regimes in most of the Gulf sheikdoms, one can assume that donations will not be predicated on Imam Rauf’s supposed efforts at an Islamic Reformation. Otherwise, what better place to start than Saudi Arabia?
But all that might be unfair second-guessing and right-wing demagoguing. After all, Mr. Rauf can simply embrace transparency, and galvanize Americans to donate to his interfaith center. (Governor Paterson has already offered the help of the New York taxpayer.) Do that, and Gulf money becomes redundant.
Then there is the image of America. Note that the world is not talking about banning the burqa in France, or shutting down a mosque in Germany. Much less are we familiar with the Russians leveling Muslim Grozny or the Chinese rounding up and jailing or shooting Muslims. And, of course, few care that the Saudis, whether the public or the government, would jail a Christian who built a church in Riyadh, or kill a nonbeliever who tried to enter Mecca.
No, Imam Rauf wanted to show the world that the most religiously tolerant country in the world was, in fact, hypocritically intolerant. It is hard to do that in an anything-goes America, where Piss Christ art and shoot-Bush Knopf novels are considered hip creative expressions. But build a mosque a stone’s throw away from Ground Zero? Now that was a brilliant move, one that would draw a reaction from everyone from Glenn Beck to the New York labor unions. All Imam Rauf had to do was propose the mosque site, scram out of the country for a month, and let the liberal elite and the media lecture the world on how nativist, xenophobic, and intolerant the most tolerant nation in the world really was — sort of like lighting a firecracker, tossing it into a crowd from a moving car, speeding away, and watching the ensuing human fireworks in the rear-view mirror.
Finally, we come to the greatest irony of all, the politically suicidal entry of President Obama into the fray. After himself invoking Cordoba for just the sort of therapeutic mythmaking that Imam Rauf is far better at, how could the president now stay out? Rauf knew that he had a legal right to build the mosque, that the cultural elite would rally to his defense, that the right wing would go ballistic, and that his “outreach” would be deeply offensive to the vast majority of Americans of all faiths.
In other words, Rauf is just the sort of Venus’s flytrap that would lure in the unthinking multicultural, multi-everything president, eager to score political points with his omnipresent tolerance, and apparently having learned nothing from his disastrous beer summit and his declaration that clinging Arizonans would arrest Mom and Pop and the kids as they went out for ice cream. Obama could not resist weighing in, and once more he ended up looking the law-professor fool, who in sonorous tones reminds Americans, on the one hand, of the banal (it is perfectly legal to build a mosque near Ground Zero), while, on the other, he plays the Chicago legislator who voted present whenever he could (to a Muslim audience, he kinda, sorta wanted it built; to an American audience the next day, he kinda, sorta really didn’t).
Imam Rauf is a rascal, but he is at least a brilliantly cynical one.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
not good for the US
Tolerance can only be taken so far. When the Muslims turned the lives of the Spanish into a living Hell, they ran them out.
In Arizona illegals are making life a living Hell for the residents. Screw tolerance. Kick the illegals out.
Don't let tolerance become interchangeable for cowardice.
Regards
I would say Imam Rauf was too clever by half.
If you believe the Politico article it seems the Cordoba Gang went off half-cocked. They haven’t done any of the groundwork considered necessary for a major construction project in NYC, haven’t got the staff together, have barely enough money to initiate the process and don’t know what the hell they are doing.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41238.html
So far all they have succeeded in doing is antagonize an entire country and scared off the Big Money in the Arab world. They’ve suckered the entire Lib/Dem/MSM establishment—from Obama on down—into sticking their necks way out for them and insulting 70% of the nation for the sake of a mosque that is now highly unlikely to ever be built.
Now that the situation is more inflamed than Ned Beatty’s hemorrhoids the price to build the mosque has probably gone up by a factor of ten even as the potential donor base has likely shrunk by the same factor. The fact that the director of Al-Arabiya television (owned lock-stock-and-barrel by the UAE sheiks) has come out against it almost certainly makes it official that the petro-dollars will not be forthcoming.
I’d say Imam Rauf could not have planned it better if he were working for the RNC. The Left has jumped into this tar pit with both feet and is already reduced to flailing wildly and lashing out blindly at pretty much the whole fracking country and bellowing for the hated George W. Bush to ride to their rescue. If by some miracle the money and permitting DO come through and the demolition proceeds you can expect “Park51” to present a putrid, oozing chancre on the liberal body politic through the election season and beyond.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Left turns on the muzzie establishment in rage at being suckered by them. They’re already turning on each other.
*
bttt
VIDEO:
Bill Whittle Ground Zero Mosque Reality Check
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg_iDPRud_c
He also suceeded in Displaying the FRAUD that Islam is first and Foremost Humble,Sensitive,Respectful and Compassionate in dealing with other Peoples Feelings when in Non Muslim Countries. So Much for the Usual LIARS and Decievers who are Trying to Dominate the World
Well maybe instead of funding the fund-raising trip, Barry & Hillary’s Department of State will fund the actual construction.
The spokesperson for the proposed mosque says she ‘feels our pain’. And why can’t that Greek orthodox church rebuild on its site in lower Manhattan? Liberal arguments used to prop up the mosque venture never hold water. Same modus operandi with Harry Reid. Democrats say he’s an independent thinker and it’s okay for him to speak out against the mosque, however, anyone else, (republicans), who opens his mouth against it is ‘ginning’ up the argument. Next we’ll be racist demagogues.
The left is scared to death of the Moselms.
Ditto for the lame stream media.
LOL.
BTTT
They truly are afraid of muslims. For Leftists to submit to any request from religion is a red flag indicator. They should just submit already and buy prayer mats.
I’ve long thought what you suggest. Those that pander to the Muslims are physically afraid of Muslim retribution toward those that cross them. And, having no firm principles for which to risk their personal well-being, they are willing to go along to get along — or so they think. Of course, we all realize that, if Sharia law ever became a reality, the first ones to be put to death would be those on the left — precisely because their “anything goes” philosophy is the very thing that’s most abhorrent to fundamentalist Islam.
I love the way this guy writes.
To his point about language (”mosque” vs. “Islamic center”)...I tuned into Alan Colmes’ radio show to try and catch the latest liberal meme, and mercifully, a sub was sitting in for Colmes. In discussing the issue, the sub was using the term “cultural center.” So they’ve already ditched the word Islamic, which tells me they know they’re on life support for this issue.
A small part of the overall equation, perhaps, but instructive nonetheless.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.