In the Shadow of 9/11: On Cordoba House

(Thanks to a friend for bringing this to my attention and providing the Wounded Knee parallel.)

The plight of Cordoba House in New York City has been in the news lately. If/when completed, the thirteen-story, $100,000,000 mosque and Islamic cultural center will stand at 45 Park Place, two blocks down from the site of the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 in Manhattan.

The planned project has attracted protests from the families of 9/11 victims and a number of commentators, including the members of several moderate Muslim organizations. The objection appears to be that to build a mosque so near the site of the World Trade Center attacks is disrespectful to the memory of those who died in the attacks. How would this be disrespectful, exactly? According to Muslim opponents of the project, it’s bound to inflame passions and perhaps be more hurtful than helpful in promoting cultural understanding – a valid point.

However, there is another, more sinister side to opposition to Cordoba House. Al Santora, a New Yorker whose son died in the attacks, had this to say about the project: "I do have a problem with having a mosque on top of the site where [terrorists] can gloat about what they did.”

Two points I wish to make. Firstly, the mosque would be two blocks down the street, not actually on top of Ground Zero. If it were actually on the site of the WTC, I might have issues with it, but not because of the fact that it’s a mosque, but rather because Ground Zero itself should be a memorial. I wouldn’t want Jews or Catholics building on top of the ruins of the World Trade Center either. But that brings up my second point, which is, would there be this kind of uproar if the Jewish National Fund were planning to build a synagogue at 45 Park Place?

Ah, but we’re talking about Muslims here, and that changes the whole game. In the words of blogger Madeline Brooks, the mosque would be a “handy meeting place for future terrorists.” If we let Cordoba House up, it means the terrorists – meaning the Muslim community of Manhattan, of course, and as we all know, all adherents of Islam are terrorists – would have won.

So what should we do? Block this mosque, that’s what. Hell, while we’re at it, let’s search all the neighborhoods within a mile of Ground Zero and evict all the Muslims in the area. After all, we wouldn’t want it to look like the terrorists had won. New York candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Tom Ognibene, compares the planned mosque to a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor: “Could you imagine a Japanese cultural center and temple next to the USS Arizona Memorial?”

Actually, I can imagine something along those lines. On December 29, 1890, United States cavalrymen slaughtered on the order of three hundred Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in my home state of South Dakota. Most of them were unarmed, seeing as how the cavalrymen had rounded up the Sioux in order to confiscate their rifles.

You know what stands in the town of Wounded Knee today? A Church of God.

If you have a problem with a mosque near Ground Zero, then perhaps you also ought to have a problem with all the Christian churches that were built on lands the U.S. government stole from Native Americans. (Or the McDonald’s we built on top of Dachau, but that’s another story entirely…)

However, the question then becomes, is that church, or this mosque, or the theoretical shrine to Japanese heritage at Pearl Harbor, really a problem? Personally, I don’t think so. That church at Wounded Knee probably wasn’t built to thumb our noses at Natives and say, “Ha-ha, we killed your people and now we’re building a church – OUR church – on their graves.” It was probably built because people in the town of Wounded Knee wanted a church and decided to build one.

And that’s exactly the case in New York. This isn’t an act of Islamic cultural imperialism, a shot across the bows in some imagined clash of civilizations. This is a devotional community in the neighborhood wishing to celebrate their religion. In fact, I think a shrine to tolerant Islam near the World Trade Center is a great idea, a reminder that many Muslims – in fact, the vast majority of Muslims – are not suicidal maniacs. I would feel similarly about a pagoda at Pearl Harbor. (Of course, whether Cordoba House is the very best use of $100,000,000 by adherents of a religion ostensibly dedicated to social justice is up for debate, but that is, once again, another story…)

This should be a non-issue. And to NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg and the local community board, who both back the project, it is a non-issue, thankfully. But when it comes to Muslims in America, it always seems to be an issue, unfortunately.