Quote of the Day

Yes, ground zero is a sacred place; my wife’s ashes are in that ground. But to deny the opportunity to worship lawfully near there is denying what is most sacred for all Americans: freedom.

         William Nelson
         West Lebanon, N.H., Sept. 6, 2010
         New York Times, Letters, Sept. 13, 2010

This beautiful letter compresses Leon Wieseltier's incandescent core argument regarding Park51:

Nationalism has always arrogated to itself a hallowing power, and the sanctification of Ground Zero is the natural expression of the memory of a nation. But this is a secular sanctity. I see no justification for establishing a mosque, a church, or a synagogue at Ground Zero, even though Muslims, Christians, and Jews died there. (Irreligious people also died there.) Yet nobody is proposing to establish a mosque at Ground Zero. Sacralization is an act of demarcation: its force is owed to its precision. Outside the line is outside the line. Park Place is outside the line, in the “profane” realm.

Did Imam Rauf take Yossi Klein Halevi's advice?

Last week, in an open letter to Feisal Abdul Rauf, TNR's Yossi Klein Halevi proposed the following -- granting undue authority, in my opinion, to sensitivities of those who choose to be offended by an Islamic Center two blocks from Ground Zero:

I believe that you intend to create a center of Islamic moderation near Ground Zero. And it is precisely for that reason that I am turning to you with a plea to reconsider your plans to build the center in its current form. Instead, I urge you to consider turning the site into a center for interfaith encounter. Build the mosque—but do so together with a church and a synagogue and a center for common reflection for all three faiths and for those with no faith. Do this, Imam Feisal, not to surrender to your critics but to honor their pain, and, in the process, to honor Islam.

In an op-ed in Today's Times, Imam Rauf seems to have acceded to that wish -- unless the brief formulation below is not quite what it seems, or the plan was always thus:

At Cordoba House, we envision shared space for community activities, like a swimming pool, classrooms and a play space for children. There will be separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and men and women of other faiths. The center will also include a multifaith memorial dedicated to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Its force is owed to its precision": Wieseltier's definitive defense of Park51

I have read twisted and perverse arguments by Leon Wieseltier, but I am in awe of the moral clarity he brings to the debate over Park51, the proposed Islamic Center two blocks from Ground Zero. Its force comes in part by cutting through a bit of cant deployed in support of the project and in defense of Islam generally, and in part by consolidation of common-sense arguments already deployed, and perhaps from some structural progression in his the argument that I can't divine. But essentially, it's a matter of clear thinking informed by internalized principles --  and precision of language.

It's a short piece, and I have no excuse for excerpting it beyond the admirer's impulse to hold jewels up to the light. Here are four of them (with my emphasis):

1. Tossing the red herring

I have no quarrel with the construction of Cordoba House, but not because Islam is a religion of peace. It is not. Like Christianity and like Judaism, Islam is a religion of peace and a religion of war. All the religions have all the tendencies within them, and in varying historical circumstances varying beliefs and practices have come to the fore...Apologetic definitions of Islam will not avail anybody in this struggle.

2. Sacred space defined

[Ground Zero's] is a secular sanctity. I see no justification for establishing a mosque, a church, or a synagogue at Ground Zero, even though Muslims, Christians, and Jews died there. (Irreligious people also died there.) Yet nobody is proposing to establish a mosque at Ground Zero. Sacralization is an act of demarcation: its force is owed to its precision. Outside the line is outside the line. Park Place is outside the line, in the “profane” realm.

Maybe Bernstein's wrong this time?

If I may indulge in a lazy blog post format, at bottom is my comment in response to Jonathan Bernstein's rather astonishing claim that the fight over the Islamic Center near Ground Zero. Bernstein, always trenchant in his  debunking of unsupported assertions about the way politicians' words and deeds affect electorates, rather gleefully insists that Park51 (f.k.a. Cordoba House) is

not going to affect elections, it's not substantively important, and to the extent it's symbolically important...well, let's just say it's not symbolically important as a stand-alone issue in any significant way (at best, it's what Kevin Drum says, one straw -- so shouldn't we pay more attention to all that other straw?).  I'm sorry to be a stick in the mud about it, but it just isn't actually a big story no matter how much it gets hyped.  Okay? 

My response, which I'll be the first to admit lacks supporting evidence and doubtless needs work:

Gee Jonathan, I know you're an expert in the dynamics of public opinion and all that, but to second CSH, you sure seem wrong to me here.

Per a Ben Smith story, I think the Republicans completely repudiating Bush's efforts to differentiate Islam from Islamism is significant. I think Palin's success in bringing another poisonous meme to the eruption point is significant. I think that waves of hysterical demagoguery that hit fever pitch are significant. And I think that, as with torture, when it comes to defense of civil liberties leaders have to be better than the rest of us, because majorities will sell those liberties without a twitch for a modicum of relief from rage or fear. When one of our two major parties goes all out demonizing an entire religion and works assiduously to interfere with a local government's approval of a religious institution to be built on private property, that's dangerous.

Yes, he walked it back

I must confess that I am disappointed by Obama's "clarification" today of his defense yesterday of the Park51 group's right to build an Islamic Center two blocks from ground zero. I think that supporters crying foul over news reports characterizing today's remarks as a walkback are in a bit of denial.

Today Obama told reporters, "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding."

That plays directly into the hands of opponents of Park51 who have claimed that they are not infringing on the Park51 backers' right to build by suggesting that they refrain from building in deference to the sensibilities of those who feel that the building would constitute an insult to 9/11 victims or a threat to the nation's security.

Obama honors his oath of office

Some have wondered (Republicans, gleefully) why Obama would take a stand in explicit support of the proposed Islamic center at 45-51 Park Place near Ground Zero when 70% of Americans say they oppose it.  I believe that the answer is simple. It comes as a coda to his affirmation last night that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable." It's this:

The writ of the Founders must endure.

The same warmongers who natter on about the President's sworn duty to protect the country forget that what the President actually swears on Inaugural Day is "that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same."

Christopher Caldwell girds for civilizational war near Ground Zero

Christopher Caldwell is a careful, precise writer, capable of building a powerful argument block by block. All the more pernicious, then, his attack on Park51, the proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero.  His argument boils down to guilt by association and an acceptance of civilizational war.

Caldwell concedes that Park51's Constitutional and legal right to build the mosque are beyond dispute.  He argues that Mayor Bloomberg's defense of that right is beside the point:

Few mosque opponents argue seriously that this one can be blocked. The argument of Ms Palin and others is instead that it is insensitive to build a mega-mosque next to the spot where 2,700 people were killed in Islam’s name. This distinction – between what is constitutional and what is appropriate – is an important one.

The argument from insensitivity validates the assumption that the 9/11 attackers and al Qaeda did, in some sense, represent Islam at large. Because the attackers acted in Islam's name, no other proponents of Islam should presume to ensconce themselves anywhere in the vicinity. Caldwell states that premise explicitly, albeit with a caveat:

The attacks of 2001 were not a political-science abstraction. They were an expression of Islam. Not all of Islam, certainly – and Islam is neither the only religion that has such crimes to answer for nor the only one that has provoked such controversies. The building of a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz in the 1980s so wounded Jewish sensibilities that Pope John Paul II ordered it removed in 1993, even though the Holocaust was not carried out in the name of any faith.