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Editor's Letter
www.jarc.org
Changing Islam's Face
A
mid the debate over plans to build an Islamic cul-
tural center, health club and mosque 300 yards from
Ground Zero, I was struck by the profound take of
an actual moderate American Muslim.
Few question the developers' legal
right to build the 13-story center in
lower Manhattan — provided funding is
secured. But the desired location is polit-
ically charged and divisive, even among
Jews. Consider the range of viewpoints
we've published relating to the Cordoba
Initiative, the organization behind the
proposed center known as Park51.
Location — so near the World Trade
Robert Sklar
Center site of the Islamist-driven 9-11
Editor
massacre — seems everything in this
discussion that won't wither.
"Let us remember that the project organizers themselves
created this controversy by announcing that the groundbreak-
ing would take place on the 10-year anniversary of the attack
and that the exact site was selected because of its proxim-
ity to Ground Zero," Abdur-Rahman Muhammad wrote in a
gripping essay that appeared on Aug. 24 at paja-
masmedia.com . He's a Washington-based senior
writer for the Association for the Study of African
American Life and History and a graduate of
Howard University in Washington.
More than 20 years ago, the African American
Muslim was the imam of a mosque where he
taught radical Muslim ideology. He later renounced
that hatred in favor of working to counter Islamist
hatemongering in the American Muslim commu-
nity. That's how the credit line on his essay reads.
Compelling as his thoughts were, I needed assur-
ance he was legitimate. So I asked someone whose Abdur-Rah
opinion I value: Steve Emerson, executive director Muhammad
of the Washington-based Investigative Project
on Terrorism. "I vouch 100 percent for the writer of the piece
Emerson told the IN. "He's a very courageous guy."
Jigging iii
In his essay, Muhammad rejected the notion that opposition
to Park51 and several other mosques around the country is
"evidence of bigotry and so-called Islamophobia."
Sure, a strain of Islamophobia infects some Americans. But
not every mosque churns out hate and not every Muslim is an
Islamist. I've said repeatedly that the vast majority of American
Muslims respect U.S. law and understand the return on contrib-
uting to the American way of life.
Still, as Muhammad noted, "there is a legitimate basis for
fear of mosques — as it is a demonstrable fact that mosques
and Muslims have been disproportionately connected to ter-
rorism in this country and around the world."
His most damning point was that "in the examples of opposi-
tion to specific mosques chosen by the media as evidence of
popular 'bigotry, the media have selectively ignored the openly
available evidence showing unambiguously that these mosques
or their officials are connected to, or supportive of, the radical
Muslim Brotherhood (the parent of Al Qaida), Hamas and other
radical Islamic fundamentalist organizations."
At The Core
With widespread opposition to the Park51 Community Center
as well as some sincere support, including among Jews, the
project — for me — comes back to the theory that the devel-
opment will promote "interfaith dialogue" and "mutual under-
standing." Muhammad mused that the project might not have
been so bitterly opposed had its Muslim developers, especially
the imam heading up the $100 million project, Faisal Abdul
Rauf, been truly moderate. "But then again:' Muhammad
wrote, "they probably would never have proposed such a thing
in the first place."
No one has tied Rauf, a Sufi Muslim who says he recognizes
Israel's right to exist, to Al Qaida. But something seemingly
simple to deduce — whether he has condemned Hamas,
which is on the U.S. Department of State list of terrorist
organizations — has become subject to interpretation. "He
also called this country an 'accessory' to the 9-11 attacks and
has written that America is shariah (Muslim law) compliant:'
Muhammad wrote. "Forget all the rubbish about 'interfaith
dialogue' and 'mutual understanding.' The ongoing battle over
this site has already belied that charade."
JTA quoted Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, as explaining in an
ABC News interview that the 2001 "accessory" comment
referred to U.S. support for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban
during the Cold War in the 1980s.
Coming To Terms
Rauf and his leadership team would be wiser
and provide a more compassionate face of
Islam were they to essentially say, "It is our right
to build here. We have permission to build here.
Now that all of America knows it our right to
build here and that we have permission to build
here, we choose to build elsewhere because we
are sensitive to both the families of the 9-11
victims and the belief by many Americans that
Islam is intolerant and uncompromising." Such
a change of heart is unlikely. Rauf, 61, has too
much at stake in political and religious power.
"Moreover," wrote Muhammad, "the mosque
will come to symbolize in the radical Muslim world the triumph
of bin Laden's attack and provide a kind of heavenly validation
for his approach to spreading radical ideology. For what other
reason could the 10th anniversary have been chosen for the
groundbreaking?"
That deduction may be a stretch.
But Muhammad was right to argue, "Non-Muslim
Americans have yet to see any clean line of demarcation
between radical and moderate Muslims. Everywhere around
the globe, Muslims are the cause of so much bloodshed and
turmoil — making life on this planet a living hell."
The underlying problem, he stressed, is that Muslims in
America "suffer a deserved trust deficit wherein they are seen
as a foreign and dangerous element." Perhaps, he concluded,
"if the $100 million being spent on this mosque were used to
build, say, a hospital, this perception would begin to change."
In Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, we have a radical-turned-
moderate Muslim urging the civilized Muslim world to reassess
how best to change the perception — beginning in America.
His message resonates. LI
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Should the Islamic center be built
near Ground Zero?
Is Imam Rauf under too critical
a microscope?
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Richard Kaplan lives at JARC's Berlin
Home in Bloomfield Hills
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September 9 2010 5