BLOGS FROM US

The Mosque-Near-Ground-Zero controversy rages on and is not likely to end anytime soon. The Mosque backers have backed themselves into a corner. The President of the United States is making a sales pitch few are buying. Politicians across the Country, both pro and con, are stoking the fire, some with more ridiculous arguments than others. And some who are just plain ridiculous. Meanwhile, the main concerns of the Country go unanswered. No one knows when it will be over or how it will be resolved. So, rather than predict an end, let’s talk about what the end should be.

The answer, which, by the way, applies to the entire Park51 Center, is no, it should not be built there. Anyway you look at it, right side up, upside down or even sideways, the Center, placed near Ground Zero, is a significant national security concern. Under those circumstances, it shouldn’t be permitted. I know, I know. “National security” has been used a lot in the last few years to get away with even more. But, before you reject it in this case, read on.

For months, Daisy Kahn and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the determined duo behind the Center, recited the same two motivations for its construction: a gathering place for the Muslim community and a wonderful gesture of cultural détente to America. A gathering place could be built almost anywhere in Lower Manhattan making the current choice inconsequential to the Center’s community purpose. However, spurring cultural détente between Islam and America is much better served by the current location. Or so Daisy repeatedly claims. But, it takes two willing participants to do the détente tango. It doesn’t happen when one of them is being dragged around the floor by the hair, caveman style, which is what’s happening now. With no reasonable possibility for détente, the reason for the location evaporates.

Other justifications for the Center’s location have sprung up. Like, Obama’s freedom of religion claim and Ron Paul’s property rights clarion call. But, we know that our rights, constitutional or otherwise, are not absolute. Not the right to life or the right to liberty, property or even the practice of religion. Superseding interests can exist that justify the restriction of any of these freedoms in particular contexts. The police power of the State exercised as capital punishment, conscription, zoning ordinances, etc., serves to curtail or even deny them under appropriate circumstances. So, asserting a right is just the beginning of the discussion, not the end.

That end here is national security, which compels the Center’s construction at a different place. An Islamic Center located within spitting distance of Ground Zero will be a beacon for radical Muslims. A place to celebrate the fall of the twin towers and an incitement to do more of the same. Feisal, the Center’s primary fundraiser, has spent this century blaming the U.S. for September 11. At the same time, he refuses to denounce Hamas, the Islamic terrorist organization. It is no wonder that Hamas supports the construction of the Center. One of the backers did recently state for the first time that construction funds would not be sought from Iran. However, we have yet to hear the same promise from Feisal who, so far, has been noncommittal.

An even greater encouragement to extremists is the strong support the Center receives from the appeasing mouthpieces among our political leadership. What a boon to terrorists everywhere that the mayor of the devastated City invites them back to party. Then there’s Obama and Nancy Pelosi. In sponsoring Feisal’s goodwill tour of Muslim countries, even our State Department is seen as sanctioning the Center’s location. These trips give him a platform to pitch the Center, among other things. While he’s prohibited from directly soliciting funds, only the stunningly naïve believe his State Department speeches do not have that effect.

Of course, the national security concern may be assuaged in another way. Instead of using part of the Center’s space as a 911 memorial, the backers can rent it to the FBI and all the other interested alphabet agencies. You can bet they’ll be all over it once construction is complete.

When Howard Dean, Newt Gingrich, Harry Reid and Sarah Palin line up on the same side of an issue, believe there’s something to it. The alternative on this one is to join the Obama-Pelosi-Hamas bandwagon. You choose.

See you on the left-side.

In the past ten days or so, President Obama sucked up a lot of airtime droning on about constitutional rights and the mosque near Ground Zero. But, his lectures amount to a zero because whether constitutional rights apply depends, not on Obama’s view, but on judicial review. He knows as well as anyone in America that freedom of religion, like other constitutional rights, is not absolute. If competing interests are strong enough, they can prevail.

So why is he making premature constitutional pronouncements? Evidently, trying to bluster an end to the debate about the mosque in a show of support for the Muslim community. What he should have done was encourage a frank discussion of the bottom line issues between the opposing sides. But, he punted and a whirlwind of political damage has been cutting a wide swath ever since.

One of Obama’s big agenda items is improving relations between the U.S. and the Muslim World. From his inaugural address, to his speech in Cairo, to his political appointments and beyond, he’s been a prodigious promoter of Islam. And, that’s not necessarily bad. Other things being equal, getting along is obviously a lot better than not. But, Obama’s single-minded purpose blinds him to virtually everything else, causing him to miss the mark too often. In this case, pulling a false trigger to force people to cozy up was bound to blow up instead. Right now, we’re suffering the fallout that political leadership may have prevented.

According to Daisy Khan, one of the two main initiators of the Islam Center project, its purpose is to celebrate diversity and detente. Since 2005, she’s spoken of it as a place of community fellowship for Muslims, and, as importantly, an overture to American-Muslim harmony. Through interfaith programs and other outreach efforts, she believed the Center would help repair the breach created by the 911 attacks. Driving a constitutional stake in the ground was not one of her talking points.

It’s not surprising. Two Mosques have existed in lower Manhattan for decades, located four and twelve blocks, respectively, from Ground Zero. Non-muslims do not protest the presence of these houses of worship. True, they are low-key, but the Islam Center won’t look like a mosque either. A thirteen-story glass and chrome structure, it will house a large auditorium, theater, performing arts center, sports center, bookstore, culinary school, art studio, food court, 911 memorial and the mosque.

How did a brawl of disagreement breakout over this idyllic purpose? In an article published before Obama opened his mouth, the New York Times listed several bridge-building missteps taken by the Center’s backers. They boil down to one thing: a failure to recognize the possibility that the Center could be viewed as a monument to the ideology that felled the twin towers.

There are several major dividing points that the article failed to discuss. Although now called Park51, the original name for the Center was Cordoba House. The effort to build it is called the Cordoba Initiative. For Muslims, Cordoba refers to Cordoba, Spain, the Muslim capital during centuries of political and military domination over that part of Western Europe. Then there’s the backers’ refusal to rule out terrorist sources of funding for the Center. Chief among them is the Iranian government, which, according to our State Department, is the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism.

Lastly, Daisy’s husband and the Center’s co-founder, Feisal Abdul Rauf, has an unfortunate habit of making very explosive, anti-American allegations. Take his September 2001 60 minutes interview and his 2005 Australian interview. He accused the U.S. of being an accessory to the 911 crimes, directly responsible for bin Laden and worse than Al Qaeda. Now days, Feisal says his 60 Minutes statements were “edited out of context”. But, for the past nine years, he’s gotten a lot of favorable mileage out of them in the Muslim World.

How this will ultimately play out is anyone’s guess. Following Obama’s initial religious freedom speech, the mosque builders dug in their heels and refuse to budge. Talk of rapprochement has been replaced by a mute determination to claim constitutional rights that were never the issue. Obama botched an opportunity to engage both sides in a dialog that may have resulted in an amicable resolution. Instead, he poured gasoline on a smoldering flame, exploding it into a white-hot election year issue. Where is the cool head of effective leadership?

See you in the mirror.