mosque.jpgNearly nine years after the Twin Towers collapsed, Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan is still smoldering. The public response to a proposal to build an Islamic center near the site has reignited the embers of anti-Muslim animosity.

The right-wing blogosphere was apoplectic about plans to create a Muslim-oriented community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site. The Cordoba House, a project of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which work to improve interfaith and community relations, would offer a prayer space alongside other public amenities like a performing arts center and fitness facilities. In an otherwise uncontroversial development plan, the political subtext is straightforward: any symbol of Islam is an affront to the victims of 9/11 and American values.

Cue the wingnuts.

Over at Human Events, avowed Jihad-watcher Robert Spencer attempts to psychoanalyze the mosque-builders’ stealth propaganda war:

The Twin Towers, after all, were the symbol of America’s economic power. Placing a mosque by the site of their destruction (at the hands of Islamic jihadists) symbolizes the taming of that power.

That’s news to Daisy Khan, executive director of ASMA, who told CNN that the project’s main mission is to “celebrate the pluralism in the United States, as well as in the Islamic religion… It will also serve as a major platform for amplifying the silent voice of the majority of Muslims who have nothing to do with extremist ideologies. It will counter the extremist momentum.”

But an editorial in Investors Business Daily rails against the supposed Islamicization of America, touting conspiranoiac allegations of the government’s support radical Islamic institutions. (Ah ha! Those extremists at the Census Bureau have exposed their jihadist allegiances by leasing office space in a building owned by a scary Falls Church mosque!)

Witting or not, the government is guilty of what it has prosecuted others for doing — financing terrorist fronts….

Appeasement is now policy. Everything we learned on 9/11 has been turned on its head.

So, um, leaving aside the apocalyptic bloviating, what does any of this have to do with a proposed community center with a Muslim (but not religiously exclusive) focus in downtown Manhattan, which appears to be a progressive project coordinated not by the government but two private community organizations? Do New Yorkers feel genuinely “threatened” by the presence of Muslims praying near Ground Zero (alongside all the other religious institutions dotting the neighborhood), especially when the Twin Towers site remains a dismal, barren lot that could use some local revitalization right about now? (Despite the political noise, the project is currently wading through the usual approval process with the necessary city authorities.)

Marvin Bethea, who served as a paramedic at Ground Zero, told CNN what the presence of the Cordoba House would mean to him:

I think it’s the right thing to do… I lost 16 friends down there. But Muslims also got killed on 9/11. It would be a good sign of faith that we’re not condemning all Muslims and that the Muslims who did this happened to be extremists. As a black man, I know what it’s like to be discriminated against when you haven’t done anything.

Witting or not, to oppose the creation of a private cultural institution simply because of its ties to Islam would expose a gross hypocrisy in the politics of commemoration. Stigmatizing Muslim Americans would only undermine the city’s struggle to include all communities in the collective rebuilding effort.

Welcoming a space like Cordoba House in the Ground Zero community would be a powerful sign that human dignity still flourishes in a city that has been besieged by violence and fundamentalist hatred from all sides. Ground Zero is a strange point of unity in a fractious city, and there’s no point in finding common ground at the site of a tragedy if we can’t learn how to share it.

Image: Rendering of the Proposed Cordoba House on Park Place. (dnainfo.com)