Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg's eloquent efforts, the controversies aren't going away about the building of a mosque and community center near Ground Zero in New York City -- or in the many other cities where mosques are proposed.
And maybe they shouldn't.
After all, when the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, they meant to maim the world's financial capital. But what they really undermined was the liberal foundation of the world's most open-minded and welcoming city in what is probably still the world's most tolerant country. New Yorkers were shaken to their core by the realization that so much of what they stood for and cherished -- freedom, openness, acceptance of differences -- helped provoke the attack.
Now New Yorkers are being asked for more lenience, and quite a few are questioning the rationale of being generous toward any group or individuals associated with Islam, in whose name the terrorists acted.
Who, what ...
Several prominent Muslims have come forward to criticize the mosque, including the Sufi mystic, Suleiman Schwartz, who denounced the plans as inconsistent with Sufi's emphasis on sensitivity toward others. Neda Bolourchi, an Iranian-born but now-American Muslim whose mother was killed on 9/11, wrote a Washington Post op-ed titled, "Build your mosque somewhere else."
"I have no grave site to visit," wrote Bolourchi, "no place to bring my mother her favorite yellow flowers, no spot where I can hold my weary heart close to her. All I have is Ground Zero."
She's right, of course.
But so is Mayor Bloomberg, when he calls on us to remember that Muslims were among those murdered, and "that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values ... if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else."
Yet New Yorkers are not wrong to push beyond their mayor's words and demand more information than they've been given -- who exactly is involved, what are their credentials, what are their statements on terrorism, and what are the sources of the $100 million in financing? Platitudes from the mosque's organizers about "healing" and "forbearance" and fostering "a better relationship between the Muslim world and the West" are inadequate on the site of mass murder.
And Muslim cleric Feisal Abdul Rauf, one of the mosque organizers, really does need to clarify his statement on 60 Minutes after 9/11: "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime that happened."
It's impossible to know without hearing directly from Rauf whether his oddly passive language -- "the crime that happened" -- is due to poor word choice or to a refusal to recognize that this was a deliberate, malevolent, organized attack that didn't just occur by happenstance.
And how does this seeming evasion of responsibility fit into the words he has often spoken, that the mosque and community center will steer "the world back to the course of mutual recognition and respect and away from heightened tensions?" The heightened tensions have many causes, but a primary one is the increasing scale and horror of Islamic-justified terrorism.
Reassure us
We need reassurance on the details of the plans and the ideas and ideologies of the organizers not because the law requires them but because decency does. The First Amendment and New York City land-use laws confer as-of-right status on the mosque, but this is not a simple land-use decision. Rather, the mosque strategy could show a way forward for Islam and America or, if mishandled, cause a giant step backward. Islamic leaders have a duty to explain just why they're building near Ground Zero -- not at all an obvious thing for them to be doing -- and how they're going to shoulder the immense responsibility they've embraced to show that their religion and outlook are both worthy of the trust of Americans.
I suspect this is actually doable, because the organizers were able to persuade both Mayor Bloomberg and the intelligent, engaged members of Community Board 1 in downtown Manhattan to support them. Yet they've done a deplorable job of persuading the public-at-large -- perhaps because they've gotten caught in some utterly unfair, even preposterous, rhetoric.
Newt Gingrich, for example, is educated enough to have known that Cordoba, the namesake city for the original project, is renowned as the medieval Spanish city where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in peace and prosperity for some 800 years. Cordoba, is not an insulting term, as Gingrich contends, nor is it a synonym for Islamic conquests.
Can we live in peace with a mosque near Ground Zero? Yes, but first we're entitled to some answers.
Julia Vitullo-Martin is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Regional Plan Association in New York.
Mosque backers, answer these questions
