The plans to build the Park51/Cordoba House community center
and mosque at a location about two blocks from the World Trade Center site has
become a national controversy. If it were not for the most disgustingly racist
anti-Muslim rhetoric being spewed by politicians, the media and others, this
situation would be laughable. The people planning to build this project several
blocks from “Ground Zero” have been holding services at the location for more
than a year—they simply want to exercise their constitutional rights to
religious freedom and construct a new and improved building at the same site
they have been using already to better serve their community. How could this be
controversial?
 Site of Park51 mosque’ Manhattan |
Freedom of religion for Muslims has become controversial in
the United States, because it is currently engaged in two imperialist wars
against predominantly Muslim nations. Thus it is imperative that racism be
continually whipped up against Muslims to justify these wars and occupations.
One of the main organizers of the Islamic Center, Daisy Khan, said: “It’s not
even Islamophobia; it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims, and we are
deeply concerned.” (New York Times, Aug. 22)
Leading politicians, from Pres. Barack Obama to Sarah Palin,
have weighed in on the issue. The president, speaking before a Muslim audience
at an Iftar dinner, appeared to defend the constitutional right to build a mosque
on private property in Lower Manhattan “in accordance with local laws and
ordinances.” He clarified the next day that he was only speaking of legal
rights, but was not commenting “on the wisdom of making the decision to put a
mosque there.” From that tepid support for religious freedom things went rapidly
downhill with the most despicable expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry being
heard from right-wingers who state outlandish untruths about Islam with a
straight face.
The ostensible reason for opposing the construction of the
Park51/Cordoba House project is that it is “insensitive” to families of the
people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center. However, it should be noted that while some oppose the project, other
9/11 victims’ families support the Park51 construction project.
Herb Ouida, whose
son Todd died, said: “To say that we’re going to condemn a religion and
castigate a billion people in the world because they’re Muslims, to say that
they shouldn’t have the ability to pray near the World Trade Center—I don’t
think that’s going to bring people together and cross the divide.”
(AOL News, Aug. 5)
Marvin Bethea, a
former EMS worker who was forced to retire in 2004 because of breathing
problems caused by working at the 9/11 site said, “Even though my life has
changed, I don’t hate the Muslims. Especially being a Black man, I know what
it’s like to be discriminated against. I’ve lived with that.” (AOL News, Aug. 5)
Protests and counterprotests
On Aug. 22, a wet Sunday afternoon in New York City, around 500
opponents of the mosque gathered to protest the plans to build it. They sang
patriotic songs, spoke of a “hijacked Constitution,” and taunted supporters of
the mosque who also gathered nearby.
Locally, the controversy is being felt by the estimated
600,000 Muslim sisters and brothers in New York. Since 2001, life for many
Muslims could be compared in some ways to life for the Japanese in the United
States after Pearl Harbor. A student at Columbia University said, “It’s been
nine years, but it feels like we haven’t moved an inch since then to come to
terms with the issues … and now it is all coming back.” (New York Times, Aug.
19)
Anti-Muslim graffiti in the subways has increased, and young
Muslims report feeling cornered at social events when they are asked to justify
what is usually referred to as “a mosque on top of Ground Zero.” The fear is
this tension will translate into anti-Muslim violence. Majeed Babar, a
Pakistani journalist who lives in Queens, says he talks to people concerned for
the safety of their loved ones. “People just want to be able to go to work and
support their families, and not worry that their children will be attacked in
the streets because of all this drumbeat of anger,” he said. (New York Times,
Aug. 19)
The debate over Park51 has consumed the airwaves, which
seems to have stirred up more anti-Muslim hysteria around the country. The
director of the Muslim center in Jamaica, Queens, Imam Shamsi Ali said that
Islamophobia is “causing the same resistance to the building of the mosques in
Staten Island and Tennessee and California.” (New York Times, Aug. 19)
Capitalism cannot function without racism. The media frenzy
behind the anti-mosque hysteria is the latest tool to pit worker against worker
by targeting one sector of the population for their religious beliefs. All
progressive people need to stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers in the
face of anti-Muslim racism.
