Is A Jew Supporting the "Ground Zero Mosque" A Traitor?

Mr. Mark Williams,

In your article here and in your response to Mr. McMorris-Santoro quoted in his article here, you apparently decided that Jews who support the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" should be called Judenrat.

(For those unfamiliar and who didn't go and read the linked articles, before I go on, the Judenrat were the Jews living in the Nazi ghettos who snitched and reported on their fellow prisoners, and essentially sold out their neighbors to the Nazis. Also, I am myself a Jew, although my argument has nothing to do with that fact.)

Mr. Williams, this is an inaccurate comparison, because it makes one assumption:

It assumes that the Muslims building the "Ground Zero Mosque" are our enemy.

They are not.

(As it has repeatedly been pointed out, <LindaRichman> the "Ground Zero Mosque" is neither at Ground Zero, nor really a mosque... discuss amongst yourselves </LindaRichman>. The official name is Park51, since people raised a stink about calling it "Cordoba House.")

The problem we have, and have been having, on a large scale and for the past several years, is that we equate the radical Muslims with all Muslims. The radical Muslims - they are our enemy, they are anti-Semitic, and murderous, and all those other bad things. But first of all, they are hardly Muslims; the Koran preaches peace and goodwill just like the Christian Bible (and assuredly has some less-than-modern morals just like the Christian Bible). Islam is not vastly different from Christianity or Judaism in the grand scheme of things; it just has some different wallpaper. The differences between radical Muslims and moderate Muslims are greater than those between moderate Muslims and moderate Christians and Jews. If we could get beyond our prejudices - the natural reaction of "That's so foreign!" whenever we see Muslims with their strange, alien prayer methods and forms of dress and their typically differently-colored skin - we could see that.

We should not be shunning and spitting at the Muslims founding this Center. They are our friends. What we should be doing is embracing them, saying, "Hey, radical Muslims of the world! Look here! Here are the true Muslims, and we are proud to call them friends. You see, it is we - the moderate, peace-loving of the world - who are united against you, the hate-mongers and the opportunists."

This is not what we are doing, or at the very least, this is not the message we are sending out because the All-Muslims-Are-Bad folks scream the loudest. This is counter-productive. Radical Muslims and moderate Muslims are not a hair's-breadth apart. Suggesting they are barely distinguishable is like saying you or I are barely distinguishable from the Unabomber or the Oklahoma City bomber because we are all Americans. We are vastly different, we just happen to live within the same nation. And so with the Muslims - the moderate and radicals just happen to be within the same (metaphorical) nation, and it's one considerably vaster than America, for that matter. It does nobody any good to lump all those moderates in with those few extremists; all this achieves is driving the dispossessed and unhappy moderates into a state where they can swallowed up by the extremists.

We should want to hug close the vast, moderate mainstream of Islam, that wide swath that includes the likes of the liberal Iranians whose secular lifestyle is almost identical to the typical American middle-class one (remember the Twitter thing?) and, of course, the many good-citizen decent-folk Muslims living in America, who, again, would be indistinguishable from typical Americans except for some differences in skin color and cultural heritage.

There is no way to justify lumping all the Muslims together without resorting to racism and prejudice. And here is the important part: There is also no way to justify saying the Center should be scrapped because its in "bad taste" without implying that we are incapable of distinguishing honest, true Islam from radical, in-name-only Islam. This should be, as they say, a teaching moment. We should be teaching the world, each other, and ourselves that love of peace, community, education, communication and tolerance are better umbrellas under which to lump together disparate peoples than the name and minimal trappings of a vast religion.

In other words, this would be an excellent opportunity for we, Americans and Jews, to re-define our concept of Muslims - to perhaps even invent a contrasting pair of terms more specific and simple than the generic modifiers "moderate" and "radical" - such that we can talk about either group of Muslims without having to spout disclaimers all the time. Imagine if we referred to the extremist so-called Muslims who are more interested in power, oppression and control of the legacy of the Koran as "Jihadists." (This would not be accurate given the definition of the word within Islam, but it's evocative for Americans, at least, and I can't do any better at the moment.)

It was Jihadists who attacked the World Trade Center - not Muslims. Muslims, like any regular Christians or Jews, are merely interested in practicing their own religion and living their own life and being, you know, normal - they don't attack people. Jihadists attack people, and they did. Jihadists caused 9/11 - Muslims want to build a Center nearby. Wait, where's the problem there? It's Group A and Group B.

We have everything to gain from doing our best to separate and distinguish the totally fine, normal everyday Muslims from the out-there violent evil quote-"Muslims"-unquote. Our aim should be to extricate the Muslims from the complicated universe of ties that connect them to the Jihadists, not to treat them as tainted.

I am not a Judenrat because I support the foundation of Park51. You, Mr. Williams, are giving more comfort to the enemy than I, by doing everything you can to drive a wedge between peace-loving peoples. The nerve you have, trying to de-legitimize the opinions of your fellow Jews by calling them such a loaded word (which very nearly evokes Hitler and thus loses your argument by Internet Law anyways). And if you would read this (I'm sure you won't, but I have to assume you will given the nature of an open letter), I am sure you would call me naive - but you are naive, to believe it possible for a religion with X million adherents worldwide to be so monolithic that to support one (moderate) member of it to be equivalent to supporting the most distant and extremist member of it.

And since I'm on a roll, responses to a couple other common anti-Park51 arguments:

"They should have known people would react negatively to it, and so not have done it." (A slightly differently worded version of the "bad taste" argument.) Yes, and the lawmakers who passed the civil rights bills in the 60s knew that people were going to react negatively. But they did it anyways, because it was right, and because those people who reacted negatively needed to grow up and learn better.

"Oh so NOW they want to build a Mosque right where they killed people on 9/11!" and any similar arguments that mean the same thing, but are worded more diplomatically. You can't make this argument without suggesting there is some Muslim committee that makes all the decisions. That use of the word "they." There is no "they." There is no monolithic Islam. There are Jihadists and there are Muslims, and even amongst those two groups, there are no steering committees. This isn't Catholicism with the Pope we're talking about. The "they" who are building Park51 are not the same "they" who flew planes into the towers - nor the same "they" who launch rockets at
Israeli civilians, for that matter.

I will conclude by saying that the choice often lies with us as to whether we identify an Other as either enemy or friend. (The key word being "often" - if someone is literally pointing a gun at you, they are probably not your friend - but this is not the case, is it?) So if we have the choice of having one more friend or one more enemy, why should we make the choice that leaves us one ally fewer and one enemy more?

The Blame Game

Short laundry list of problems we face today;

- Out of control deficits
- Economic crisis
- Ongoing state of war
- Starbucks which close before 10PM

So who is to blame for these issues? That's easy.

Anybody who's not us.

The total impact of illegal immigrants on this country's economic standpoint is all but negligible in the face of the real problems we face. Illegal immigrants did not cause the housing crunch, float trillions of dollars in bad loans while betting against them, or just flat out rip people off. Yet there's a tough immigration law in Arizona that almost went into action save for an 11th-hour ruling against it, and a similar law is being proposed now in Florida. The reasoning behind it all, more often than not? Illegal immigrants cost Americans jobs. They also take our health care and are bad for the economy.

No, they're just easy targets. We come down like a ton of bricks on the individual illegals, but when was the last time you heard anything in the news about the places hiring them being made to pay for their crime? How many of the jobs they do are in serious contention in the job market? Are there that many immigrants taking all the good IT work and office jobs around the country? Is Arizona's pool of the educated yet unemployed suffering because there are too many immigrants taking the jobs they need a degree to qualify for? Or is it that a heretofore unknown majority of skilled laborers prefer to work as farmhands, delivery boys, or underpaid manufacturing line workers?

The good jobs aren't out there because super-wealthy, American-born men and women made a fortune off of exploiting loopholes in our system or doing things that are bafflingly legal yet absurdly detrimental to the economy. Some of them, but not many, were punished for it. Most just got a stern talking-to by Congress followed by a bailout. Meanwhile, nothing has been done to try and move past the boom-and-bust cycle economy we live in which inevitably leads to long recessions and the kind of baseless finger-pointing established by the Arizona and Florida bills. You're not out of work because there's a Mexican driving a truck back and forth for a ranch somewhere making $3 an hour. You're out of work because the people at the top decided screw you, I'm at the top.

On a personal note, I am all for an aggressive reform to our immigration system. Illegal means illegal; there are perfectly valid ways to enter this country if you want to live and work here. However, realistically, they pretty much suck and it's not hard to see why people avoid it where possible. We want to stay on top of immigration, we have to attack the reasons why it's so easy to get in to this country, not the people taking advantage of our terrible system. If we're really that concerned with jobs being taken, we have to find the people giving out those jobs and force them not to use undocumented workers and make sure everyone working for them is on the books and making at least minimum wage. Drug trade a concern? How about we tackle the education and social welfare issues which attract drugs to a given community rather than fighting a war on drugs which has been a complete failure?

Let's find the people actually here to exploit the system and take advantage of the country and kick them out, and find ways for people no different from your ancestors or mine to stay here and become real Americans.

Of course, illegal immigrants are only half of the imagined problem the country is getting up in arms about. The other is the whole idea that freedom of religion extends to religions we don't like.

It seems America isn't particularly high on mosques right now, but nor is it particularly high on understanding what does and does not constitute a mosque. Ignoring for just a moment (I will come back to it) the idea of preventing a people from peacefully pursuing their religion, this really got started with plans to build a Muslim Community Center near the World Trade Center site.

The general consensus was "we don't want a mosque in sight of the 9/11 attacks." Other opinions were "This is an insult to the victims of 9/11," "Islam has a history of building mosques over the sites of their victories," and "mosques are monuments to terrorism."

In regards to the New York City plans, I suppose it's completely understandable that the city might harbor some resentment and not want a mosque visible from the World Trade Center site. What makes it confusing is that the planned building is two blocks away, will not be a mosque, and not look different from other buildings surrounding it. Yet some people act as if they're performing the equivalent of putting a Japanese monument next to Pearl Harbor.

Oh wait.

Anyway, so New York has some grounds for complaint, but did I miss the news of Muslim terrorists attacking Murfreesboro? Or Chicago? I can't imagine Fox News would've neglected to inform me about the attack on Riverside County.

So what we have here is a growing number of Americans deciding that the rights guaranteed under the Constitution just don't apply if we don't like the extreme elements of your religion. This is totally understandable; after all, Christian extremists have never taken part in anything so horrendous as what Islamic jihadists do.

Nothing like genocide, elimination of liberal elements, destruction of the environment and native cultures, and more genocide. And that doesn't even get into whether or not abortion clinic bombings and the shooting of doctors constitutes terrorism (it does).

Bottom line is; there are some pretty bad Muslims out there, and the way they're portrayed by today's media doesn't really do them any favors. What tends to get forgotten are the millions of Muslims in America living and working here peacefully, just like every Catholic, Jew, Methodist, Hindu, Agnostic, Wiccan, or Sun-Worshipper* that's not also a total jerk. Speaking from what I think is a pretty reasonable outside perspective, however, I've never had a debate with a Muslim about religion that was any more or less fervent than what I would get from a devout Christian. The practitioners of humanity's major religions all carry their (remarkably similar) beliefs close to their hearts and want the right to express them fully and peacefully, while disregarding those which don't ring true on a personal level or that they understand to be a corruption of their faith. So, and this may come as a shock to you, just because there's a Muslim cleric out there putting a jihad on America doesn't mean they're all going to start strapping on dynamite vests anymore than one Christian leader's beliefs means everyone is going to protest at military funerals because there are gay people in the world.

So to wrap up, yeah, we've got problems, and we rely on our duly elected politicians to take care of them for us. Only, those politicians aren't going to take on problems that won't look good on the campaign trail. That makes it incumbent upon us to demand that the real problems are the ones being tackled, not the scapegoats or red herrings. Or just hope one comes along smart enough to know the difference, and charismatic enough to convince us, too. In the meantime, though, when we start thinking about our problems, let's make sure we keep a clear head when assigning blame.


*religions listed in order of how seriously they are taken by the rest of the world