More on the mosque… August 20, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in US Politics.trackback
Got to say the attacks on the mosque in Lower Manhattan are becoming increasingly strange. Newt Gingrich, whatever the public perception, is no fool so to hear him saying on the Guardian :
“We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor,”… “There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Centre.”
…is an absurdity – since Islam isn’t coterminous with violent Islamists any more than… well, insert organisations and religions as one sees fit. Worse he’s being more than liberal with the truth…
Gingrich has also claimed that the imam behind the proposed community centre, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a “radical Islamist” even though the US state department flew Rauf to Saudi Arabia this week to promote America by telling audiences “what it’s like to practise Islam under our regime of religious freedom and equality”.
And that’s rather a pernicious thing to do.
Meanwhile speaking of ‘Japanese sites’ close to Pearl Harbour one presumes that Gingrich must be at least somewhat exercised by say this , Japan-America Institute of Management Science, sited on ‘a six-acre campus in the Honolulu suburb of Hawaii Kai on the island of Oahu’.
Now granted it’s not a religious or community centre, but rather a commercial site which arguably is worse than people worshipping essentially the same God as many of those making these rhetorical attacks.
And for those of us not aware of it Oahu is the same island as Pearl Harbour, indeed Honolulu and Pearl Harbour are broadly speaking part of the same conurbation [and on a slight tangent it's weird looking at maps or photographs of Honolulu. Many hours years back spent playing FA/18 on computer has given me a strong if somewhat graphically abstract grasp of the layout of the island].. Now, it’s not a couple of blocks away, but once a site is not quite literally positioned at the main location what principle is at work there? Is there a ten block exclusion zone? Twenty? 100? It’s an odd day when the Spectator supports the point… and notes a Shinto Shrine not far from Pearl Harbour.
And they’re – the Japanese – ‘opening offices’, bringing in ‘employees’ – or so they say .
And fond of the place too… We love Hawaii. He wants us to have a dream for their life. And for the Japanese, this is like a paradise,” said Yoshie Fujita, of Royal Cosmetics.
Indeed.
But surely the stand out must be…
A common theme of the Republican attacks is Saudi Arabia’s ban on non-Muslims from Mecca. “Ground Zero is hallowed ground to Americans,” Elliott Maynard, a Republican candidate for Congress in West Virginia, said. “Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?”
Erm… yes… and tell us again about the distinction between living in an open society (however flawed) and a theocracy?
I visited Ground Zero about eight months after the attack and there’s no doubt that it was enormously affecting. There are sensitivities – although given that the future plans include office buildings it’s hard to know where to start picking those sensitivities apart. But this furore seems to invert the reality of a crime and to invest the place the crime occurred at with something that is in truth quite inappropriate and turn the reality of what it is meant to represent on its head.
……….
Meanwhile on a not unrelated matter I was checking out Paul Berman’s latest work online during the week. I read and enjoyed – even if didn’t entirely agree with – his mid-2000s book on the development of the European left post 1968 and attempting to engage with totalitarianism and urban terrorism, amongst other issues, entitled A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968. His later Terror and Liberalism was less convincing, a post-9/11 attempt to chart a line between totalitarianism of left and right and violent Islam. And while there some evidence of some philosophical influence it seems very shallow compared and contrasted with the actuality of events, histories and already extant philosophies.
It appears that he has been doing something similar subsequently in his ‘Flight of the Intellectuals’, albeit this time his focus has now shifted to responses to those like Tariq Ramadan who he appears convinced is an exponent of an even more – gasp – dangerous iteration of the Islamist threat. Ramadan seems like an intriguing character to me, and given that he must balance a number of sharply opposing forces continually manages to impress.
I haven’t read the Berman book yet, but this review from the always interesting Foreign Affairs (which I was amused to read is regarded by some on the internet as ‘left-wing’) provides an interesting analysis .
Gringich’s comments are to be expected from the anti-Muslim right in the USA.Small minded and bigoted.
Tariq Ramadan from what I know is far from “intriguing”and has been recorded on the French island of the Reunion calling for separate swmming pools for men and women in EuropeDown with this sort of thing!.He was unable to call for an end to stoning under Sharia law just a motatorium in a debate on French TV .A polished performer no doubt but I think that’s part of his image.Reminds me of a 1950s priest in his devotion to god and his rigid moral views.
This is not to deny the anti-Muslim and anti- Arab prejudice that is alive and well in Europe.
Fair points fergus. I guess with Ramadan it’s a matter of interpretation. The Reunion speech IIRC was from the early 1990s, his thinking appears to have evolved since then. The stoning issue point up the balance he must seek. He is trying to open a space in areas where there is fierce adherence to actions like that which require education, etc to change attitudes. I think it was the Foreign Affairs piece which discussed how even to call for a moratorium is a significant step forward in the context of who the dialogue is being conducted with and why.
And the other side of course is that the expression of views, as with Alive! is not the problem. It’s the actions that go with that expression where we hit problems. In that respect I think Ramadan is – if not a progressive figure – certainly one who shifts the approach of some parts of Islam towards a position where it is possible to see some sort of liberalisation or acceptance of pluralism in a societal context.
I would suggest, Fergal, there’s a qualitative difference between anti-Muslim prejudice and anti-Arab prejudice, despite all the nonsense about “racialisation”. Like it or not, the former is an ideology and should be treated as such, and we secularists have never shied from criticising ideologies. I’ll be first in line to say I hate Islam with a passion, and the issue whether or not it even is a “religion” – in the same Western-defined sense as Christianity and Buddhism are (because, uniquely, Islam must, by its own law, be spread through Holy War) – aside, the purveyors of such ideology should not be immune from prejudice.
The ground zero mosque is likely to be built, and its supporters will still say it is a peacemaking exercise, but one must question those motives when they fly in the face of American citizens’ feelings on the subject.
It’s always useful to have you out yourself as a bigot, Tim. If you weren’t to express small-minded, unpleasant, views you would disturb my sense that the world is functioning as normal.
But Tim, Islam isn’t a monolithic religion. I know Muslims from central Europe who on any rational axis share cultural mores exactly the same as you or I (right down to enjoying a drink – and yes, isn’t that a glib way of defining this) and yet they too belong to the broad spectrum that is Islam. The variation in thought, practice and so on is enormous.
With regard to a holy war due to Islamic law, that’s over egging the pudding. Given that Islamic law (or duties) beyond sharia, and and indeed within sharia, is interpreted in hugely different ways within Islam ‘jihad’ means many things and in the broad main appears to mean something rather different to ‘Holy War’. Even if it did it’s been singularly ineffective. I’m unconvinced that in the literal meaning it is that different to the beliefs of Constructionists in Christianity.
But the danger is by equating Islam with violent Islam this narrows the ground – which obviously exists given that the overwhelming majority of Muslims aren’t violent Islamists (indeed in truth Islam was regarded as quite passive until the mid 20th century, a religion and a culture in decline) – for any meeting of minds.
On the issue of ‘feelings’, WIlliam Saletan – a conservative – countered precisely this point by suggesting:
“Note the sleight of hand. First, opponents stirred up discomfort about the project by claiming that its sponsors were radicals and that any mosque near Ground Zero was inherently inappropriate. These claims, as explained above, are false. But that no longer matters. What matters is that people now feel discomfort about the project, and for that reason alone, it should be relocated. The same argument could be made against anything that upsets a local majority: same-sex marriage, Jews in restricted neighborhoods, Christians in Mecca, blacks sitting in the front of the bus. If you can’t justify your discomfort, it merits no respect.”
Always a pleasure Mark, and you’ve managed to take my remarks in the exact opposite way to how they were intended. I said purveyors of the ideology – not practitioners; the Imams funded by Saudi Arabia or Iran who spread hate (and Wahhabism). Spreaders of hate always deserve criticism and indeed prejudice.
No matter how much spiritual talk there is within an ideology, I will always be suspicious of one that tells me I must become a believer, a slave, or a corpse. There’s a qualitative difference between judging people by who they are (racism) and what they do, and think, and believe.
WbS, The majority of European Muslims, I believe, do not think like that and I don’t have any problem with them, but they have reached accommodation with the West in the way others have not, and those others are happy to constantly remind those backsliders of the parts of the Koran they are ignoring.
On the other hand, violent jihad was the way throughout history, and was only ended when confronted with superior military force. It may have been reinterpreted since then, which must be seen as a positive development, but violent conflict is still the norm wherever Islam meets non-Islam anywhere you look in the world.
I’ll be first in line to say I hate Islam with a passion
Spreaders of hate always deserve criticism and indeed prejudice.
Let me suggest, Tim, that your ignorance on a number of subjects appears woeful.
1) The concept of jihad as found in Islam is a great deal wider and more complex than “holy war”.
2) For most of history, largely Muslim states have been markedly more tolerant of religious minorities (particularly Christians and Jews) than largely Christian states have been of non-Christians. To the limited extent that Islam is unusual amongst major world religions in its relationship with other religious forces, it is unusual in its historic propensity for religious tolerance. When the Jews fled persecution in Spain, they went to Muslim countries for good reasons not because they like the weather.
3) There is no proposed “ground zero mosque”. Rather there is a proposal for a Muslim community centre, including prayer facilities, two blocks from ground zero, a similar distance from the allegely inviolate “hallowed ground” as a number of strip clubs.
4) The Imam whose motives “one must question” is a longtime ally of the US state department, spoke at some length at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl in the local synagogue and was sent on speaking tours by both the Bush and Obama administrations. Exactly what would the man have to do to prove his “moderation” to your fellow bigots?
wrong on the first two counts, Mark, but that’s a debate for another time and place.
as for the mosque in NY, many including myself don’t deny their ‘right’ to build it but merely suggest they shouldn’t. Cultural sensitivity works both ways. Which is the view, btw, of Raheel Raza, founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress. I don’t doubt Rauf’s bona fides, either.
ejh, I take your point, but I also hate Nazism and communism and don’t feel those are bigoted stances – and most sensible people distinguish between ideas and people. Why is religion such a sacred cow? (no pun intended) should it not be treated as a set of ideas like other ideas? I understand this to be the basis of secularism.
but that’s a debate for another time and place.
Well, it’s a debate you brought to this place at this time. You chose to make statements about jihad and the history of Islam.
Of course it’s possible to distinguish between ideas and people. But it puts a responsibility on you to give a fair idea of what those ideas are and what those people do. You do neither.
Fair nuff, ejh. What 99.9% of ‘those people’ do is try to live their lives like anyone else, with many Koranic statements commanding them to do something quite different – which most have reached some internal accommodation with, as have Christians whose command to spread the gospel throughout the world tends to get ignored by most.
So the disconnect between the ideas (Holy War, etc) and the people originates in the practitioners of the religion themselves, which is something the radicals are trying to reverse.
Jihad means spreading the faith usually through Holy War and, historically, has always done. Now, you can interpret it to mean something else, and most Muslims have done so nowadays, but this is an intellectual process which, again, largely belongs with the people themselves, although it was historical events and practicalities which forced the reinterpretation, as is common in all religions when some tenets become uninforceable.
Secondly, there have been some historical situations where tolerance was practiced in the Islamic world, and it usually coincided with the worst period of intolerance in Christendom. Some of this stemmed from a desire to promote peaceful coexistence, and sometimes it was the case that minorities were tolerated so that they could be made to pay jizyah to the ruler.
As WbS stated, Islam is not a monolith and has taken on a very different character in different times and places. It is fair to say that the central ideas of the religion as laid out in the Koran are distinct from the ways in which those ideas have been put into practice – none of which means those ideas are immune from criticism themselves.
WbS-The fundamentalists in Alive have lost their battle to restore theocracy to Ireland or Europe.I’m not convinced by Ramadan’s commitment to a genuine separation between churches and state.
How would people feel if a leading Christian or Jewish intellectual was unable to condemn outright the barbaric practice of “stoning” and still maintain a certain status and be applauded for opening up a space for pluralism?
I don’t deny it’s a problem. But like it or not, and I don’t, there are practices (if that’s not prettifying it) that occur that need to be shifted away from. For certain voices to retain authority it is in varous cases difficult for people to condemn outright – any more than in a different context it was possible for Irish Republicans to condemn outright certain acts (the situation isn’t identical, but it’s not entirely inappropriate).
One thought that does strike me though is that Islam in the west remains a minority, and will do so on any serious projections, so the issue of separation between church and state is moot. By the way, I’m 100% with you on that separation. It’s essential.
WbS-point taken about Islam’s minority status what I was getting at was,maybe not a hypothetical case,if a woman manages to escape a stoning arrives in Europe and sees certain” hardliners” holding sway being feted,she would well be entitled to wonder about Europe’s ideals on women’s rights and separating church and state.Really I’m an old fashioned anti-clericalist and have no time for any church,mosque or synagogue!
That’s also a very fair point. The most important thing is then to stress that secular means secular. That all are welcome to worship or not to worship but that the state/the civil society is distinct from religion. Not anti-religious, just separate.
It does concern me that the current moral panic about Islam will translate itself into incursions generally on religious liberty. One of the campaign groups in Ontario against incorporating Sharia Law into the legal system even proposed that sermons of religious ministers be pre-vetted by the police. As this good Catholic blog commented: “Those who fear a future in which they are no longer free to practice their religion ought to be out there defending religious freedom, even if it means an increase in religious pluralism.”
There are concerns in some western quarters about Saudi state funding for mosques and schools (which often come with stipulations that imams be Wahabbi) while religious liberty is denied in Saudi Arabia itself. In France, where laicité is stricter than the American sense of secularism (ie. merely institutional seperation of church and state), I believe it can be difficult for mosques to get planning permission. Sarkozy seems keen on the Napoleon model; give public funding to mosques (to prevent them having to rely on ‘extremists’) in exchange for some government control. That comes close to religious policing.
There are a couple factual issues being ignored in this debate. One is that the building being constructed isn’t a mosque per se, but a cultural centre which will include a Muslim prayer space among other things. The site in question is already being used by Muslims for that purpose, and there are genuine mosques within a short distance, so it’s really a lot of hullaballoo about nothing.
Tim seems to imply that the centre’s supporters are being deliberately provocative. But the iman behind it has a long history of trying to improve Muslim-Western relations. I can’t see any justification for anyone with knowledge of his background, bar an Islamophobe or racist, to doubt his bona fides. Maybe he simply underestimated the depth of irrationality on the subject and the shit-stirring capacity of those who want to portray 9/11 as Islam v USA (who of course are the chief beneficiaries of the controversy, and in that respect I mean those on both sides of the issue).
And what you said… particularly as regards the nonsense of it already being used in precisely this manner.
Sarkozy is aiming for something else here replacing the welfare state with religious groups,hence the funding for certain mosques.As he attacks France’s welfare state each religious group will look after their own by providing shelter,soup kitchens.
The same man publicly bemoaned the absence of priests in French classrooms claiming that without priests morals went into decline!A French satirical magazine,after the Ryan report,had a huge headline claiming that Ireland had had plenty of priests in its classrooms and look at the “morals” they introduced!
I don’t know if it’s difficult to get planning permission for mosques in France,Marseille has 50 mosqueq/prayer rooms and is due to build one of the largest mosques in Europe this year.I could be wrong here regarding overall planning permission
If one were to look at planning permission for churches here you might get very very few if any.Does this mean it’s hard for Christians to get planning permission for places of worship?Or were religious orders too busy flogging off land for a quick buck?
That’s useful to know about Sarkozy. Yet another ‘caring compassionate’ conservative who will gut the welfare state.
Fergal, that’s one of the reasons so many French Muslims have to worship in prayer rooms. Well that, and they tend to be more disadvantaged as a whole. I think that’s one of the reasons Sarkozy is so keen on amending the 1905 Law on Secularity. He wrote a book on this.
Shane, wanted to say, I agree entirely with you re ‘incursions into religious liberty’.
“one must question those motives when they fly in the face of American citizens’ feelings on the subject”
Tim there was once a time when American citizens felt rather hostile to the building of Catholic churches (often attacked by mobs) and for reasons analogous to modern day anti-Islamic sentiment.
Most religions are ‘ideologies’ in some sense or another. John Locke’s conception of religion as a purely private matter to be seperated from political government has long been very influential in traditionally Protestant societies (and English-speaking culture is profoundly Protestant). In Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration he seems to link intolerance of Catholicism with Islam:
“That [Catholic] church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate, which is constituted upon such a bottom, that all those who enter into it, do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince [ie the Pope]. For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own government. Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the court [ie the Roman Curia] and the church afford any remedy to this inconvenience; especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person; who has not only power to persuade the members of his church to whatsoever he lists, either as purely religious, or as in order thereunto; but can also enjoin it them on pain of eternal fire. It is ridiculous for any one to profess himself to be a mahometan only in religion, but in every thing else a faithful subject to a christian magistrate, whilst at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the mufti of Constantinople; who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman emperor, and frames the feigned oracles of that religion according to his pleasure.”
Yes, all religions are ideologies and should be treated as such, although the separation of the category of ‘religion’ from other categories is purely a western Enlightenment one and as Locke acknowledge, the line is a very thin one.
“John Locke’s conception of religion as a purely private matter to be seperated from political government has long been very influential in traditionally Protestant societies” The exception, of course being the UK. The Huse of Lords is one of only two upper chambers in the world in which clerics (the 26 “Lords Spiritual( sit purely on the basis of there religious standing. The other being Iran
Correct me if I’m wrong CM, but isn’t it the case that the lords spiritual, by convention, abstain from voting on ‘temporal’ matters? I’m not defending the CoE’s establishment, but it hasn’t had much political power for a very long time and it seems that very few people (including its own adherants) see it as much more than a colourful, but redundant, decoration on the constitution. You often hear defenders of the CoE praising its capacity for wishy-washiness as a bulwark against more ‘extreme’ forms of religion. Of course the CoE doesn’t claim the same institutional authoritativeness or doctrinal homogeneity as other religious organizations; Anglicanism is very contested and elastic.
While the Lords Spiritual do normally abstain from voting on temporal matters, the last time was during the Parliament Act of 1911, their very existance in the House of Lords does contradict the idea of religion as a “purely private matter” and more directly the seperation of church and state that is the very cornerstone of a secular society. Any Catholic or Muslim country that had a similar system would surely be derided as a theocracy
I think a more worrying note that comes from this issue, is the fact that down right lies have a good deal of traction. I fear for my country come November, and mind you I’m no Democrat. I don’t mind debating issues, but what counts as political debating nowadays is simply stating your positition louder and louder (I know this is nothing new, but to see it decide the balance of the Senate and House is disquieting). I had to have this debate on facebook, it was extremely painful.
I do think this is a storm in a tea-cup whipped up by bigots – not a phrase I’m using about any co tributing reader here though.
I say that as someone who thinks we should halt all wahabbi funding of mosques, and is wary of some aspects of Islam I see practiced in western Europe.
Historically, in sone ways islam has been more tolerant of other religions than Christianity (specifically of Jews), but that is Only in relative terms. Moorish Spain is often given as an example here, but for most of it’s history it was happy to sell christian slaves, and in any event was situated on occupied land taken from Christians through holy war.
I would however contend that despite some of the tenets of the religion the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, have no interest in pushing their views on non-Muslims and, in my experience, are profoundly embarrasses by the actions of their more militant co-religionists.