Those who embrace violence, whether in the form of acts of terrorism or acts of war, are necrophiliacs. They worship death. They sacrifice life, including at times their own, for the heady intoxication that comes with becoming an angel of destruction. And in the wake of their fury and violence they not only leave grief, pain and suffering, but they perpetuate new cycles of revenge and murder like bad karma. These killers are presented to us in many forms. They come packaged as patriots and heroes, wearing rows of medals like David Petraeus or Stanley McChrystal, or they stumble onto the stage as bearded villains wearing suicide belts. But they are all killers. They all drink the same, dark elixir of death. They all partake of the same drug. They all take life in the name of high national or religious ideals. And they are all the scourge of the human race. Chris Hedges ☀
To say that there are competing versions of Christianity is not to say that any version is as good as any other one. Quite the contrary — the contest over which version of Christianity is truest to the intent of the God we have met in Jesus Christ is a matter of desperate importance. But because of the diversity of the biblical materials, because of the way Christian faith has been transmitted through various traditions, because we are all still sinners, and because we see through a glass darkly, Christians have always contested various versions of the faith. Traditionalist conservatives like to identify a pristine “faith once delivered to the saints,” and to plant their flag there. But despite heroic efforts to pin down the nature and content of that faith, its content was — and is, and ever shall be — contested. David Gushee ☀
But even on the grounds that the Cordoba House founders are not right to build although they have the right, opposition to the project is unspeakably idiotic. So painfully stupid and/or hateful that I am literally embarrassed for my country that it is so deeply embroiled in what should be a complete non-issue at best, and a municipal debate among New Yorkers at worst.
The claim is often made by opponents that what makes building the Cordoba House “at Ground Zero” so wrong is that it hurts the feelings of 9/11 survivors and inflames the nation’s sensitivities about that fateful day. Basically, these concerns flow from a sense that building the Cordoba House would be some kind of act of provocation. Comparisons are quickly made: would you want a monument to Japanese kamikazes at Pearl Harbor? What about raising a Confederate flag across the street from a slavery museum?
These comparisons - and more generally, the characterization of the Cordoba House as a provocative act - do indeed clarify the issue. But they don’t clarify by demonstrating why opponents are right or even sensible. They clarify by further showing why opponents are deeply wrong and operating from a set of ignorant or bigoted assumptions. Examined closely, the comparisons and arguments used against the Cordoba House finely crystalize the issue by revealing even more strikingly the dark unreason that lies at the heart of much of the opposition.
In the Pearl Harbor and slave museum examples I gave (and similar other examples), one must ask: what makes the acts in question provocative? What would make people right to object?
First, the thing proposed would need to be essentially inseparable from the initial, traumatizing act. In the Pearl Harbor example, Japanese kamikazes attacked that base, and in the slave museum example, the Confederacy explicitly fought to preserve the South’s “right” to have slaves. (By the way, I am not interested in debating this - the effort to cast the Civil War as fought over more benign matters is pure historical revisionism, full stop.)
The second factor justifying objection to the Pearl Harbor and slave museum examples is that the location in question is inseparable from the grievance suffered. Here, proximity and the nature of the area matter. Pearl Harbor itself is obviously inseparable from Pearl Harbor, and a slave museum is, by its very nature, inseparable from the issue of slavery.
So, in a nutshell, we have two main factors that make acts like these provocative: (1) the act is inseparable from the initial tragedy; and (2) the location of the act is inseparable from the tragedy. With the Cordoba House, neither factor is present, and only severe misunderstanding or willful malevolence can make a person think it qualifies as an act of provocation deserving scorn.
First, the Cordoba House is deliberately, expressly, and unequivocally intended to stand for the diametric opposite of what the 9/11 attackers believed. It would stand for inclusion, reconciliation, and understanding across faiths and cultures. In fact, in many ways, the Muslim founders of the Cordoba House (and its imam) are the sorts of people that bin Laden and his adherents hate most, because they are seen as traitors to the radicals’ beliefs and cause. Founders and supporters of the Cordoba House are cosmopolitan and modern. The community center itself will contain many earthly luxuries and pleasures, and the initiative behind it seeks to promote harmony between Islam and the West, including human rights for women. Its founders (and location) actively embrace multicultural, multi-sectarian, quintessentially modern New York City, and many of its proponents have happily lived in Southern Manhattan for decades.
The Cordoba House, in other words, is not only blatantly separate and distinct from the identity and ideology of al Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorists, it is a direct repudiation (“refudiation,” as demanded by Sarah Palin) of them. So the only way that someone could ever confuse the Cordoba Initiative with radical, militant Islam is if that person thought that Islam itself is inseparable from terrorism or terrorist sympathies (or had been misled by demagogues to believe the Cordoba House aligned itself with radical Islam). And, incidentally, if a very small handful of radicals who call themselves believers in a religion can cause that religion to stand for the terrible things the radicals do and believe, then, well, Christianity apparently stands for the murder of doctors, the preachings of David Koresh, the beliefs and deeds of Tim McVeigh, the goals of the Huntaree militia….
Second, the site of the proposed Cordoba House is not “at” or “on” Ground Zero. When considering whether the location of a supposed provocative act is essentially inseparable from the initial tragedy, we have to take all contexts into account - not just physical location, but the nature and characteristics of the area. As many others have pointed out, the Cordoba House imam has been a member of the community since long before 9/11, as have many other Muslims. I used to work in Tribeca before 9/11, just a few blocks from where the Cordoba House would be built, which is itself two blocks from Ground Zero. One of my favorite places to eat for lunch was a place called the Pakistani Tea House. It had amazing, inexpensive curries and a robust clientele of Pakistani cab drivers. Right in the shadow of the building Other Muslims would one day destroy!
Now consider the density of the area. Two blocks in Manhattan are like two miles in many smaller communities. The difference between being at a specific location in that area and being two blocks away from it is enormous. One can’t even see Ground Zero from the proposed location (which is the hallowed site of an old Burlington Coat Factory). I say all this because, quite unlike being at Pearl Harbor or being across the street from a slavery museum, being two blocks from Ground Zero might as well be as far as the Upper East Side or the other “tolerable” zones where opponents insist the Cordoba House be built instead. Nevertheless, as we are now tragically seeing across the country with increased frequency, even mosques built hundreds of miles from Ground Zero are apparently intolerable affronts to Real Americans.
That opponents of the Cordoba House regard it as an outrageous act of provocation tells us a great deal about their actual attitudes. Scratch just below the surface of much of this opposition - the patina of their ostensibly noble defense of 9/11 families’ sensibilities - and one will find an ugly layer of outright xenophobia and religious bigotry. We know this not in spite of, but largely due to, opponents’ insistence that the issue is not a question of “rights” but “what is right.” In the assumptions required to see the Cordoba House as provocative and insensitive, we have all the evidence we need to see that a cultural war and reopening of wounds is not what opponents seek to avoid, but something they hope - ironically - to provoke.
I am concerned about one thing, above all, understanding how and why humanity escaped (at last) from its old, vicious cycle of feudalism and began a tremendous enlightenment. One that included vital things like science, democracy, human rights and science fiction. I’ve come to see that openness — including openness to free-flowing criticism — has been the key. Secrecy is the thing that makes every evil far worse. And it is especially pernicious when practiced by the mighty. But the real irony is inside the sci fi community. The trend toward feudal-romantic fantasy may seem harmless. But dreaming wistfully about kings and lords and secretive, domineering wizards is simply betrayal. Pure and simple. Those bastards were the enemy for 6,000 years. Some kings and wizards were less bad than others. But they were all “dark lords.” We are the heirs of the greatest heroes who ever lived. Pericles, Franklin, Faraday, Lincoln, Einstein. Any one of whom was worth every elf and dragon and fairy ever imagined. David Brin ☀
If we’re more opposed, for instance, to what we take to be ‘bad language’ and nude scenes and films about gay people than we are to people being blown up, starved to death, deprived of life-saving medicine, or tortured, our offendedness is out of whack. David Dark ☀
The moment those reporters granted anonymity to the government sources attacking Valerie Plame, American journalism took the side of the powerful figures against non-powerful figures - and exposed the transformation of the media to the public. Between the Plame affair and the willingness of of the media to transcribe Bush administration lies about Iraq WMD, we now know that in the dark, shadowy places where news is reported, many major reporters no longer see their job as questioning and challenging power - they see their job as aiding and abetting it against those who dare to ask questions. Whistleblowers and truth-seekers of America beware: that old friend of yours known as the media has now been infiltrated by your enemy. David Sirota ☀
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