The Boogeyman

“Bigoted,” “Intolerant,” “Small Minded,” “Fearmongering,” “Assisting Al Qaeda in its Recruiting,” and even “Hateful.” These were some of the charges leveled at me directly by some of my left wing friends and indirectly by the op-ed writers at the New York Times for my stance against the building of the Ground Zero Mosque.

When my liberal friends don’t have much to counter with, they dredge up the old bigotry charge. Immediately prior to the ’08 election, they had the “Bradley Effect” arguments at the ready. Obama was leading in the polls and it was inconceivable that someone as wise, wonderful and articulate (and, according to Joe Biden, clean) could lose. It would have had to have been latent racism. Only he got elected and that ended that. They have tried to pin the racist moniker on the Tea Party movement, too, but so far, it has not gained much traction. The Tea Party movement is simply made up of patriotic, limited government voters, and no hard evidence of racism has been unearthed. With the heated debates over health care reform, the liberals again attempted to trot out racism charges, but, again, there was no evidence to support that at all, even though Nancy Pelosi made a valiant attempt to provoke an incident by walking arm in arm with black congressmen after its passage.

Once again, the left is attempting to tar us with those ugly labels, and they are dead wrong. While I do not dispute the legal right of this group to build, I oppose the Ground Zero Mosque on the grounds that this site is sacred and because of the nature and reach of Militant Islam.
It is true that we enjoy religious freedom of expression here in the United States to an extent found in almost no other place on earth. Here, you can worship in any place and in any way you like, and there is almost no religious bigotry of any kind. Except for a few lunatics in the hills of Tennessee or the woods of Oregon, not only are different religions tolerated, they are accorded a great deal of respect. Heck, I don’t care much if you practice Santeria, as long as your chickens don’t bleed on my side of the fence. And we get a little queasy when folks like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell got too close to the mechanisms of government.

But Militant Islam is different. In many ways, it is an enemy uniquely adapted to our weaknesses. We do well against large armies on a battlefield. Our forces are designed to defeat people like Saddam Hussein or Soviet tanks rushing through the Fulda Gap, not bands of suicidal jihadists. Second, and more importantly, Militant Islam is uniquely designed to exploit our religious tolerance. Unlike our society’s relationship between religion and government, which, for the most part occupy separate spheres, Militant Islam’s view is that they are necessarily intertwined, and that makes it difficult. You simply cannot tell the difference between a “moderate” or a “radical” or discern who will morph from moderate to radical. While it runs counter to our society and culture to limit the rights of Muslims to worship in any reasonable way, it is also offensive to common sense to have a mosque built so proximal to Ground Zero when the perpetrators of that atrocity did it invoking the name of Islam. We’re not saying you can’t build a mosque. We’re not curtailing your ability to worship in any way. We’re just asking that you don’t build this center on this particular piece of real estate.

Several left leaning writers have said that opposition to the mosque gives Al Qaeda a propaganda tool. I assert that just the opposite is true. It is more likely that Al Qaeda will interpret our willingness to accept a mosque at Ground Zero as a huge propaganda victory. It will be seen as a monument to their martyrs and will be celebrated throughout their ranks. They will see the U.S. as a weak willed “weak horse” and that will be a recruiting tool. What other country would permit this to happen? Even pusillanimous France won’t permit women to wear hijabs. If headscarves were similarly banned here, the ACLU would go into convulsions.

Second, the location and political controversy gives rise to legitimate security concerns. Militant Islam has been very adept at mixing terrorism with mosques and charities. Imagine the propaganda victory if the next big terrorist attack on the U.S. was planned out of the basement of the Ground Zero Mosque. Further, at least one of the donors has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent holding company of Al Qaeda.

Third, Imam Rauf, the leader of the Cordoba Project and self-proclaimed “bridge-builder” has been anything but in this process. “Bridge builders” acknowledge the concerns of their opposition. Rauf has done nothing of the sort. He has stubbornly pushed ahead with his wife on national media circuit denouncing the bigotry of the opposition. His earlier statements on terrorism have been equivocal. He has not condemned Hamas and his statements indicate his belief the U.S. is just as culpable for discord around the world as the terrorists. His renouncement of terrorism and Hamas has been equivocal but his support of Sharia has not.
Fourth is its symbolism, which I touched on earlier. Ironically, liberals are in a frenzy over the symbolism of Glenn Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of his “I have a dream” speech, even though MLK was referred to in the most respectful terms and slavery was singled out as a terrible blight on our history. Yet they insist that nothing of the sort is going on with respect to the Ground Zero Mosque. Hmmm.

I reject this charge of bigotry in most stark terms. Like most Americans, I do not care who, where or even if people worship. My opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque is rooted in the propaganda victory it will hand Al Qaeda, the equivocal approach to terrorism and Sharia law that Imam Rauf has taken, and a legitimate concern of a “mixed use” property. We are not at war with Islam, but we are at war with Militant Islam. In war, symbolism is important. Our marines raised an American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima and that image is part of our national lore. It would be a travesty if the Ground Zero Mosque became a similar symbol for Radical Islam.