President Obama's comments on the planned building of an Islamic centre near Ground Zero have inflamed a row in which conservatives sense they have the emotional advantage, writes NIALL STANAGE,in New York
THE FORMER SITE of the World Trade Center looks more ordinary than it has for years. For most New Yorkers that’s a good thing. Ground Zero lay quiet for a long time after the terrorist attacks in 2001, in which 2,800 people died. Squabbles about an appropriate memorial delayed new construction time and time again. The site was an open wound, literally and metaphorically.
The first steel beam for the memorial was finally swung into place just before the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Now construction is moving ahead fast. At least nine cranes are in action on the site. The sounds of heavy vehicles, jackhammers and big men in hard hats cut the air.
Even if Ground Zero’s physical appearance is now vaguely normal, however, its symbolic power is still raw. A reminder of this, if one were needed, has come in the past 10 days with a ferocious battle over plans to open an Islamic centre close to the site.
Respected politicians, such as Republican Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, have suggested that the proposal is akin to erecting a Nazi sign at a Holocaust museum. Sarah Palin has compared it to a “stab in the heart”.
President Barack Obama has stepped into the controversy too – though many observers believe he has only done himself harm in the process.
So intense have the arguments been that it comes as a surprise, on a warm Manhattan morning, to find only three protesters outside the building where the centre is to be erected. More surprising still, all three are trying to rally support for the proposal.
One of them is Julia Lundy, a 28-year-old private tutor. She says she has never taken to the streets for any cause until now. “One of our fundamental rights as Americans is the freedom of religion,” she says. “We are not in a holy war. I think some Americans think that we are, and some of the terrorists want us to think that too – but we’re not.”
A short stroll away, on the periphery of Ground Zero itself, a middle-aged man who will give his name only as George is sitting quietly. A New Yorker born and raised, he had two friends who were in the Twin Towers. They escaped with their lives, barely.
“Out of respect, I just don’t agree with putting a mosque in this area,” he says. “It’s not anything against the religion . It’s just that, to me, it would be like putting some kind of Japanese memorial at Pearl Harbor.”
The young woman and the older man represent the two poles of the debate, one demanding absolute freedom of religious practice, the other adamant that sensitivity must be shown to the feelings that still run deep at Ground Zero. There is no sign yet that the two imperatives can be reconciled.
There are two important facts about what critics call “the Ground Zero mosque”: it is not at Ground Zero, and it is not only a mosque. The proposed centre would actually be built two blocks from the World Trade Center site. The plans are still somewhat vague, but the building would supposedly include a swimming pool, a gym, a restaurant, a library and an auditorium. Although much of the building would be open to all, it would have an Islamic character. The mosque within it could hold as many as 2,000 people for Friday services.
The religious leader spearheading the plan is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. His wife, Daisy Khan, is also central, as is an Egyptian-American developer, Sharif El-Gamal. To their defenders, Rauf and Khan epitomise moderate Islam. As far back as 1997, according to the Washington Post, they formed the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which they claim was "the first Muslim organisation committed to bringing American Muslims and non-Muslims together".
Khan told Newsweek that it was important to have the new centre so close to Ground Zero because “we want peace and we want it where it matters most. This is where it matters most.”
The plan’s detractors are unconvinced by these protestations. They point in particular to Rauf’s past suggestion that US foreign policy played a part in fuelling the September 11th attacks, and to his apparent reluctance to refer to Islamic militant group Hamas as terrorists.
Opposition to the mosque project had been percolating, especially on right-wing blogs, for some months. Obama stayed out of the furore until eight days ago, when he held an Iftar dinner for Muslim leaders at the White House. His remarks seemed crystal clear: “I believe that Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan . . . This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.”
It turned out, however, that Obama’s own commitment was a bit shakier than his partisans had hoped. The very next day, faced with a clamour of right-wing criticism, he appeared to backtrack. “I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” he said.
The White House protested that there was no inherent contradiction between the two positions, but the perception stuck that Obama had, as the liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it, “skittered back” from his noble-sounding rhetoric of the previous night.
The curious episode has annoyed Democrats in Congress, many of whom face perilous contests in November’s mid-term elections and who must now grapple with yet another problem. “It wasn’t prudent at all for Obama to get involved,” says Dr Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Centre for Politics. “The issue was working its way to a conclusion which would probably have favoured his side. So why intervene? Why make additional enemies? Why create another controversy?”
Some conservatives reacted with glee to Obama’s apparent mis-step, not least because nationwide polling shows that the planned Islamic centre is opposed by about 70 per cent of Americans. Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist and long-time aide to former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, argues that the controversy could harm Obama especially badly with the white working-class voters whom he had to struggle so mightily to win over in 2008.
“This is like radioactivity – it lingers and it’s going to be corrosive over time,” he says. “There are still a lot of blue-collar Democrats who get a tear in their eye over 9/11 and that hole in Manhattan. These are people who Barack Obama cannot do without.”
Still, there has been some muddying of the usual political lines on the issue. To the consternation of liberals, Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, who had been their great hope in the 2004 presidential election, recently described the planned centre as “a real affront to people who lost their lives” in the attacks. Some Republicans, including New Jersey governor Chris Christie, have seemed uneasy with the attacks levelled by their party colleagues, lest they bring accusations of intolerance or anti-Muslim bias in their wake.
“I buy the argument, generally speaking, that the Republicans could be accused of intolerance,” says Doug Muzzio, a professor of political science at New York’s Baruch College. “But for the most part, the Republicans understand the emotional side of these things very well. They understand that side better than Democrats traditionally have done.”
But unless the people behind the project agree to abandon or shift their plans, there is not much any branch of government can do about it.
“The one thing that is absolutely clear in the United States is that no government can ever discriminate against a group on the basis of religious belief,” says Marci Hamilton, a professor and expert on church-state issues at Benjamin N Cardozo School of Law, in New York.
Hardline opponents of the plan for the Islamic centre “are asking the government to violate the constitution” she adds. “You just cannot do it.”
But that does not mean the story is at an end. New York State’s governor, David Paterson, is trying – so far in vain – to persuade the organisers to move their project elsewhere, apparently even offering state land on which to build. Media reports have also suggested that almost no progress has been made towards meeting the $100 million (€78 million) construction cost for the project. Further fundraising, it is predicted, will be difficult in the midst of the current tumult.
If the proposal ultimately collapses, it will be a disappointment to people such as Iqbal Chowdhury. A Bangladeshi immigrant, Choudhury works at a newsstand just across from the proposed centre. A Muslim, he is perplexed that the plans have created such outrage.
“I don’t know what they are worried about,” he says of the centre’s opponents. “This is not a politics place; it is not a business place; it is just a place for people who want to pray to Allah.
“There are so many Muslim people here in this country, and we want to say ‘we are here’. We want to see you accept our faith.”
As he speaks, Julia Lundy is still protesting in favour of the centre. Asked whether the people behind it should consider another location, she demurs sardonically, arguing that they have every right to hold fast.
“You see where we’re standing?” she asks with mock puzzlement. “This is still America, right?”
