OPPONENTS OF the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" – a proposed Islamic cultural centre two blocks north of the site of the atrocities of September 11th, 2001 – blasted Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USAfrom a CD recorder.
“Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11,” said one placard at Sunday’s protest in lower Manhattan. Several demonstrators carried signs with the word “Sharia” written in dripping, blood-red paint. Supporters of the centre, who numbered fewer than its detractors, brandished posters saying “Support Freedom of Religion”.
While the thousand or so protesters shouted at each other across a police line, Daisy Khan, the wife of imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has not even begun fundraising for the $100 million (€78.9 million), 13-storey community centre, told ABC television's This Week with Christiane Amanpourshow she did not rule out building the centre at a different location, as suggested by New York's governor David Paterson.
The imam has disappointed supporters by maintaining silence throughout the controversy, which began in May when Rupert Murdoch's New York Postbegan stoking the dispute, inspired by a blogger who once claimed President Barack Obama was the illegitimate son of Malcolm X.
Imam Feisal is an establishment figure who has lectured on Islam for the Bush and Obama administrations. The events of 9/11 propelled him to notoriety as a moderate Muslim advocating inter-faith dialogue. Now, 9/11 may be his undoing.
On a State Department-sponsored trip to Bahrain at the weekend, Imam Feisal’s remark at the US ambassador’s residence that “The fact we are getting this kind of attention is a sign of success”, beggared belief.
The national controversy over the “Ground Zero mosque” is this year’s silly season story, exercising the media while politics subsides through the August holiday.
It has particularly dangerous consequences. For example, Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach megachurch in Gainesville, Florida, has scheduled an “International Burn a Koran Day” on September 11th.
"We are handing al-Qaeda a propaganda coup, an absolute propaganda coup," Evan Kohlmann, a "terrorism consultant" who monitors jihadist websites, warned the Wall Street Journal.
Republican politicians find the mosque grabs more attention than tirades against taxation. Sarah Palin has called the project a “stab in the heart” of Americans who “still have that lingering pain from 9/11”.
The former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, a recent convert to Catholicism, said: “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a sign next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”
Rick Lazio, who is standing for governor of New York, angered firemen and police officers by using photographs of 9/11 in his campaign advertisements. “Defend New York,” says Lazio’s website. “A terrorist-sympathising imam wants to build a $100 million mosque near Ground Zero,” Lazio says in a television spot broadcast across the state.
A quote by Imam Feisal on the CBS News 60 Minutesprogramme in the wake of 9/11 is used to tar him with the "terrorist sympathiser" brush. "I wouldn't say that the US deserved what happened, but the US policies were an accessory to the crime that happened," he said, adding: "Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam."
President Obama weakened his position last week by making a statement at a White House Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan, which was construed to signify support for the Islamic centre – and then backing down in a formal statement less than 24 hours later.
The controversy has revived what Frank Rich of the New York Timescalls "the most insidious anti-Obama narrative . . . Obama the closet Muslim". Shortly after a Pew Research Center poll found 18 per cent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, a Timemagazine poll found 24 per cent believe the same lie.
The myth is propagated by right-wing commentators. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh jeers at “Imam Obama, America’s first Muslim president”. Evangelist Franklin Graham told CNN Mr Obama’s “problem is that he was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father, like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother.”