"I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."
--Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin
If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.
If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl.
--Imam Rauf
This brings up an interesting question: who would you want building a house of worship in your neighborhood? The right wing of the country has already made its decision. You know the wing in question. The one that likes to dress up in revolutionary war garb out of a reverence for a strict construction of our founding documents. Documents such as the Constitution of the United States, whose First Amendment seems to be explicitly clear on matters like this:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
All the people who showed up yesterday for Glenn Beck's "whitestock" rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial should have taken the opportunity to go see the original document. It's still quite legible, in case the "Christian nation" crowd had any doubts about the authenticity of the language. The premise is clear. American values are not defined by one's creed, but by the pursuit and defense of the shard values of tolerance and respect for anyone, regardless of whether they come here or are born here, who seeks the American dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The fervent elements of nativism, racism, and bigotry have always been with us. But time was, there were many more conservatives like Ted Olson. They were people with whom progressives may have disagreed from a political point of view, but at least there may have been consensus about the fundamental values of tolerance for pluralism, as well as the guarantee of equal rights under the Constitution. If there were only one human being that conservatives ought to look to for moral guidance about how to treat the issue of Park 51, it would be Ted Olson: a conservative legal genius with broad respect from all quarters--and who lost his wife because of the savagery of Islamist terrorism.
Ted Olson supports President Obama's position on Park 51.
These days, however, principled conservatives like Ted Olson are considered sellouts because they don't bring the hate enough. Precisely because they don't discriminate. Precisely because they are dispassionate purveyors of equal justice under the law. Instead, this is the face of the conservative movement now: a mob, mostly white, and teetering on the edge of violence against anyone who doesn't look like them, and therefore might not exactly think like them--especially if that person looks like he just might be Muslim. This modern xenophobic face of the conservative movement is now so riled up, so terrified of the supposed "threat from within" of a community that has been with us for many decades now, that they are even willing to throw their own religion's legal protections under the bus if it means the opportunity to discriminate against the religion they don't like right now.
Consider the case of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The Volunteer State a law called the Tennessee Religious Freedom Protection Act, which gives added protection to religious organizations under certain circumstances. It protects, for instance, the right of Christian adoption agencies to only place children with couples who fit their criteria for moral adequacy. But the law also makes it harder to deny land use permits to religious organizations--including the new proposed Islamic Center in Murfreesboro.
The conservatives who sponsored the legislation to protect the right of Christians to discriminate against others are now horrified that they themselves cannot discriminate against a mosque. But rather than accept pluralism and the inclusion of a growing minority community, they are willing to undo the protections that they themselves wrote:
State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, said the Tennessee law had overwhelming bipartisan support.
"It's a pro-Christian bill," Ketron said. "It was established to protect the First Amendment to keep the federal government from coming in and making a decision on whether or not the church qualified or not to be a church."
Ketron is not convinced by the arguments about the law presented to the planning officials from the two Nashville lawyers.
"They are both very liberal," Ketron said.
A former county commissioner, Ketron said planning officials should have done a better job examining the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.
"I still think there's an obligation in the planning commission process to find out what the Islamic Center or any religious institution is going to be doing, and find out where the funding is coming from. Is it truly a church or is it a training center?"
...
Ketron said because of the one incident involving the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, "I would like to go back and look at the law."
Religious Act in TN may get tweaked--The Daily News Journal (Murfreesboro, TN) July 1, 2010 Thursday
Get it? If a law designed to protect churches accidentally protects a mosque too, get rid of the law. After all, Muslims are the minority, so if you don't allow them to worship, churches will be the only ones left. Right? This is where we're at now. The right wing fanatics in this country are now favoring eliminating laws that protect religious freedom just so they can discriminate against Muslims. One nation, under God--just as long as it's Jerry Boykin's one, and nobody else is invited to the party.
Or consider the case of a proposed mosque in Temecula, California--where another Islamic Center is in the planning stages. A group of people claiming to be tea party activists encouraged anti-mosque protesters to bring their dogs to the protest--a deliberate offense to Muslims, many of whom believe that dogs are impure. Or how about Burn a Koran day? Or the Bangladeshi cabbie, nearly killed by an idiot with an unhealthy taste for scotch?
For the partisan news organizations promoting this sort of hysteria, it's just another day at the races in pursuit of short-term electoral victories. But the serious long-term danger this fanaticism poses to our fundamental value system cannot be overlooked--nor can the jeopardy that this poses to our national security, since it is impossible to win hearts and minds abroad while displaying such rampant bigotry here at home.
There may well be an enemy within that is seeking to sabotage our values from the inside. And it may well be located in New York. But it's not two blocks from Ground Zero--it just may well be on the Avenue of the Americas instead.
PS after the time of this writing, the Murfreesboro Islamic Center construction site was the victim of an arson attack.