The Frantic Uproar Concerning the Building of the Mosque

There is no doubt that the frantic outcry about building a mosque near the site of the former World Trade Center in New York is a disgraceful situation. However, this is not a new situation for America. It persecuted the early Jews and Catholics, and the religious rituals of new immigrants have always been looked on as “barbaric practices.” And one can only be amazed at the courage of New York [City’s] mayor, Michael Bloomberg, in defending the mosque project. And in the climate of doubt that political opportunists have raised concerning the controversy surrounding this project, one empathizes with American Muslims.

Nevertheless, there are important questions here that Muslims in the United States and minorities all over the world must confront. First, didn’t you really move to a new home and join a new family, and shouldn’t that involve much effort to accommodate? Furthermore, did you strongly and openly side with this new family and its values against its adversaries?

Second, how willing are you to confront and overcome the misunderstanding and disdain that afflict all foreigners in all foreign countries? Did you expect the situation to be smooth and easy from the beginning? Didn’t you realize that the United States is a “fundamentalist” country in many respects, with all the shortcomings that that word implies? And a crazy preacher in Florida threatening to burn the Quran on Sept. 11 is only one example in a series of offensive and barbaric acts that go back to the American Nazi movement’s march that the state of Illinois witnessed a generation ago.

And in democracies fraught with unrest like the United States, the voices of those who attract attention are always louder. If you were a Muslim American and lowered your head and kept silent and avoided condemning al-Qaida and suicide bombers, why wouldn’t crazy extremists suspect that you sympathized with the bombers’ crimes?

And to be reasonable, as moderates are advised to be, please avoid generalizing. But fanatics and racists and those who have a national agenda generalize. They generalized when they sent Americans of Japanese descent to concentration camps. And times have changed all over the world, and tolerance toward different cultures is no longer politically popular. “Be Dutch or leave Holland!” and [this is a statement] from “tolerant” Holland! It is sad to say that as long as there is a potential Jihadist threat, and Muslims in America don’t speak out against Jihadist violence, the United States will be a sensitive place for Muslims just as it was for Americans of German descent during the two World Wars.

And with respect to foreigners — and in this case, they are Muslims in America or others from non-Islamic countries — there are only two alternatives to packing up their belongings and returning to their countries: to assimilate or to vanish behind the majority and begin to adhere to the majority’s basic beliefs and specific traditions. This is the easiest road, but it is not free of obstacles, since you will feel [some degree of] bigotry, even if it is not aimed at you directly, and you will need to suck it up and get over it.

The alternative is to refuse to conform. And in today’s world, this position will expose you to violence, and the pride that you’ll feel may not be proportionate to the amount of harm that you’ll be exposed to. And in the end, you might become full of hate, like the British young men who placed bombs in the subway. Who wants to be that angry??

A small number of Muslims in America today will give in and sit there helplessly while the debate continues about the mosque project — more than the Japanese detainees did or the Jews on the West Coast, whom prominent politicians in the 1920s used to call “kikes.” And most Americans have to realize that with the passage of time and the emergence of Islam in America, simple-minded people and opportunists will attack it. But after this situation dies down — say, before half a century passes — one can expect that Muslims in the United States will begin to feel that they are true Americans and may be willing, like others, to notice the grave errors of the new immigrants. And time will prove the accuracy of that assessment.