Republican demagogues are accustomed to igniting baseless political wildfires out of inflated straw issues to distract voters in election season. Regrettably, they now seem all too willing to fan a far more disastrous cultural war with the Muslim world. Witness Newt Gingrich's wildly irresponsible charge, among others, that a proposal to build a mosque and multi-cultural community center two blocks away from the Ground Zero site of the former Twin Towers is tantamount to "putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum."
That is a reckless, inflammatory and wrong-headed analogy about a Muslim mosque that would be two intensively urban city blocks away from the site to which he connects it. Worse, it's made in such an exceedingly critical moment that it is absolutely dangerous to our troops.
American soldiers are entwined in hostile wars in two Muslim countries where terrorist plotters will use any devilish motivation available to recruit the suicide bombers who daily attack American and allied forces. Osama bin Laden and his fellow plotters surely must be grateful to Gingrich and his ilk for handing them supporting evidence for their claim that Americans are in a holy war against Islam itself - and not just al Qaida-style terrorism.
There is a vast difference between fighting terrorism and fighting a religion. Presidents George W. Bush, who began the wars, and Barack Obama, who inherited them, have rightly taken great care to make that distinction clear. Gingrich and other Republican leaders - including House minority leader John Boehner and New York Rep. Peter King - who have jumped on the anti-mosque bandwagon seem blithely unconcerned, however, that their characterization of the proposed mosque would trample that crucial distinction.
In fact, their view of the location of the proposed mosque is baseless on all counts. It also ignores America's constitutional mandate for freedom of religion, and it mocks New York City's political and governmental decisions.
The city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has vigorously supported the mosque/cultural center proposed by Feisal Abdul Rauf, a prominent leader in the Muslim community and a long ally in support of moderate Muslim views. The mayor, himself a Jew whose parents had to arrange a blind purchase of a house in an unwelcoming suburb, was correct to support the plan for legal, political, cultural, civic and strategic reasons.
New York City represents a panoply of immigrants, cultures and religions. To exclude religious institutions goes against the city's fabric and grain. The mosque would not be usually or uniquely located, moreover. There are older, smaller mosques four blocks and 12 blocks from Ground Zero. The proposed site is intensively urban: it is surrounded in an area of restaurants and shops, a gay bar and a porn shop. It would not be on, or be seen from, the hallowed ground of Ground Zero.
For outside politicians to step in an grossly inflate and distort the city's debate over the mosque and its location is simply a misguided intrusion from any viewpoint.
Americans have ample reasons, moreover, to resist conflating religion with ethnicity and radical extremists. This nation's goal is not to try or fight Islam, but to fight terrorists who hinge their extremist views, period. These terrorists have killed and slaughtered fellow Muslims who disavow and resist their terrorism and the warped views of Islam that the terrorists peddle to attract recruits. This nation's aim, and best strategy, is to isolate the extremists from Islam, not to confuse or solidify the two.
Our own national intelligence services and their strategists rightly insist that imams like Feisal Abdul Rauf are enemies of al Qaida and related terrorist groups as much as the American soldiers who fight the terrorists. To debase normal Islamic leaders and their institutions, as well as our own constitutional norms, in order to stir political passions against the Obama administration and responsible political leaders is beyond the pale. Such provocation to hatred should be rejected out of hand.