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.