The war against the terrorists is not a war against Islam. In fact, you can't have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam.George W. Bush understood this. And it is odd to see Barack Obama less clear about this matter than his predecessor. It's time for W. to weigh in.
Joe Conason asks, preposterously, "Where Is George W. Bush When America Needs Him?"
For Muslims around the world, George W. Bush and his decision to invade Iraq became symbols of Western arrogance, hostility, and even religious supremacy. But neither Bush's terrible foreign policy nor his personal and political connections with the religious right—where bigotry against Muslims runs rampant—prevented him from speaking out for religious tolerance and freedom on many occasions, especially in the aftermath of Sept. 11....So why is the former president silent now, when a proposed community center and mosque in lower Manhattan have called forth such vitriol and prejudice from his supporters?
In fact, Bush ought to maintain his silence, partly because he has no interest in coming to the political rescue of people who unfairly vilified him, but mostly because one of his virtues as president has been the fact that—unlike recent Democratic office-holders—he actually believes in quitting the office and staying out of politics.
But there is a point to all of these insincerely nostalgic cries for his leadership. George Bush had some serious problems, particularly his early "Islam is peace" whitewashing of the enemy's creed, and his later declarations about how "democracy is democracy," so that it would be OK for the Iraqis to vote themselves into an Iranian-style theocracy. But the left knows that Bush understood one important thing: that the War on Terrorism is not a war "on Islam."
America does not fight religious wars—thank God! This war, like all of America's wars, is a war for the political creed of liberty and against the political creed of tyranny, in whatever form it takes.
When I say that this is not a war against Islam, I don't mean that the Islamic creed bears no responsibility for the attacks of September 11 or for the murder and oppression committed in its name. Islam is the world's worst religion, the only major creed founded by a brigand and a tyrant, a religion created by and for criminals. But only a minority of Muslims allow themselves to fully understand, embrace, and act upon the vicious basis of their creed. And only a minority of that minority do so in a way that is a threat to the United States. (The rest pick victims closer to home, like their wives and daughters.)
Those who say the War on Terrorism should be a war on Islam claim they are clearly identifying the enemy, but they are doing the opposite. They are naming, as the enemy, an undifferentiated mass of about one billion people—rather than defining the exact criteria that ought to single out targets for military action.
The same thing applies for targets of legal action. So again, I'll repeat that the only basis for taking or threatening any kind of government action against the Ground Zero Mosque is specific information indicating that its leaders are actually aiding and abetting terrorist groups.
To do otherwise is to weave a very tangled web. To use zoning laws and historical preservation powers to block a mosque at one specific location is, in and of itself, a relatively small-scale attack on religious freedom—but think what vast, amorphous, arbitrary government power it sanctions. Take, for example, a Charles Krauthammer column in which he advocates blocking the mosque—and then goes on to endorse the whole panoply of local socialism and arbitrary power that holds sway over the construction industry in America.
America is a free country where you can build whatever you want—but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.These restrictions are for reasons of esthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred.
So you're free to do anything you want—so long as it doesn't run afoul of anyone's "sensibilities," their esthetic judgment, or their religious views about what is "sacred." But other than that, you're free! This is why we have be scrupulously clear that only strictly private pressure can be brought to bear against the builders of the mosque.
Which is part of the reason why I wish all politicians, on both sides, would please shut up about it. The other reason I wish they would shut up is because the issue is not really important. I've been pointing out that what happens in Afghanistan and Iran (and what has already happened in Iraq) is a thousand times more important. But Jack Wakeland pointed me to a column in the New York Post by John Podhoretz which names the other thing that is a thousand times more important. Follow the link and read the whole thing, but here is Jack's summary.
"John Podhoretz gets to the heart of the non-issue. The question is not whether or not the government will permit a mosque and Islamic 'cultural' center to be built at the abandoned Burlington Coat Factory building at 45 Park Place, but how the World Trade Center site could remain empty, a hole in the ground for nine years following the attack.
"Post-modern architectural competitions, proposals by insane modern artists to turn the whole area over to a memorial hole in the ground, and endless local board meetings over which minor facilities and non-entity community organizations and could use which part of the World Trade Center space have transformed the area around the World Trade Center from a beating heart of Lower Manhattan to a slum—'post-industrial urban space'—in which buildings like 45 Park Place could be abandoned.
"This is the material issue behind the whole story of the 'Park51' project. If there were 2 million square feet of occupied office space at the World Trade Center site (complete with the 60, 80, and 100-story skyscrapers that house them) the whole area around what would no longer be known as 'Ground Zero' would be buzzing with commercial activity.
"I disagree with Podhoretz on only one point. Whether or not a mosque is built near the World Trade Center building is totally irrelevant. It is what has not been done with the site that matters. If the mosque builders could afford the prices in the kind of bustling neighborhood that would have existed if the World Trade Center site had been developed—well, they could still have gone ahead with their project, only New Yorkers would not have noticed. They would have built and moved beyond 9/11 and would be living in the future instead of the past.
"What we notice today—what New Yorkers, especially, notice—is that Ground Zero remains a zero. It is an abandoned neighborhood in the heart of Lower Manhattan. This—the hole in the ground where buildings should have stood by now—this is not a Muslim victory. It is an American defeat. It is a self-imposed defeat. We are defeated by socialism; socialism in the state ownership of the World Trade Center site; socialism in support of post-modern art; socialism in city planning.
"The only way out of this is for the State of New York to immediately sell the 'Ground Zero' site to a private developer and for the city government to get behind the developer to cut through all the red tape and all of the community board meetings that will be put in their way. The government must let someone own 'Ground Zero.' It must let someone build on, rent, and profit from 'Ground Zero.' If the site is not put into private hands, it will be nine more years before it is developed and another nine before the area is properly integrated back into a city that still lives around the dead hole of New York socialism."—RWT
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