COMMENTARY
Part 1: The Ground Zero Mosque
Last Friday, Obama made a statement on the Ground Zero Mosque in which he described it as a test of our dedication to religious freedom:
I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.
So he's in favor of building the mosque, right? Well, the next day he walked back that implication, explaining that "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding." Then later a spokesman added that "Just to be clear, the president is not backing off in any way from the comments he made last night." Glad he cleared that up.
So on the substance of the issue, President Obama is once again voting "present," carefully parsing his words in order to express no position in particular.
But the symbolic meaning of Obama's statement comes through loud and clear. It's not really a statement about the mosque; it's a statement about us, the American people. His message to us is that we can't accept the mosque because we're a bunch of intolerant religious bigots—and because we're letting emotional "trauma" cloud our thinking—so we need lectures on tolerance from our more enlightened superiors. Obama's statement is really just another expression of leftist condescension toward the American people.
This is why some of his fellow Democrats aren't exactly thrilled about this little hand grenade he's handed to them three months before an election. Before Obama spoke, condescension on this issue was Mayor Bloomberg's specialty. While Bloomberg is nominally a Republican, everyone knows that he really represents the Bloomberg Party, whose platform is that Michael Bloomberg is better and smarter than everyone else and knows how they should run their lives. But now, thanks to Obama, the Democrats now own a position on this issue that is unpopular with 70% of the American public.
The interesting thing is that Obama and his friends on the left are the ones who are really working to make this into an issue of religious freedom. Most commentators on the right have acknowledged that religious liberty and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment do not allow us block a mosque just because it is a center for the Islamic religion. I caught a little bit of Glenn Beck on the radio Monday morning, and he was very clear on this point. Similarly, Daniel Pipes says that "Muslims have every legal right to build a mosque near Ground Zero" but points out that "this initiative carries the unmistakable odor of Islamic triumphalism." The closest he gets to advocating government action is to hint that the US government could block Saudi funding for the mosque—the exact sources of its funding are still unclear—which is a potentially legitimate measure, since foreign governments and their agents cannot claim the protection of the First Amendment. (This suggestion is complicated, though, by the fact that Saudi Arabia, unlike Iran, is not a hostile power.)
A good Wall Street Journal editorial sums up what seems to be the standard argument on the right.
There's nothing relative about the Constitutional protections afforded to expressions of religious freedom on private property. The government has no right to stop imam Feisal Abdul Rauf from developing the abandoned Burlington Coat Factory at 51 Park Place into a 13-story complex of classrooms, auditoriums and a mosque under the name of Cordoba House. Even opponents of the mosque concede this point.But the objection here is not about the right to religious free expression. It is about the prudence—and some would say effrontery—of seeking to build a symbol of Islamic faith at the doorstep of a site where terrorists invoking the name of Islam killed 3,000 Americans.
Thus, the right has (quite properly) focused on exposing the fake "moderation" of the mosque's builders and supporters. Here is the Wall Street Journal on that:
On paper, Mr. Rauf, a Kuwaiti-born cleric who came to the US in his teens, is an unlikely rabble-rouser. Over three decades, he has denounced terrorism and anti-Semitism, attended "peace seders," and preached democracy and human rights for the Muslim world....His 2004 book "What's Right With Islam"—the paperback version adds the clause, "is What's Right with America," to the title—argues that Islam's core teachings are compatible with American democracy. "We have the chance to create here a new Muslim identity, to modernize the theology," he told the French weekly L'Express in 2003. "America is an opportunity for Islam."
But these sentiments have been drowned out by other comments by Mr. Rauf that have been amplified in the tumult of recent weeks. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Rauf told CBS that "the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime that happened."
Earlier this summer, asked whether he agreed with the State Department's designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization, Mr. Rauf demurred. "I'm not a politician," he said. "The issue of terrorism is a very complex question."...
Mr. Rauf also hasn't been clear about the sources of the $100 million or so needed to build the Cordoba House project.
By the way, this is why I think we shouldn't over-estimate the symbolic victory that Muslim apologists for terror hope to get from building the mosque. How much of a pro-terror message can they send, if they have to disguise their real motives under a bunch of platitudes about peacefulness and tolerance? I also think Raymond Ibrahim has a good point when he argues that trying to build this mosque will backfire on the Muslim apologists for terror. By insisting on building their mosque near Ground Zero, they have thrust themselves into the harsh light of public scrutiny, where all of their double-talk about "moderation" will be exposed.
But like I've been saying, the Ground Zero Mosque is really just a symbolic issue, and symbolism never trumps substance. Or put it this way: a substantive set-back for Islamism carries its own, much more powerful symbolism, which dwarfs anything having to do with this mosque project. The war will be won or lost depending on whether we defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan or whether we withdraw and let the Taliban take over. Just as important, it will be determined by whether we increase pressure on the Iranian regime and cause its collapse, or whether we allow them to acquire nuclear weapons and declare themselves a Middle Eastern superpower.
So let's refocus our attention on those big questions.
Since I'm a few days behind on TIA Daily, and since this commentary is getting longer than I expected, I'll break it into two parts and deal with the real substance—the actual centers of the war in Afghanistan and Iran—in a follow-up installment later today.—RWT
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