While trying to follow, at great distance, the news and sharp controversies about the project to construct an Islamic Center and Mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, another telling occurrence deflected my attention in the direction of Washington, DC.<\/p>\n
On August 28, a host of right wing Americans, neo-conservative crowds and TeePartyUSA multitudes demonstrated at the Lincoln Memorial in the American capital in favor of \u201cAmerican Dignity Restored\u201d and implicitly against that part of the country that had elected a black President for the first time ever, with a Muslim for a father and a Hussein for the obligatory American middle name, to boot.\u00a0 The demonstration took place exactly where the American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, had delivered his famous \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech 47 years ago to the day.<\/p>\n
Liberal and Civil Rights America was appalled at such tactics, timing and protestations regarding the whole affair as a deliberate provocation of and an intended affront to the best in American values in general and to America\u2019s blacks and it\u2019s other ethnic minorities in particular.<\/p>\n
At this point, I thought to myself: Is not the same logic of provocation and affront applicable to the Muslim construction project and Mosque in the Ground Zero zone?\u00a0 I do not want to answer the question simplistically. Obviously, the intention of the New York project is forgiveness and reconciliation and not just to insist and no matter what on exercising, in a certain way, the constitutional right guaranteeing to all Americans the freedoms of religion, conscience, worship and expression.\u00a0 At the same time, it is no less clear that the intention behind the TeePartyUSA demonstration in Washington, DC is out and out provocation, at least to all those who hold dear the memory of Martin Luther King\u2019s speech and the epochal shift it triggered in American life.\u00a0 I say this with all due respect to the inalienable right of all people to assemble, congregate, demonstrate and express themselves and their grievances peacefully.<\/p>\n
In my estimation, the Ground Zero Muslim construction project shows, at its best, lack of tact, inconsiderate plans and bad live-and let-live strategies and tactics.\u00a0 This can only be of great disservice to a religious minority, like the Muslims, in a country such as the USA where the disabling backlash phenomenon is pervasive, powerful and so well known.\u00a0 At its worst, the project is open to charges of gratuitous provocation, bad faith, and hypocrisy.\u00a0 So, all in all I am for moving the Center and Mosque to another and more suitable location in New York City to prove good faith and honorable intentions.<\/p>\n
In any case the organizers and financial backers of the project have already made so many concessions to the opposition as to render the whole idea pointless.\u00a0 For example, they agreed to change the name of the Center from the tell tale \u201cCordova House\u201d to the utterly bland street address of \u201cPark 51\u201d.\u00a0 They denied that they are building a mosque in the first place.\u00a0 And they reassured everyone concerned that no casual passer-by would not recognize the Center for what it is from its outside appearance.\u00a0 In other words, no minarets and no revealing Islamic architectural or decorative features.\u00a0 Given these demeaning and humiliating concession, it would be more dignified to relocate the Center to a spot where there will be no need to conceal its identity in such a ridiculous manner.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, the Muslim and Arab Worlds do not have much to show on matters of the freedoms of religion, conscience, worship and free-expression neither officially nor at the popular level.\u00a0 The current despicable plan of the small evangelical Florida Church to burn copies of the Koran on the occasion of remembering the 9\/11 destruction and victims should not be a warning only but should also critically remind us of the recent Muslim resurrection of the Medieval rituals of book burning (and people burning as well) when they put to the torch, in view of the whole world, copies of Salman Rushdie\u2019s novel, The Satanic Verses, most spectacularly in Bradford, England.\u00a0 Perhaps, at least American Muslims should heed the Arab piece of wisdom saying: \u201cHe who lives in a glass house does not throw rocks at other people\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sadik J. Al-Azm
\nBeirut, Lebanon<\/p>\n
Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm (Arabic:<\/em> \u0635\u0627\u062f\u0642 \u062c\u0644\u0627\u0644 \u0627\u0644\u0639\u0638\u0645\u200e) (born in Damascus, Syria, in 1934) is a Professor Emeritus of Modern European Philosophy at the University of Damascus in Syria. He has been a visiting professor in the department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University until 2007. His area of specialization was the philosophy of Immanuel Kant with a more current emphasis upon the Islamic world and its relationship to the West, and he has contributed to the discourse of “Orientalism”.[citation needed] He is also known as a human rights advocate and a champion of intellectual freedom and free speech.[1] Al-Azm was schooled in Beirut, Lebanon earning the B.A. in Philosophy from the American University of Beirut (1957). Al-Azm earned the M.A. (1959) and Ph.D. (1961) from Yale University majoring in Modern European Philosophy.<\/em><\/p>\n He won the Erasmus Prize, with Fatema Mernissi and Abdulkarim Soroush. In 2004, he also received the Dr. Leopold-Lucas-Preis of the Evangelical-Theological Faculty of the University of T\u0171bingen. In 2005 he became a Dr. Honoris Causa at Hamburg University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While trying to follow, at great distance, the news and sharp controversies about the project to construct an Islamic Center and Mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, another telling occurrence deflected my attention in the direction of Washington, DC. On August 28, a host of right wing Americans, neo-conservative crowds and TeePartyUSA multitudes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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