I don't understand why people are being so permissive about opposition to the WTC mosque. It is not a view that should be treated with even the slightest air of legitimacy. It is every bit as idiotic as the people that say gay marriage leads to bestiality or that Obama wasn't born in America.
Opposition to the mosque (as opposed to another holy building) is predicated on several different assumptions, all of which are false. Most of the protest rhetoric falls into one of these modes. The more intelligent opponents will attempt to conceal the blatant falsehood of these assumptions by using disingenuous or counterintuitive logic. However, examining these points intelligently will reveal just how skewed they are.
Anti-mosque rhetoric falls into two categories, each with attendant fallacious assumptions. The first is:
Building the mosque is inappropriate because the site of the WTC attacks is sacred in a way that precludes Islam.
This is the mild version of this rhetoric, and is only rarely phrased so delicately. This is the rhetorical branch which includes slogans like "You can build a mosque at Ground Zero when we can build a synagogue in Mecca." The most exaggerated
one I've heard is "it's like building a neo-nazi cultural center in Auschwitz." Though that's a bit more second branch.
There are two assumptions that could lie behind this branch. The FIRST, and the lest likely, is the idea that a denominational faith based center is an affront to the wide variety of faiths and creeds which lost something in the disaster. Alternatively, that the loss was a political one, and memorial to the fallen should reflect that, as religiously non-denominational war memorials do. However, since a cross made out of girders has been left up at the site for a while, and I sincerely doubt a church would meet with similar opposition, this is not the case.
What I suspect the true assumption is, is that The 9/11 attacks constituted attacks on America, and America is a Christian nation, hence national memorials must by necessity be Christian. I have no desire to argue this right now, but America is not an inherent;y Christian nation. Evidence abounds. Anyone arguing otherwise is a fool, and I will say no more. When this assumption crops up elsewhere, it is recognized for the bullshit it is, but for some reason we're willing to accommodate it here. I suspect, sadly, that this is a product of the second branch of rhetoric, which America has internalized:
The perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and those responsible for the building of the mosque are the same group of people. This is the much, much more vile way that mosque opponents go about arguing. This is a vile rhetoric because it makes the dark, racist assumption that evil is monolithic. Much as it pains me to play the anti-semitism card, this is the same logic people use to claim that Jews control the media, Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist, and that Sputnik was a spy satellite. A variation of a statement above which compares the mosque at Ground Zero to "a memorial to Hitler in Auschwitz" (from this sign here at a slant) sums up this despicable assumption nicely. A mosque is a house of worship wherein the teachings of Mohammed, one of the prophets worshiped by Islam (alongside Jesus, Abraham, and John the Baptist, which as a side note shows the sheer depth of ignorance of the "synagogue" wisecrack above) and a servant of God (again, the same god worshiped by Judaism, Christianity, and all their 31 flavors) are studied, practiced, and his rituals observed. To compare him to Hitler reveals a twisted universe wherein Mohammed and ALL his "deluded followers" were directly responsible for and participatory in the 9/11 attacks. Anyone believing this, or any variation of this, has no right to have their opinion respected. At all. Period. This has been shown to be a false worldview, like the stars being set in a firmament or all objects being made out of earth, air, fire, or water.
The reality is that the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were political and ideological opponents of America as a nation, who made a political attack on us in response to a foreign policy which is no less destructive for the grief that 9/11 caused us. Religion enters into it on only one front: the fact that it's perpetrators used religion as a mechanism to comfort themselves and to justify their actions, which is no more unexpected than American soldiers turning to god to provide them with the same comforts.
The fact that the religion the perpetrators chose to turn to was Islam means that the only religion which is involved by necessity in this incident IS Islam. No one killed in 9/11 claimed to, themselves, represent the will of god, nor of Ahura Mazda, nor any of the things people build faiths around. Only the perpetrators did. What this means is that the religious dimension of 9/11 was an act of war done in the name of a religion which preaches peace. The only faith which was attacked during 9/11 was Islam itself.
Admitting this, the 9/11 mosque is more than the "one more mosque" that the media seems to be characterizing it as (even the liberal pundits who seem to support the mosque all phrase their support along the lines of "well where else are they going to put it?" and Sarah Palin proposed putting it "down the road.") It is an active attempt at conciliation: a move towards healing the wounds dealt to the faith and human brotherhood by the attacks. The fact that we react so bitterly and with such open contempt for an invitation to peace from our fellow man reveals us for the low, brutal savages we are. If this is really the way we want to act, then maybe the assumption, which I have deigned not to touch, that we did not deserve the attacks is misplaced. Maybe we deserved them, and far, far worse.
