Being sensitive to the feelings of others
A surprising number of Americans—principally from the Right—have taken the position that a community center should not be built one block from a couple of strip clubs (New York Dolls and the Pussycat Lounge), which happen to be located on hallowed ground. (The strip clubs, like an off-track betting parlor, are on “hallowed ground” and don’t seem to be a problem.) A block farther away from Ground Zero, at the site of a defunct Burlington Coat Factory store, there’s a plan to build a community center that will be open to all and include, among other things, a prayer room for Muslims, like the one now active in the Pentagon, another target on 9/11.
Those objecting to the community center (which they place two blocks away, directly at Ground Zero, and call a “mosque” because that is scarier than “community center”) say that they recognize that the owner of the building has the right to build a community center there, especially if it includes a prayer room (thanks to Constitutional guarantees and a general feeling that a person can do what they want on their own property), but that exercising that right might hurt the feelings of the victims of 9/11 (except, presumably, the innocent Muslims who were at work in the World Trade Center that day and were also killed).
Strangely, polls done in Manhattan show that people who actually live there have no problem with the community center, but those objecting are so concerned that feelings might be hurt that they ignore the poll and continue to butt into something that really, truly is none of their business: they don’t even live in the neighborhood.
First: having a right means that you can exercise that right. If you cannot exercise the right, what earthly good is it? It becomes like all the human rights that were included in the Soviet constitution: nice to read, but you couldn’t really use any of the rights. If the guy who owns the building has the right to build the community center, then game over. He can build it.
Second: all these people so concerned about the feelings of others: I wonder what they thought about the “draw-a-cartoon-of-Mohammed” contest, specifically designed to hurt the feelings of orthodox Muslims. I don’t recall the outrage from the Right, protective of the feelings of others, in that affair.
In fact, I believe what is going on is a clear outbreak of religious bigotry. The fact is that Muslim places of worship are being fought—directly against the guarantees of the Constitution and the American spirit of tolerance and religious freedom—all over the country. Some completely despicable politicians try to finesse the issue with all the subtlety of a four-year-old by saying Islam is not a religion. That single statement reveals the rotten core of the movement.
If that’s not convincing, take a look at this post by Matt Duss at ThinkProgress and tell me that what you observe is not religious bigotry:
At an anti-Islam rally yesterday at Ground Zero, a person of color wearing a skull cap and wandering through the crowd was targeted with insults and nearly attacked by protesters for the offense of looking vaguely Muslim. The videographer summarized the episode this way:
A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later I caught up with the man who’s name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him.
Glenn Greenwald observes that the video “shows some extremely ugly stuff that’s been unleashed.” Watch it:
Interesting way to “honor” Ground Zero, no?
John Cole points out:
At about 25 seconds in, he quite astutely points out to the crowd that “All y’all dumb motherfuckers don’t even know my opinion on shit.”
They also fail to understand the principles of the US Constitution and the concept of religious tolerance and seem to have a lot of free time on their hands to get so deeply involved in something that’s absolutely none of their business.
UPDATE: Mark Kleiman on Karen Hughes’s contribution to the controversy.
