More on the Ground Zero Mosque

This from a long-time reader:

As a follower of your blog—in all its iterations throughout the years—I have a tremendous amount of respect for your opinions, philosophical and otherwise.  Yet in your recent post on the Cordoba House building plan—apparently now called park51--I found myself disagreeing with you on several points of your discussion.  When I have had this discussion with others—namely my parents and grandparents, all of whom share your opposition to the plan—I found little more than shrill arguing going on. I recognize that intelligent and thoughtful people exist on both sides of this, and I want to understand the rational arguments available to both, not just the blustering rhetoric being bantered [bandied] about.  Hopefully in discussion with you I can find a more rationally driven discussion than I found elsewhere. 

I'll give it my best shot.

It is true that we do not have an obligation to tolerate the intolerant, but it needs to be established that these particular Muslims are themselves intolerant and that the building will be a monument to said intolerance. 

I would argue that it suffices that it will be perceived as a monument to intolerance and the promotion of values inimical to American values.  We need to promote comity, not make it more difficult.  Please note that the objection is not to Muslims' building a mosque, but to their building a mosque near Ground Zero.  One of the stated reasons for the construction in that  spot won't wash, namely, to promote inter-faith dialogue and mutual understanding.  That reason cannot be credited since no one with any knowledge of human nature would expect the GZM to be perceived by a majority of Americans as anything other than a provocation, an outrage, and an attempt on the part of militant Muslims to see how far they can go.

It is also important to note that Muslim citizens, while they enjoy freedom of religion as U.S. citizens, do not thereby enjoy an unlimited 'freedom of construction' any more than Jews or Christians do.   A blocking of the proposed construction is not eo ipso a violation of freedom of religion. 

It is interesting to compare the present brouhaha with a similar one from the '80s.  This from WTC Mosque, Meet the Auschwitz Nuns:

In the 1980s, Carmelite nuns moved into an abandoned building on the edge of the former Nazi death camp to pray for the souls taken there. As with the dispute over the mosque near Ground Zero, the convent's presence escalated into a clash not only between different faiths but between competing historical narratives. As with today's clash too, it seemed intractable until the Polish pope stepped in.

Long story short, the Pope asked the nuns to back off. 

There's a lesson here. Even those who favor this new Islamic Center surely can appreciate why some American feelings are rubbed raw by the idea of a mosque at a place where Islamic terrorists killed more than 2,700 innocent people. If feelings in Auschwitz were raw after nearly half a century, it's not hard to see why they would remain raw at Ground Zero after less than a decade.

It is also a serious question how seriously we should take what Muslims say concerning their intentions given the doctrine of

i. Taqiyya -- Religious Deception

Due to the state of war between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, reuses de guerre, i.e., systematic lying to the infidel, must be considered part and parcel of Islamic tactics. The parroting by Muslim organizations throughout dar al-harb that "Islam is a religion of peace," or that the origins of Muslim violence lie in the unbalanced psyches of particular individual "fanatics," must be considered as disinformation intended to induce the infidel world to let down its guard. Of course, individual Muslims may genuinely regard their religion as "peaceful" -- but only insofar as they are ignorant of its true teachings, or in the sense of the Egyptian theorist Sayyid Qutb, who posited in his Islam and Universal Peace that true peace would prevail in the world just as soon as Islam had conquered it.

A telling point is that, while Muslims who present their religion as peaceful abound throughout dar al-harb, they are nearly non-existent in dar al-Islam. A Muslim apostate once suggested to me a litmus test for Westerners who believe that Islam is a religion of "peace" and "tolerance": try making that point on a street corner in Ramallah, or Riyadh, or Islamabad, or anywhere in the Muslim world. He assured me you wouldn't live five minutes.

{A} problem concerning law and order {with respect to Muslims in dar al-harb} arises from an ancient Islamic legal principle -- that of taqiyya, a word the root meaning of which is "to remain faithful" but which in effect means "dissimulation." It has full Quranic authority (3:28 and 16:106) and allows the Muslim to conform outwardly to the requirements of unislamic or non-Islamic government, while inwardly "remaining faithful" to whatever he conceives to be proper Islam, while waiting for the tide to turn. (Hiskett, Some to Mecca Turn to Pray, 101.)

Volume 4, Book 52, Number 269; Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah: The Prophet said, "War is deceit."

Historically, examples of taqiyya include permission to renounce Islam itself in order to save one's neck or ingratiate oneself with an enemy. It is not hard to see that the implications of taqiyya are insidious in the extreme: they essentially render negotiated settlement -- and, indeed, all veracious communication between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb -- impossible. It should not, however, be surprising that a party to a war should seek to mislead the other about its means and intentions. Jihad Watch's own Hugh Fitzgerald sums up taqiyya and kitman, a related form of deception.

"Taqiyya" is the religiously-sanctioned doctrine, with its origins in Shi'a Islam but now practiced by non-Shi'a as well, of deliberate dissimulation about religious matters that may be undertaken to protect Islam, and the Believers. A related term, of broader application, is "kitman," which is defined as "mental reservation." An example of "Taqiyya" would be the insistence of a Muslim apologist that "of course" there is freedom of conscience in Islam, and then quoting that Qur'anic verse -- "There shall be no compulsion in religion." {2:256} But the impression given will be false, for there has been no mention of the Muslim doctrine of abrogation, or naskh, whereby such an early verse as that about "no compulsion in religion" has been cancelled out by later, far more intolerant and malevolent verses. In any case, history shows that within Islam there is, and always has been, "compulsion in religion" for Muslims, and for non-Muslims.

"Kitman" is close to "taqiyya," but rather than outright dissimulation, it consists in telling only a part of the truth, with "mental reservation" justifying the omission of the rest. One example may suffice. When a Muslim maintains that "jihad" really means "a spiritual struggle," and fails to add that this definition is a recent one in Islam (little more than a century old), he misleads by holding back, and is practicing "kitman." When he adduces, in support of this doubtful proposition, the hadith in which Muhammad, returning home from one of his many battles, is reported to have said (as known from a chain of transmitters, or isnad), that he had returned from "the Lesser Jihad to the Greater Jihad" and does not add what he also knows to be true, that this is a "weak" hadith, regarded by the most-respected muhaddithin as of doubtful authenticity, he is further practicing "kitman."

In times when the greater strength of dar al-harb necessitates that the jihad take an indirect approach, the natural attitude of a Muslim to the infidel world must be one of deception and omission. Revealing frankly the ultimate goal of dar al-Islam to conquer and plunder dar al-harb when the latter holds the military trump cards would be strategic idiocy. Fortunately for the jihadists, most infidels do not understand how one is to read the Quran, nor do they trouble themselves to find out what Muhammad actually did and taught, which makes it easy to give the impression through selective quotations and omissions that "Islam is a religion of peace." Any infidel who wants to believe such fiction will happily persist in his mistake having been cited a handful of Meccan verses and told that Muhammad was a man of great piety and charity. Digging only slightly deeper is sufficient to dispel the falsehood.

There are many intolerant Muslims, some who are in America, but there are also many Muslims in America who are not so intolerant and dangerous to the point that they should be excluded from exercising their rights as citizens.  You rightly point out that fear of radical Islam is rational, but that does not mean that fear of anything Islamic is rational. 

Right, but nobody would say that.  Hell, I've got Der Koran (Arabisch-Deutsch) sitting on my desk as I write.  If I feared everything Islamic, I certainly wouldn't have it in what my wife calls my "sanctuary."  Not only that, I have Muslim friends.  I visited plenty of mosques when l lived in Turkey.

I don't have a racist or xenophobic bone in my body, and any liberal-leftist who suggests that conservatives in the main are motivated by racism or xenophobia are moral scum and must be denounced as such.  They are morally defective specimens because they know what they are doing and they know it is a lie.

Just as people were rational in fearing the Red Threat (NOT: 'Red Scare' as lefties would have it) during the Cold War, I am rational today in fearing radical Islam.  I recommend that you read David Horowitz, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (Regnery 2004).  The parallels between Communism and radical Islam are interesting -- and sobering.

In the six years I have been running this weblog, I have distinguished between moderate and militant Muslims.  Some of my more conservative friends have criticized me for this distinction, and I am currently re-evaluating it.  This is an open question for me.  Perhaps 'moderate Muslim' is as oxymoronic as 'moderate Communist.'  Communists used our institutions and freedoms to undermine us, and that's a fact.  It is at least an open question whether Muslims are doing the same, with so-called 'moderate Muslims' being like 'fellow travelers' who are not actively engaged in subversion but provide support from the sidelines.

There are many Muslims who reject militant strands of Islam in the same way that there are many Christians who reject the militant strands of Christianity that bomb abortion clinics and protest with signs proclaiming “God hates fags.” 

You are now on the brink of making a very bad mistake.  There is simply no reasonable comparison between the atrocities committed (and attempted but thwarted) by Muslim militants and those committed and attempted by Christian militants.  Can it be denied that most of the terrorism in the world today comes from Muslims?  It is also crucial to observe that the domestic terrorism of Timothy McVeigh, assuming he counts as a Christian, does not have its source in Chhristian doctrine, while the terrorism of Muslim terrorism does have its roots in Islamic doctrine.

Threat-assessment is very difficult.  We obviously differ on the type and degree of threat  Islam poses to us.  But you should least consider what some experts have to say:

As we have seen, contrary to the widespread insistence that true Islam is pacific even if a handful of its adherents are violent, the Islamic sources make clear that engaging in violence against non-Muslims is a central and indispensable principle to Islam. Islam is less a personal faith than a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, and individuals. The Islamic holy texts outline a social, governmental, and economic system for all mankind. Those cultures and individuals who do not submit to Islamic governance exist in an ipso facto state of rebellion with Allah and must be forcibly brought into submission. The misbegotten term "Islamo-fascism" is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.

The spectacular acts of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are but the most recent manifestation of a global war of conquest that Islam has been waging since the days of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century AD and that continues apace today. This is the simple, glaring truth that is staring the world today in the face -- and which has stared it in the face numerous times in the past -- but which it seems few today are willing to contemplate.

It is important to realize that we have been talking about Islam -- not Islamic "fundamentalism," "extremism," "fanaticism," "Islamo-fascism," or "Islamism," but Islam proper, Islam in its orthodox form as it has been understood and practiced by right-believing Muslims from the time of Muhammad to the present. The mounting episodes of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are due largely to the geostrategic changes following the end of the Cold War and the growing technical options available to terrorists.

With the collapse of Soviet hegemony over much of the Muslim world, coupled with the burgeoning wealth of the Muslim oil-producing countries, the Muslim world increasingly possesses the freedom and means to support jihad around the globe. In short, the reason that Muslims are once again waging war against the non-Muslim world is because they can.

It is paramount to note, however, that, even if no major terrorist attack ever occurs on Western soil again, Islam still poses a mortal danger to the West. A halt to terrorism would simply mean a change in Islam's tactics -- perhaps indicating a longer-term approach that would allow Muslim immigration and higher birth rates to bring Islam closer to victory before the next round of violence. It cannot be overemphasized that Muslim terrorism is a symptom of Islam that may increase or decrease in intensity while Islam proper remains permanently hostile.

Muhammad Taqi Partovi Samzevari, in his "Future of the Islamic Movement" (1986), sums up the Islamic worldview.

Our own Prophet ... was a general, a statesman, an administrator, an economist, a jurist and a first-class manager all in one. ... In the Qur'an's historic vision Allah's support and the revolutionary struggle of the people must come together, so that Satanic rulers are brought down and put to death. A people that is not prepared to kill and to die in order to create a just society cannot expect any support from Allah. The Almighty has promised us that the day will come when the whole of mankind will live united under the banner of Islam, when the sign of the Crescent, the symbol of Muhammad, will be supreme everywhere. ... But that day must be hastened through our Jihad, through our readiness to offer our lives and to shed the unclean blood of those who do not see the light brought from the Heavens by Muhammad in his mi'raj {"nocturnal voyages to the 'court' of Allah"}. ... It is Allah who puts the gun in our hand. But we cannot expect Him to pull the trigger as well simply because we are faint-hearted.

It must be emphasized that all of the analysis provided here derives from the Islamic sources themselves and is not the product of critical Western scholarship. (Indeed, most modern Western scholarship of Islam is hardly "critical" in any meaningful sense.) It is Islam's self-interpretation that necessitates and glorifies violence, not any foreign interpretation of it.

You point this distinction out yourself when you say that someone’s fear of radical Islam “is rational and it is directed not at Muslims qua Muslims but at Muslims qua militant subversives.”  It now needs to be demonstrated that this building project is indeed both supported by radical Muslims and will attract radical Muslims from abroad, which your post does not seem to do.

Is the building project supported by radical Muslims?  Well, consider the following reasons (especially the third) for opposing the GZM, from Stephen Schwarz, himself a Sunni Muslim since 1997:

• Insensitivity toward non-Muslims. American Muslims -- especially their leaders and the large body of Islamophile academics led by Esposito -- have a great deal of work to do to convince a significant share of non-Muslims that Islam can function alongside other faiths in the panorama of American religious communities. Traditional Islamic guidance calls on Muslims living in societies with a non-Muslim majority to avoid giving offense to their neighbors. The Koran states (29:46), "Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book" -- i.e., Jews and Christians. Could anything appear more offensive and less considerate of American non-Muslims than erecting a large Islamic building close to Ground Zero?
• Disregard for the security of American Muslims. Islam teaches that a Muslim's first interest is to obtain security for his or her family and fellow Muslims. Al-Gamal and Rauf have argued that the intent of the Ground Zero project is to further understanding of Islam and to help heal the collective wound inflicted on 9/11. But rather than a patient, calm effort to advance conciliation, the Ground Zero mosque project appears to be a heedless venture that will inexorably increase suspicion of Muslims. What could do more to undermine the security of American Muslims than an insult, intended or not, to the memory of the dead of 9/11?
• Radical and otherwise suspect associations maintained by Rauf. It has become widely known that Rauf is a leading figure in the so-called Perdana Global Peace Organisation, which is headed by one of the Islamic world's most offensive Jew-haters, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. Perdana was instrumental in organizing the Turkey-based attempt to run the Israeli naval embargo of Hamas-run Gaza at the end of May. The group's roster of "Role Players & Contributors" begins with Mahathir, listing Rauf as second below him. Incredibly, the same list includes Michel Chossudovsky, a Canadian leftist professor known for his ardent defense of Slobodan Milosevic, the late Serbian demagogue. What could be more Islamophobic than to join in a public enterprise with such an individual?

A further question needs to be addressed is what the definition of radical is.  I take radical to mean those who use violence to achieve their objectives.  From what I have researched I cannot find much substantial evidence to suggest that the main supporters of this plan are radical as I define it.  I also find Robert Wright’s discussion[1] reasonable on this question, particularly regarding how support for Hamas fits into that definition.

You also make two claims with regard to the hypothetical Shinto temple near the USS Arizona:  first, that no rational person should believe this hypothetical juxtaposition is permissible, and second, that no rational person could believe that the equivalent juxtaposition of a Muslim center near Ground Zero would bring moderate Muslims and westerners together in mutual understanding.  I question both of these.  I’ll grant the first assertion with the following qualification:  if there was a Japanese structure erected near the USS Arizona that praised the bombing of the USS Arizona, then, as you assert, it should not be allowed.  I however have yet to find any analogous evidence that the Park51 building will do anything remotely resembling praise of the 9/11 bombers and their deeds.  Nor does it seem evident that they will encourage future acts of a similar nature.  Perhaps you have some evidence to think this is the case?

From what I have said above and the quotations I have adduced, it should be obvious what my response will be.

Second, your claim that no rational person could think this building would bring moderate Muslims and non-Muslims to some level of mutual understanding strikes me as false.  If the Muslims that would work and worship, inter alia, in this building attempted to counteract the perception that Islam is inherently violent and totalitarian by presenting a kind of Islam that is tolerant of other faith-traditions and co-exists peacefully with them, then this would certainly move somewhat in the direction of mutual understanding.  Why is this not even possible, on your view?

It may be possible, but it is not likely.  And then there is the business of Taqiyya (religious deception) described in a quotation above.

To me, the most compelling reason to allow this building project is that it does not fit into the propaganda narrative of Osama Bin Laden.  If this building project were allowed, it would be a sign that the western-driven “War on Terror” is not just a covert “War on Islam” that Bin Laden asserts that it is.  By allowing this project, we show that we pursue, rightly, those Muslims who use violence, not Muslims as such.

If that is 'the most compelling reason" then your case is weak indeed.  Of course, they are not going to promote the building using bin Laden style rhetoric!  Look, we have already proven how liberal and tolerant we are by allowing Muslims to immigrate and build mosques in our country.  (Do they allow churches and synagogues and Buddhist shrines in their countries?  Are you aware what the Taliban did to the ancient Buddhist statuary?) It is obvious to any rational person that the war on Islamic terrorists -- to avoid the idiotic PeeCee phrase 'War on Terror' -- is not a war on Islam.  Obviously, the USA is not in Iraq or Afghanistan to convert the infidels to Christianity.

So now you are asking the thousands upon thousands of people who have been directly or indirectly affected by the horrific 9/11 attacks to tolerate a mosque in the vicinity of Ground Zero?  That sends exactly the wrong signal to both the victims and the aggressors.

I recommend you listen to your parents and grandparents.