The Lower Manhattan Community Board in August approved a building under the name of the Cordoba House — a name that holds little significance for most Americans next to the nickname it has since been given by conservative pundits and bloggers nationwide: The "Ground Zero Mosque."
For many Americans closely affected by the tragedy of 9/11, the approved building has become the center of a heated argument as to whether building an Islamic center so close to ground zero is a disgrace to the memory of those who lost their lives there.
Yet Rosemary Hicks, a post−doctorate fellow at the Center for Humanities at Tufts (CHAT), questioned the validity of legally distinguishing ground zero from any other patch of city ground, raising the point that there were mosques in that area before the World Trade Center was built.
"These suggestions about what's ‘hallowed ground' and what's not are increasingly portraying all of New York as ‘hallowed ground' that writes out Islam completely," she said, citing a plot on Staten Island that a Catholic organization had sold to and later taken back from a group proposing to build a mosque there.
Some even go so far as to say that the national fixation on the building of this community center reveals a deep xenophobia present in the United States. Others feel that the proposed construction of the center is a major national concern, some even spending the ninth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center in near−violent protest around Lower Manhattan. Still others responded to the building with mere, and sometimes bigoted, frustration.
In response to the many remarks in opposition to the Muslim center, Assistant Professor of Religion Ken Garden questioned the validity of applying such general and racist language to Islam and, moreover, any group.
"Is it accurate to talk about religion in that way at all?" he said. "Is it accurate to make generalizations about a million people, to talk about Islam as a blueprint to produce cookie−cutter Muslims? I try to bring this out when I teach. [In] any tradition … you can see that it's hard to find a single thing that would hold true across time or across the world."
The easiest way to understand why generalizations do not hold true, Garden said, is to try and apply them to an ideology you know well.
"If you look at Christianity, you have Catholicism, which is a rigid hierarchy with popes and cardinals and monsignors, and you have Quakers sitting in a circle where people talk when the spirit moves them, and you have snake handlers who prove that they're true Christians by drinking strychnine [a poison]," he said. "When people read the Quran, they focus on certain passages to tell us this or that about Islam. You cannot go independently to a faith scripture and say what all worshippers or believers are like. That seems to me where the mistake is often made."
Tufts Democrats President Seth Rau, a junior, agreed with Garden and called the widespread criticism of the community center "the closest America's gotten to McCarthyism in 40 years."
He quoted a recent statistic from the Pew Research Forum stating that 18 percent of Americans believe that President Barack Obama is a Muslim.
"There's a lot of irrationality behind it," he said. "We're in tough economic times and we have a president with a foreign−sounding name. When people are scared, they look for an outlet to express their fear — [they] look for a scapegoat. The real issue at play here is that the economy stinks and people are taking out their economic frustrations [on the center] in greatly disproportionate ways."
Senior Michael Hawley, a former president of the Tufts Republicans, acknowledged that the center's builders have the constitutional right to build it at the proposed location. Hawley noted, however, that the question of whether it was fitting was another issue altogether.
"I think, and I think few people would deny, that the builders of the mosque have an absolute right to build it … The question … is whether it is appropriate for them to build the mosque, especially in light of the reasons the imam building the mosque had given for building it," he said. "He said … the goal of the project is to foster understanding and build bridges between the Islamic community and the United States. I feel that it's pretty clear at this point that the mosque is not serving that purpose. … Considering its proximity to what was in fact a horrific terrorist attack by Muslim extremists, it seems in some ways inappropriate to build this building there."
Hawley further pointed out that the center's opponents have the right to air their views publicly and participate in the discourse.
"While the people building it have, as I said before, every right to build it there, Americans have every right to reject it … but will have crossed the line when they prevent it from being built."
Much of the fury associated with the Muslim center has been unleashed not only on Muslims but also on Arabs and citizens of Arab heritage, a majority of whom are not Muslim. Senior Danna Solomon echoed Hawley and said that the bigoted and extreme opposition against the proposed Muslim center obscures the rational arguments many Americans make, not about the illegality of the center but about its inappropriateness.
"Is it okay for the government to repress religious expression and regulate where a place of worship can be built? No, not at all. But there is something to be said for sensitivity," Solomon said. "The fact is that the location in which this mosque is being built is extremely close to a place where lots of people were killed in the name of Islamic terrorism. It's pretty ridiculous to try and pretend that its establishment won't be perceived as a provocation. Our liberal community here at Tufts might be able to see this mosque as a step toward religious coexistence, but America as a whole just isn't that tolerant yet."
Hicks pointed out that one reason issues surrounding the Muslim center have been getting so much media attention lately may very well have to do more with the upcoming midterm congressional elections than anything else.
"The mosque has been functioning there since October 2009, which most people don't know," she said. "They announced the plans to build the center itself in December, and it didn't make national news until May, when Mark Williams, the Tea Party chairman, conflated it with the Republican Party trying to make a referendum on Obama in November."
Those who agree with Hicks are frustrated with politicians' exploitation of the situation to serve their campaigns. Sophomore Jack Fleming, a born−and−bred New Yorker, believes that the election should be a moot point when it comes to issues of such importance.
"I wish any politician had the balls to come out and speak for what was clearly just not only constitutionally but also morally just without thinking about whether it was an election year or term or cycle," he said.
He also emphasized, however, that while the attitudes about Islam that have arisen out of this conflict are important to talk about nationally, the community center itself is a local issue that should not necessarily concern those who do not live in New York.
"This is not a national issue," he said. "The rest of America needs to back out because it's just not their jurisdiction. Tell me how a community center in Lower Manhattan is going to affect people in Dallas, or even Boston, for that matter." Ellen Kan contributed reporting to this article
