I like democracy. I like freedom. 9/11 was a terrible, terrible day that I will never forget. Also breathing is good. And I suppose girls are pretty, if you’re into that sort of thing. (I am. Although there have been moments …)
So now that I’ve spoken the appropriate shibboleths and made all due obeisance to the idols of the hour, let me just say that I find the whole debate over the Cordoba House (EDIT: now “Park51″, more’s the pity) puzzling and disappointing. I also find the debate over gay marriage puzzling and disappointing, but I’ll tackle that one later.
Did I miss the part in my US government class about loopholes in the First and Fourteenth Amendments? I suppose I could ask my teacher for a refresher, but since he’s busy representing me in Congress I might have to wait a while.
I get that people are sensitive about Ground Zero, much as they are about Pearl Harbor or the Murrah Federal Building. I am, and I was thousands of miles away when the towers fell. And I’m not ignorant of the fact that the hijackers were called themselves Muslims.
Also they had hands. Hands which they used to subdue the flight crews and steer the planes into the buildings. Most likely they wore shirts, too. Shirts they used to blend in with the rest of us while they plotted mass murder. If I recall correctly some of them enjoyed strip clubs. Spend enough time obsessing over the wicked immodesty of Western women, and you’re going to need to blow off some steam while you work to suppress the bare-faced hussies back to the Stone Age.
So I guess we shouldn’t let anyone build a glove store or a drycleaners’ or a strip club near Ground Zero, either. Because having hands, wearing shirts, and enjoying strippers are all just about as relevant to what Atta et al did as being Muslim.
After Pearl Harbor our government rounded up all the Japanese-Americans and shipped them off to camps in case they were some kind of fifth column. This was a popular move at the time, but we’ve come to consider it one of the more shameful parts of our history. We let our fear and anger and xenophobia lead us down a disturbing path. I can’t really see how the uproar over building a mosque near Ground Zero is any different.
The dangerous part of “radical Islam” isn’t Islam, it’s “radical”. And you can find radicals in every religion and value system and way of life around the world. Islam isn’t the problem – radicalism is the problem. It’s the idea that your way is the One True Way, and it’s up to you to enforce that way on the rest of us by any means necessary. It’s the idea that the whole world is black and white, and that every thought and deed are strokes in an eternal struggle between the two.
This kind of extremism isn’t about Islam or Christianity or Judaism or any other “-ism” besides itself. The vast majority of adherents of any faith or creed are perfectly willing to accept others as long as they’re extended the same acceptance. (Not tolerance, mind you – I mean acceptance. I think calling it “tolerance” stresses the discomfort and unease some feel around the Other, and I’d rather stress the ideal of embracing and acknowledging difference as something to be actively celebrated rather than passively suffered.) It’s not about hating freedom or mistrusting modernity. It’s a deep rejection of plurality.
Zealots don’t trust or understand more than one way of seeing things. I understand their unease around ambiguity and a world where it’s increasingly difficult to orient yourself. To be honest, I feel a little of it myself: I’d still rather build my house on solid rock, not shifting sand.
But wishes aren’t beach sandals, much less hiking boots. The fact that I’d like the world to be a more singular, stable place won’t make it so, and it won’t give me the right to try and write my discomfort in blood and legislation across the white page of the world. There are as many paths as walkers. The more the world grows, the more it branches out; changes iterating fractally in our shared space, a kaleidoscopic explosion of possibilities. We stand at once central and peripheral.
So I try to adjust. I try to see the world through different lenses, remembering that “tinted” isn’t “tainted” and there’s no color-free scientifically-corrected Truth-o-vision. Seeing is believing, and the distance between believing and knowing is measured in humility. I remind myself that Here and Now are all I have, and I share that condition with everyone I meet. Reach exceeds grasp, and that’s where we all have to live.
That, in short, is what this debate is about: there are those who want Their Way enshrined in law and custom like a beetle trapped in amber, and there are those who value the chaotic interplay of ideas and personalities that has produced this wide, wild world we all live in and love. I’m stating that with no small slant because while I value a broad acceptance of all views, I find it hard to visualize a workable acceptance of those who refuse to accept others. If your one-way world leaves no room for me and mine, it becomes all but impossible to negotiate a framework that allows us both the liberties we need. Any idea is acceptable but the idea that no other ideas are acceptable. We reserve the right to refuse service to those who tell us who we can’t serve.
I’ve often thought that those of every faith should refuse to call their zealots “fundamentalists”. Yes, the zealots claim to be getting back to the basics of their faith. But I don’t concede that claim. Fundamentalist Christians, for example, are sometimes misogynistic and judgmental. Is that consistent with the foundations of Christianity? Is that what Christ taught in the Gospels? It’s been a while since I read the Bible, but I don’t recall anything like that coming from Christ’s mouth.
Fundamentalists aren’t some kind of extreme “back to basics” version of the faithful. They’re no closer to the roots of their faith than mistletoe is to the roots of an oak. So why play along with their presumption? I’d love to call myself “most supremely awesome lover Winter”, but even if I got everyone to go along and call me that it wouldn’t make it so.
So let’s let go of the idea that Islam has or had anything to do with terrorism. Let them build a mosque and a community outreach center – and, by the way, a memorial to those killed on 9/11. What better way to show Islam’s rejection of the terrorists’ suicidal insanity? What better way to help heal the wounds and repair the unjustly tattered reputation of a noble faith? What better way to reaffirm the very tolerance and plurality the terrorists tried to tear down with the towers?
And then let’s let go of the idea that there’s only so much room at the table. Anyone who’s willing to break bread beside another hungry soul deserves a seat, a plate, and as much as they need to be full.
