Guest columnist: Dangerous mosque rhetoric

The proposed plans for a mosque near Ground Zero have lost much of their sound bite sensationalism. The danger to civil liberties, however, lingers.

Because the Constitution protects citizens from government intervention in the free exercise of religion, those who set themselves to opposing the mosque project have adopted an anti-minority rhetoric to rally a nation-wide following.

This rhetoric ironically has become perhaps the strongest argument in favor of completing the mosque. The keys we need to disassemble the opponents’ arguments are always already present in their own words.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for example, told the New York Times through a spokesperson that he “respects” the protections of the First Amendment, “but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.”

Of course, if one sincerely believes people have a guaranteed right to build the mosque near the Ground Zero site, then comments from prominent congressmen are at best irrelevant and very likely dangerous to religious liberty.

The integrity of a group of citizens should not be diminished because they exercise their guaranteed rights.

Underneath the senator’s comments, however, lies a more subtle and pernicious assertion.

When a senator suggests that prudent Muslims should establish a house of worship in a different location, he provides ammunition to those who care little for the Constitution’s guarantees and prefer to use popular public pressure to restrict a minority they dislike.

An example of the damaging discourse this equivocating stance on the First Amendment makes possible are the comments of a Republican congressional candidate in West Virginia.

“Ground Zero is hallowed ground to Americans,” Elliott Maynard said in the New York Times, apparently believing this to be evidence of incompatibility between an Islamic house of worship and a place endowed with significance to Americans.

These words exemplify and lay bare the falsity of all the arguments designed to force the mosque to move to a different location.

First, the proponents of the view seem to assume there is a clear division between practicing Muslims and good American citizens.

Second, they falsely differentiate what is “hallowed” from Islam.

Third, the protestors seem to believe the mere presence of a religious minority threatens a memorialized place.

These unvoiced assumptions may be masked by clever verbiage, but when unraveled from the speaker’s quotes they show their harmful and sensational natures.

For anyone who believes this rhetoric to be harmless, it seems instructive once again to return to the speakers’ own words. They vividly expose the horrifying reality of would-be religiously restrictive American government.

“Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?” Maynard quipped to the New York Times. Anyone who suggests Saudi Arabia as a benchmark for free exercise of religion in the United States should be unable to win election to public office.

Harmful scorn for a religious minority lies palpably beneath the surface of all such suggestions, and we need look no farther than the words to bolster our support for Constitutional religious tolerance.


E-mail: wallacen@indiana.edu