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Yesterday, Sarah Palin tweeted:
Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing
As it turns out, near North Sixth Street and Kentucky Avenue in Waco, Texas, you can find the Greater Mount Carmel Church. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the Mount Carmel Center in Waco became the home of the violent religious fanatic David Koresh’s Branch Dividians. In 1993, after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to execute a warrant to investigate Koresh’s illegal stockpile of weapons, a 50-day siege unfolded that ended with the deaths of four federal agents and 76 of Koresh’s followers. I don’t honestly know if the Greater Mount Carmel Church in Waco is affiliated in any way.
But I do know that if any politician implored the Greater Mount Carmel Church to close its doors because its all-too-reminiscent name represents an “UNNECESSARY provocation” that “stabs hearts,” that politician would be unfairly and ignorantly projecting Koresh’s crimes onto a community of faith that saw its beliefs misrepresented and exploited by conspiracy theorists. It is not the responsibility of that faith community to change its behavior in order to reassure ignorant politicians who seek power and wealth through washing themselves in the blood of a national trauma. It’s the responsibility of politicians not to implicate entire communities of faith with the crimes of violent conspiracists.
Muslims died on 9/11, as 3000 Americans of every and no faith did. Muslim Americans serve their country in uniform, even after years of fear-borne ignorance by those who inadvertently buy into the sweaty worldview of Usama bin Laden. Would Sarah Palin dare to stop Marine Corps Sgt. Jamal Baadani from worshipping near Ground Zero?
Someone is indeed engaged in unnecessary provocation here, but it’s not those who want to build the Ground Zero Mosque. And if there’s something to be rejected in the interest of healing, it’s the guilt by association that Palin is peddling.
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And if there’s something to be rejected in the interest of healing, it’s the guilt by association that Palin is peddling.
How very true. As a middle aged white man, I am so embarrassed that I can be easily put in a category with Mrs. Palin.
If he were out of uniform at the time, I believe she would. And it would not be politically disadvantageous for her to do so; her supporters are also generally the sort to whom (absent incontrovertible proof otherwise) it would never occur that a muslim might be a patriotic American.
It must be difficult, for those so disposed, to keep track of all the grudges, prejudices and hatred that every event on the world stage seems to engender. Every Muslim has the taint of terrorism, every Latino is viewed through the prism of “Illegals”, every gay man or woman carries the mark of the beast, every African American is a drag on the economy at best, and is often suspected of criminal behavior, everyone who disagrees with you politically is a Socialist out to destroy America and no Atheist could possibly have a moral compass.
It just goes on and on, growing, fewer of “us” and more of “them”. What will the Palins of the world do when they realize that they have designated virtually the entire world as loathsome, evil or dangerous? It’s become a sick parody of itself, and you’d almost start to think they would notice – but that would require a self-awareness that can only come from outside the bubble, and that is a place they find too fearful to go…
mikey
A Catholic Carmelite convent was forced to close because of it’s proximity to the Auschwitz death camp. Jews reacted forcefully to crosses and other symbols of Christianity at a place where so many of their people perished, while ignoring the fact that millions of Catholic Poles also were murdered by the same people.
Many Americans believe that the area around the WTC is also hallowed ground.
If Catholic convents are restricted from being near Auschwitz, then mosques being restricted from Ground zero sounds reasonable.
Sounds reasonable, but it’s not. Auschwitz is hallowed ground to Jews, of course. Jews were primarily persecuted there. WTC is hallowed ground not to Christians or any religious group- it’s hallowed ground to all Americans. OUR people in this, the victims, are Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others. So easy to forget.
The anti Muslim angle here and by opponents is purely an emotional argument, seeming to be logical but one based in racism. Why does it make sense to oppose a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero? How about four blocks, or in all of New York… and DC and Pennsylvania? How about preventing any mosque from being constructed on hallowed American ground anywhere?
I don’t think the analogy here flies. 76 (or 80?) Davidians and 4 ATF agents were killed during the Waco Siege — that wasn’t a terrorist attack from some Davidians on American civilians; it was a federal raid. Ground Zero in this analogy is the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that was bombed by Timothy McVeigh in 1995. Today, there is a memorial there. I don’t know if there would be any opposition to building a church there, but then again, it was never on the table. I don’t think Muslims have any obligation to oppose the building of the Ground Zero Mosque, but I do think if you’re going to use an example of religious terrorism to justify its construction, then you can’t pick this one.