A Mosque Blossoms in Manhattan...or Not

The anti-mosque demonstrators at ground zero didn't do themselves any favors today when they mistook a Black union carpenter wearing a wool watch cap for a Muslim and started verbally abusing him. (The fact that he is also wearing an obnoxiously large chain with a Puerto Rican flag pendant didn't dissuade them either, because, you know, Puerto Rico is totally Islamic and an Al-Qaeda stronghold.) Of course, the ignorance started well before this altercation when the anti-mosque demonstrators blasted Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." at full volume, completely oblivious to the fact that the song is actually a criticism of American military actions in Vietnam.

But if it sounds like I'm all for that mosque, you'd be wrong. I don't think the mosque should be built on that spot, but not for the reasons others have given. Yes, I know the building is a distance from ground zero and you can't even see ground zero from the proposed building area. Yes, I know that the entire building is not a mosque but also a rec center and a whole host of other things. Yes, I know that the logic of protesting a mosque near ground zero is equal to protesting the building of a church near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The hijackers spoke for all Muslims as much as Timothy McVeigh spoke for all Christians.

But I also believe that nothing good can come of building a mosque in the proposed location. A mosque will not change minds; it will not foster understanding; it will not build bridges. What it will do is paint a huge bulls-eye for every arsonist and so-called patriot to focus on. And when someone does finally hit that bulls-eye, it will rip open all those woulds that never fully healed in the first place.

You can't force understanding, but in trying to do so, you can give rise to further resentment and anger, which is what I believe will happen if this mosque is built.

There will be a time for building bridges, and the atheist in me hopes that a few centuries from now we will all look back on religion as a primitive and crude system of beliefs, the same way we look with curiosity and some amusement at at our early ancestors who worshipped natural elements that they did not understand.

But the time for building those bridges is not now, and definitely not in this way.