New York Mosque Opposition Damages America: Roger Lowenstein
A New York Times poll reports that two thirds of New Yorkers want an Islamic study center and mosque, planned for a site two blocks from Ground Zero, to be moved. Since the same poll suggests that many New Yorkers support the center if built elsewhere, the results will be seen by many as a healthy sign of balance and compromise.
Actually, forcing the Islamic center to move would be just as un-American as banning it outright.
One reason is familiar: our religious freedom brooks no compromise. No religions have only a half-right to assemble, or the right to worship only in some places. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said, courageously and repeatedly, if an area is zoned for some churches, it is zoned for all. (The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.)
A more worrisome concern, which has been overlooked, is the harm that comes not from discriminating against some groups (in this case, Muslims) but from granting preferred, or favored, status to those who claim the mantle of victims.
Those who demand that the center abandon its proposed locale have said that a Muslim institution close to the site of the Sept. 11 tragedy would be disrespectful to those who died there. Also, they have said that it would be insensitive, even provocative, toward the victims and their families.
Constitutional Safeguards
First, it should be said, however painful it is to hear, that the Constitution doesn’t tolerate suppression of our freedoms even when the expression of those freedoms might seem insensitive. There is a good reason why the founders -- recall the famous phrase, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” -- defined our freedom as absolute.
If freedom ran only to the boundary of insensitivity, local zoning committees and legislatures, and ultimately judges, would have to decide exactly which behavior or traditions were insensitive -- a gray zone unlikely to produce consistent, fair or objective decisions.
Moreover, such bodies would have to answer the trickier question of “insensitive to whom”? To one victim’s family? To a majority? To those who purport to speak on the victims’ behalf?
Even in cases (unlike that of the study center, which its backers says will promote ethnic understanding) of undeniable insensitivity, there is no constitutional basis for prohibition -- nor should there be. Since freedom of worship, like that of expression, is an unalienable right, it can’t be curtailed short of actions that foment an immediate physical danger (shouting “fire” in a theater).
Political Correctness
In recent years, unfortunately, there have been numerous attempts to curtail freedom on the basis of insensitivity. Many of these ill-conceived attempts have been supported by those on the political left. Examples include campus ordinances that restrict speech deemed offensive to women or to minorities or ethnic groups.
The political correctness movement has clearly had a chilling effect on what is deemed permissible to say -- or even think -- in public and in schools and workplaces. Not that the left has a monopoly on intolerance, witness the campaigns in Texas and elsewhere to sanitize American history books, and even to suppress entire texts and works of literature.
The anti-Islamic center crusade is aimed mostly from the right -- but no matter. Each of these campaigns seeks restraints to avoid giving offense to a particular group or cause. But constitutional protections rightly exist for those who “give offense.” Offense is the grain of sand in society’s oyster --it is the irritant that leads to new ideas, or to challenges to old ideas.
Claiming Special Status
Societies that prohibit offense are static and stagnant; witness the fundamentalist Islamic societies in the Middle East today.
In the U.S., people fulminating against the mosque claim a special, sanctified status for Sept. 11 victims. And the people who died on that awful day were victims of a horrible, unspeakable war crime.
Society has no interest, though, in elevating one group of people or survivors above any others. To their own families and descendants, every life -- a serviceman who died in Iraq, a lynching victim in the Jim Crow south, or that of an ordinary citizen who died in bed -- is sacred. The state shouldn’t play favorites.
Ancient Conflicts
Ground Zero should certainly be commemorated, and it will be. But societies that enshrine particular classes of victims, or a generalized sense of victimhood, too often succeed in sparking ancient grievances and perpetuating conflicts. The Balkans waged a brutal war in the 1990s essentially over unresolved and decades-old injuries. And the U.S., since Sept. 11, has narrowed our historic welcome toward immigrants, which is part of America’s birthright.
The most poignant example is Germany between the wars, which nourished an undeserved sense of having been the victim in World War I. Its sense of having been wronged was exploited by the Nazis and contributed to the horrors of the Third Reich.
Even in societies that were truly victimized, obsessive focus on the losses can foster an unhealthy, hostile spirit. The Soviet Union, which lost 20 million people in World War II, converted its war experience into a sustained paranoia toward the western democracies, which became the basis for its suppression of half of Europe.
We all know people whose characters are distorted by their perception (accurate or otherwise) of victimization. Nations have characters, too, and grievance is a poor basis on which to tailor laws or ordinances. It is even less healthy as a basis of ongoing national or ethnic identity.
Sept. 11 was a terrible day. We should never forget it, nor should we let it alter our character or change what we stand for. Specifically, it should not be the basis for restricting constitutional rights that have endured more than 200 years.
(Roger Lowenstein, author of “The End of Wall Street,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Roger Lowenstein at elrogl@hotmail.com
To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page