Would that there were as much interest in building mosques -- or churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship -- as in building temples to Zeus. But we are a long way from that enlightened condition, and it is not always useful to remonstrate with the faithful about their false beliefs and archaic practices. Sometimes political exigencies trump the moral imperative to abandon childish illusions, and to face reality as it is. This is the case with the so-called Ground Zero mosque. Its proponents need support. They must not back down.
Spurred on by hate mongers and demagogues and facilitated by media that thrive on controversy and that exist mainly to entertain and dumb down, that mosque -- actually, a civic center that includes a mosque, near but not in Ground Zero -- has become the focal point of a fierce national debate. However, in a saner political climate, there would be no debate at all. The issues could not be clearer; the case for going ahead could not be more compelling.
The constitutional issues are beyond dispute: not only do the developers have every right to go ahead; they are entirely in the right. And neither are there vexing policy questions to ponder. On this, doves and hawks, imperialists and anti-imperialists should agree: unless the goal is to perpetuate the idea that the U.S. is waging a war on Islam, it's a no-brainer. The moral issues are even clearer except perhaps to those who believe in collective guilt or in punishing the innocent. This is why Republicans and Blue Dogs and Abe Foxman and exceptionally spineless Democrats like Harry Reid and Howard Dean are more reprehensible than George W. Bush. He, at least, refused to blame Muslims generally for 9/11.
And make no mistake: the very idea that the "sensitivities" of some (far from all!) 9/11 families militate against building a mosque on that site implies collective guilt. This too is a no-brainer.
There is nothing to debate, but the matter is nevertheless consequential. At issue is how the events of 9/11 register in our collective consciousness. Strictly speaking, Ground Zero is a crime scene, a place where people were murdered. But unlike the two other 9/11 crime scenes -- the Pentagon, where there has long been a mosque and no one seems to care, or the field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania where United flight #93 crashed - Ground Zero has also become part of a narrative that operates to sustain the continuing Bush-Obama wars and on-going and future ventures cut from the same cloth.
Ironically, the real world Ground Zero is prime real estate. Therefore, no matter how it is depicted in imperialism's justifying mythologies, capitalism's rapacious engines of commerce are bound to overwhelm that space in short order. But, even as this happens, the idea of Ground Zero can still do harm.
It might be otherwise if there were a significant component of our political mainstream that had the insight and courage to promote a narrative of national contrition for the depredations that led to the mass murders of 9/11. This would not mitigate the perpetrators' criminality. But it would help reduce the likelihood of repetitions of their crimes. But, needless to say, Democrats and Republicans are incapable of putting imperialism in question. Hoping that that will soon change is tantamount to hoping that a genuine left will take root in the Democratic Party. That is almost as pointless as hoping that people will soon become enlightened enough to lose interest in building houses of worship.
Not in better possible worlds but in our actual one, Ground Zero has been invoked from Day One as an excuse for perpetual war, and for the related idea that Muslims are irrational and that their faith breeds hate. [It does, of course, but no more than Christianity or Judaism.] Ground Zero is used to instill the idea that, since "true" Americans must tolerate Muslims, they should at least disparage them and get in the way of their exercising their rights to the extent the law allows.
This being the case, we should endeavor to demythologize 9/11 as best we can; to normalize the memory of the crime scene as inexorably as commerce will encroach upon its physical space. In our world, it is normal that houses of worship are built; and all but the most rabid of our Judeo-Christian Taliban grudgingly include Muslims in this normality (though even this concession to enlightenment is starting to ebb). We who yearn for a better possible world should therefore set ambivalence aside and embrace that normality. In the world as it is, nothing good can come from treating the Ground Zero neighborhood differently from any other.
This is why, the mosque's developers ought to go ahead, even if they conclude that with Fox News and its ilk broadcasting hate filled dispersions and with the Tea Party up in arms while mainstream Democrats cave and Obama equivocates, saying one thing on Friday and something else the next day, it isn't worth the trouble. If we must suffer a house of worship anywhere, it should be a mosque in that location - not because it will enrage all the right people (that's just icing on the cake), but because it will help to normalize Ground Zero. Law, morality and "public diplomacy" demand it; and elementary decency requires no less.