Sometimes public policy disputes become transformed into symbolic conflicts that go to the heart of national identity. The "mosque controversy" was initially a mere zoning question. It is now a symbolic conflict over the place of Muslims in our national life.
As a scholar whose first book was on the Holocaust, I hear echoes of the Dreyfus Affair.
Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was the only Jewish member of the French General Staff in the late 1800s, a time when France was deeply infected with anti-Semitism, and its elites resented the admission of Jews into the higher reaches of French society, including the military.
Dreyfus was appointed to the General Staff in 1893. His appointment, and the advance of other Jewish army officers, evoked strong protests from anti-Semitic French newspapers which sought to whip up fears that Jews were not loyal Frenchmen, and were in fact potential traitors.
In 1894, it was discovered that a French officer was passing secrets to the hated Germans. Dreyfus was accused on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence, and when it appeared that he might be acquitted, leading officers -- including the minister of war -- forged documents to implicate Dreyfus and slipped them to the judges without the knowledge of the defense attorney. Dreyfus had been framed. He was convicted, sentenced to life in prison, publicly stripped of his rank and degraded before crowds shouting "Death to the Jews," and shipped off to Devil's Island.
Convincing evidence surfaced within the military pointing to the innocence of Dreyfus and the guilt of a different, non-Jewish officer. But by now the army had too much at stake to allow this evidence to become public. Eventually, however, the evidence (as well as newly forged anti-Dreyfus materials) leaked, and all of France fell into an uproar over the matter. It became clear that not just the guilt or innocence of Dreyfus was now at stake, but the honor of the military, the role of emancipated Jews in France, and the capacity of France to reach a just verdict.
Demagogic media leaders stoked the fears and prejudices of the French Christian (primarily Catholic) majority throughout the conflict. Images of the Jew as Judas were routinely employed to cast aspersions on the trustworthiness of Dreyfus or any Jew. When one of the anti-Dreyfus forgers killed himself in prison, the anti-Semitic press honored him as a Christ-figure, casting Dreyfus and "the Jews" as betrayers. The French newspaper La Libre Parole and other voices began calling for a massacre of the Jews.
It took until 1906 for the Dreyfus case to be resolved. Only then was his conviction reversed and Dreyfus restored to his rightful position in the military. Holocaust scholars take this case seriously because it anticipated the way Germany and its collaborators and allies turned on the Jews in their midst from 1939-1945. People who had seemingly been integrated into modern European countries were all too easily plucked out of those societies, rejected and dehumanized, and finally sent to their deaths.
The limits of my comparison between the Dreyfus case and the mosque controversy are obvious. But the similarities must also be taken seriously. Those similarities include the identification of an entire religious minority as a threat to the nation, the harmlessness of both Captain Alfred Dreyfus and Imam Abdul Rauf, the role of major media voices in whipping up frenzied national fears, and the questionable capacity of the nation to honor its own legal and moral principles. The other parallel is almost too painful to name: the role of the Christian majority and some of its most vocal and visible leaders in turning the religious "Other" into an object of infamy. In France a hundred years ago, these were Catholic demagogues leading the charge. Today they are mainly Protestant evangelicals.
A close look at the Dreyfus case reveals that its outcome hinged largely on honorable leaders finally resisting demagoguery and standing on higher principle. We have seen such leadership from Mayor Bloomberg of New York and a handful of other leaders.
One of those leaders has been President Barack Obama. He made one forceful stand for the constitutional principle of religious liberty in this case. But he has been very careful. I think I know why. He himself is at risk of being "Dreyfused." In fact, as last week's much-discussed polling pointed out, he is already being Dreyfused on the "Muslim issue." He has been called "Imam Obama" by Rush Limbaugh. One-fifth of the nation thinks he is a Muslim, and in this moment in American public life, that is a dangerously high number. A concerted effort is being made by extremists to "other" him right out of American public life. It is a truly shameful display.
So the president cannot carry the ball on the mosque controversy. It is up to the rest of us to resolve our own budding Dreyfus case before it goes any further.
Follow Dr. David P. Gushee on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dpgushee
Ground Zero Mosque Opponents, Supporters Turn Out to Demonstrate ...
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Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.
Muslims caused 9/11. Of this there is no doubt.
Now Muslims want to build a Muslim monument ... right where they caused over 2700 innocent civilians to die??
Where is the PROPRIETY, the DECENCY, the HONOR in doing that??
There is NONE, and *that* is the reason so many Americans don't want to see a Muslim monument marking the place of a Muslim atrocity.
Period.
Muslims, kindly stop clouding the issues and instead show the decency you claim to have. Thank you.
Any religious group, including Muslims, are legally guaranteed the right to build this mosque under the Constitution of the United States' free exercise and establishment clauses of the 1st Amendment and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment
Now. Whether this mosque SHOULD be build is an entirely different issue. I personally have no problem with it being built, but community standards are an issue which the leaders of this community should consider. If nothing else, I would be concerned for the safety of the members.
This isn't Russia, this isn't Saudi Arabia, this isn't almost every other Muslim country in the world. This is the United States of America. And unlike the aforementioned nations who have restricted or non-existent civil liberties, we treasure ours. If we arbitrarily pick and choose which religions can and cannot build a place of worship, we not only violate the rule of law upon which our country is so sacredly built, we lose our unique place in history as the world's moral paragon.
All the brave Americans who have lost their lives fighting for these civil liberties are disgraced by your a-legal and illogical rhetoric
P.S. Although this issue is important, comparing this to the Dreyfus Affair is like comparing the intelligence of Joe the Plumber to that of Enrico Fermi. The implications surrounding the Dreyfus Affair were exponentially more serious than this. This title is outlandish and ludicrous.
In 1915 muslims in Turkey killed one million Armenian Christians because they refused convert. No one was lying to them or stealing their oil and reserves. Spreading the cult through use of vilence is permitted in the holy Book. That is the truth.
19 of the terrorist were from Saudi Arabia and yet many of our leaders are hand in hand with the Saudi kings. Do we go burning their property because they associate with so-called "terrorist sympathizers"?
GW Bush practically made out with the king the last trip he took. Should we burn every written memory of GW?
News Corp (FOX) are taking millions from Saudis who are major contributors on their board. Should we go out and burn everything FOX?
Because the Bible says to stone your wife when she cheats on you, does that mean all Christians are evil murderers? Do we have to start burning the Bible too? Yet, mostly all Christians believe and read the Bible and respect the laws of Moses.
Let's stop hating and being bigots based on religion and learn to respect all people & religions & separate religion from our government before we all turn into a nation of brutal, ignorant crazies.
In the US Islam is respected like every other religion and that is what we should worry about right now. Maybe if we weren't interested in lying about and to them and stealing all their oil, resources, & minerals we would not have to worry about so many of them and what they do.
If we do pray, we should pray that we are forgiven for the millions of innocent lives that have been lost, including our troops, in the name of our "Christian Nation".
In this case, SHOWING respect would be to build their monument *elsewhere*.
Jews don't have a Sura of the Sword.
Not.
The.
Same.
Not even close.
The Q'aran's BEST interpretation - the one real mainstream Islam uses - is war to the death with unbelievers.
The Torah's best interpretation is not war to the death with unbelievers.
It's simply NOT the same. Go read the Q'aran with commentaries and interpretation. There is a REASON that people are a bit worried.
It was passed in 2000, at which time there was a Republican majority in Congress. In passing this law, Congress found that the right to assemble for worship is at the very core of the free exercise of religion. It passed in both houses unanimously.
RLUIPA prohibits zoning and landmarking laws that: (1) treat churches or other religious assemblies or institutions on less than equal terms with nonreligious institutions; (2) discriminate against any assemblies or institutions on the basis of religion or religious denomination; (3) totally exclude religious assemblies from a jurisdiction; or (4) unreasonably limit religious assemblies, institutions, or structures within a jurisdiction.
So, it seems that 10 years ago Conservatives were all about religious freedom to build places of worship. This law had the support of a coalition of religious groups such as the Christian Legal Society and the Family Research Council. Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., said it was aimed at "the well-documented and abusive treatment suffered by religious individuals and organizations in the land use context." Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, pushed it because, he said, "At the core of religious freedom is the ability for assemblies to gather and worship together."
2) "The Q'aran's BEST interpretation - the one real mainstream Islam uses - is war to the death with unbelievers."
100% False. Keep you ignorance and hate to yourself.
Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria were all Christian countries and now they are muslim majority with the disappearance and liquidation of the Christian minority population and it is because they did not do it.
The British Prime Minister has answered yoou question 120 years back. Read:
"William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) was Prime Minister of Great Britain four times: 1868–74, 1880–85, 1886 and 1892–94. He called the Qur'an an "accursed book" and once held it up during a session of Parliament, declaring: "So long as there is this book there will be no peace in the world."
There should be no Christian or Catholic churches built in eye shot of the memorial.
Think about this you're just opening up a can of worms, if you deny this cultural center then we or I have the right to deny any churches Catholic or Christian to open schools or be built around public schools, nursery schools or playgrounds
But what's your point?
Kind of sad that we are not civilized enough to put all that stuff behind us, to live up to those ideals that this country was actually founded upon. I know every adult in this country studied the holocaust when they were in school. But I think we've done a very poor job of helping our children understand why it still matters. We treat the civil rights movement as something that's over and done with, the holocaust as something that those villainous Nazis did back then. I don't think we ask our children or ourselves to look in the mirror enough, and I appreciate that Gushee is trying to get us to see those connections, painful though they may be. The Founders new fully well that Americans would be as capable of evil as any other society, and they knew first hand that Christians could be bigots, too. Yes, the Founders wanted to guard against the individual tyrant, but they were just as concerned with the tyranny of the majority. That's the half of the formula that the Tea Partiers and Christian Zealots would like to ignore.
And I agree with Gushee that it's up to all of us to ensure that we don't.
How does a pastor justify burning another religion's book of faith? Not to mention that this action will endanger the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. A reporter from Pakistan said he would not report the book burning in his country, as no American would be safe.
It is a shame that all Americans will be judged by the actions of this one man; however, do most Americans not do the same - equate an entire faith with the actions of a few extremists?
The uproar over the building of a mosque near ground zero would indicate that is the case.
Unfortunately, we must tolerate such stupid people who cannot see beyond their corrupt pulpits.