The current fight over the building of an Islamic study center near Ground Zero here in Manhattan is reminiscent of another battle nearly thirty years ago. Then, too, ignorance, rage and prejudice threatened to destroy the creation of something intended to help mend a grievous wound and foster understanding and reconciliation.
In May 1981, a jury of architects and sculptors announced the results of a nationwide competition to design a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Congress had authorized the setting aside of three acres of National Park Service land near the Lincoln Memorial. More than 1,400 design submissions came in, so many they took up more than 35,000 square feet in a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base outside the capital. Each entry was numbered so that the identities of those submitting remained anonymous.
The winner, by unanimous vote of the jury, was Number 1026 -- a massive, horizontal V made from polished black granite: two walls, each 246 feet, nine inches across, inscribed with the names of more than 58,000 Americans killed during the Vietnam War. In the words of Jan Scruggs, the ex-infantryman who came up with the idea of building a monument, "As you looked at the other designs, they were miniature Lincoln Memorials. There was the helicopter on the pole, there was the army helmet with dog tags inside. They seemed so banal and average and typical compared to this."
But many screamed in protest, including two who had been supporters of the idea of a Vietnam memorial and prominent fundraisers for its construction: billionaire H. Ross Perot and now Democratic senator from Virginia Jim Webb, who wrote to Scruggs, "I never in my wildest dreams imagined such a nihilistic slab of stone."
Some veterans described it as a "black gash of shame" and said it was an insult, both to those who had given their lives and those who had fought and survived. Others were further outraged by the identity of the memorial's designer, a 21-year-old Yale undergraduate, Chinese-American Maya Ying Lin. Irrationally ignoring even the simple truth that the judges had no idea of her identity beforehand, the notion that a young Asian woman should be chosen to design a monument to a conflict in which the other side was Asian was attacked as a slap in the face by the bigoted and ill-informed.
As Washingtonian magazine reported, in words echoing the current Ground Zero battle, "The fight was bitter, fueled by emotions that had as much to do with the war as they did with the memorial itself. There were death threats, racial slurs and broken friendships. Memories of that time still spark pain and anger."
Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior James Watt, the same man who wanted to ban the Beach Boys from Washington's National Mall because he thought they attracted "the wrong element," tried to block the building permit. But eventually a compromise was made. Over Maya Lin's vehement, aesthetic objections, a statue of three servicemen and an American flag were added to the site.
Today, of course, the protests have faded to meaninglessness and Maya Lin's Vietnam wall is recognized for what it is and always was, a simple yet dramatic and eloquent expression of both service and the horrible finality of war. Now a venerated part of Washington's landscape of monuments and tributes, more than three million come to the wall every year, triple the combined number of sightseers who go to the White House and the Washington Monument. Many stop to make a pencil rubbing of one of the names engraved in the granite; some leave flowers and other mementos, or stop to stare into the polished black surface that reflects back the visitor's own face.
"It has become something of a shrine," Jan Scruggs told US News and World Report in 2007. "It has helped people separate the warrior from the war and it has helped a nation to heal." So powerful is its impact, replicas of the wall tour the country, reminding towns and villages that sent so many of their young to southeast Asia of the sacrifices made and the lives cut short by combat, then and now.
Millions will not visit the planned Islamic study center near Ground Zero (although surely they will flock to New York's someday-soon-to-be-completed 9/11 memorial). But with patience, tolerance and common sense, perhaps in the years to come, when the angry shouts have ended, it, too, will become a place where visitors -- Muslims, Jews, Christians and those of all other faiths -- can peacefully reflect not only upon a great national tragedy but on the centuries of good and evil perpetrated throughout this planet's history in the name of God, ideology and country.
Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.
Stuart Whatley: Democratic Values, Islam and the Judeo-Christian Tradition Fallacy
Models for pluralistic societies based on liberal democratic values exist throughout the historical landscape, independent of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It bodes well that they may be freely adopted by all cultures.
Dean Obeidallah: Why Building the Mosque is Good for America!
Where can the Muslim community center be built in NYC? I say you can build it here or there, by a house or a mouse, in Tribeca by Robert DeNiro or further down by Ground Zero. It's that simple.
Zahra Khan: The Potpourri Resolution for a Ground Zero Mosque
Adherents to Islam form a vulnerable racial minority before a prejudiced media that uses religious misnomers like "Islamic terrorist" to develop public support for attacking adherents to Islam, a word that literally means "Peace."
Ramazan Mubarak.
After Pearl Harbor American citizens of Japanese descent were rounded up on the west coast and resettled in camps because many associated the action of Japan with some of it's own citizens. Is this our nature, to turn upon ourselves when faced with adversity?
And today, we fight an enemy who claims the US is persecuting Muslims and we conveniently accommodate their claims by turning our backs on what made this nation great and suggesting that while all men, all Americans, are equal, some are just a bit less equal or deserving of their freedoms than others.
"British Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Burhan Hanif told participants at a conference in western Sydney yesterday that democracy is "haram" (forbidden) for Muslims, whose political engagement should be be based purely on Islamic law.
"We must adhere to Islam and Islam alone," Mr Hanif told about 500 participants attending the convention in Lidcombe.
"We should not be conned or succumb to the disingenuous and flawed narrative that the only way to engage politically is through the secular democratic process. It is prohibited and haram."
He said democracy was incompatible with Islam because the Koran insisted Allah was the sole lawmaker, and Muslim political involvement could not be based on "secular and erroneous concepts such as democracy and freedom".
in simple words he means that Muslims have different views from the rest of the world and it does not fit into democracy. he urged Muslims to do abide by their sharia law, thats totally ok.
People are entitled to their own opinion, you should not be the one judging what they say.
Yea, sadly - "...ignorance, rage and prejudice...." - are still alive & well.
One thing though, perhaps while in the past "the centuries of good and evil" may have been "perpetrated throughout this planet's history in the name of God, ideology and country." - Today, "good and evil" is perpetrated for the love of image, power and influence. And for the wealth, assets & natural resources of other peoples' countries....
Please don't blame ordinary Muslims for the doings of 11 men. did you know that Islam is fastest growing religeon in the world and one of the largest too?
Let them be...
the day that you see bearded men walk in congress demanding Shria, then slam your fist, but not for this!
Of course, what I'll actually get is a plaque on a sculpture and a bunch of people demanding that a religion be removed from lower Manhattan due to the actions of a handful of extremists, but one can dream.
The problem is one of perception. Protesters think of 9/11 as Muslims attacking America. Non-protesters think of 9/11 as small group of extreme cultists attacking America. So sure, if al-Qaeda tried to open a consulate I think we'd be in agreement. Otherwise, I really don't care.
I've read a lot of offended posts about this mosque in "the shadow of the WTC." So, for scale, here's a photo of the actual shadow of the World Trade Center: http://www.asohogallery.net/wtcviewitook.GIF
There are a great many buildings within two blocks of the site of the attacks of the 11th of September, 2001. Should they all be razed?
Get your facts straight before you shoot off your mouth!
Ok. Islamic Community Center in Manhattan -> ??? -> Sharia law in America.
If you've been living on planet Earth, you understand how incredibly difficult it is for our legislature to pass even the smallest of reforms. To believe that somehow we'd experience an enormous demographic shift that puts a majority of Islamic extremists into office who then are able to radically change the structure and basis of our legal system is absurd. We're more likely to... well, do just about anything before that happens. I expect reptilian aliens to take over before Islamic extremists do.