"In a paradoxical sense," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said, "maybe in a poignant sense, this is an opportunity." He was speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York yesterday morning. He came back to the point several times. Having arrived in the United States as a boy, in 1965 -- in his opening remarks he recalled sailing into New York harbor on a wintry morning and admiring the Statue of Liberty -- Imam Rauf has been exploring the relationship between America and Islam for a long time. He said the point of his visit to the Council was to reach out to Americans about Islam and to reach out to Muslims around the world to "explain and share my love of America."
He had not expected the "Ground Zero mosque" proposal to bring on what he called "a time of great crisis and danger." When asked what, had he known, he might have thought to do differently, he said, "Maybe not even do it at all." But here he was, trying to turn crisis into opportunity, specifically an opportunity to broadcast the message of Islamic moderation, for which he has long been a spokesman. (He has led prayers at a TriBeCa mosque, 12 blocks north of Ground Zero, since 1983. A regular at international conferences on interfaith dialogue, he has made four outreach trips for the US State Department, two under the younger Bush, two under Obama.) He noted the irony of this apparently disastrous collision of religion and politics being, perhaps, an opportunity: "Now we've gotten attention for the voices of moderation, I'm accused of being an immoderate!" That got the biggest laugh of the morning. The Council on Foreign Relations is full of people who appreciate the humor in unintended consequences.
I was also reminded of the way President Bush, in the months after 9/11, spoke of the attacks as having created an "opportunity" for American renewal. The imam is a compact and pleasantly calm man, the more so in contrast to his interlocutor, Richard Haass, CFR president and former director of policy planning at the State Department, who is characteristically wound-up. Haass' frustrated farewell to the Bush administration was a book called, yes, The Opportunity, describing what America could yet do in the world, if only it would. That was in 2005, another opportunity missed. Chastened optimism is a frequently struck note at the Council.
Haass wanted Imam Rauf to take this moment to propose some compromise on the mosque, but the imam would only say that "everything is on the table" and "we are exploring all options." He clearly wanted to keep his opportunity alive. But how?
He did talk about his Cordoba Initiative, named as it was for the Spanish city where, prior to the Christian Reconquest, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together, "the most tolerant and enlightened" city in the world, as he said. He told us his goal was "to build a new Cordoba."
When Ayman al-Zahawiri said, in October 2001, that al Qaeda was determined not to repeat "the Andalusia tragedy," it was, for me, one of the more disheartening moments in a period that had been full of them. He was referring to the expulsion of Muslim armies from their European lands in Spain -- al-Andalus in Arabic -- in centuries between 1200 and 1614. Islam as an expansionist religious community had been on the defensive ever since, more or less; al Qaeda's idea was to regain the initiative, 400 years later, and restore the caliphate of which Andalusia had been a shining part. This must have struck a chord with some Muslims, perhaps many. Without being overly determinist about these things, one can still say that great defeats can inspire resentments and dreams of restoration for a very long time.
The naming of the Cordoba Initiative was either brilliant or disastrous. It is part of the battle over Andalusia. The Cordoba Initiative aims to invoke the "good Andalusia": the Andalusia of convivencia, of a Golden Age. Productive and innovative Andalusia. Anti-fundamentalist Andalusia. Al Qaeda of course had a different Andalusia in mind: a place dominated by Muslims for Muslims in the name of Islam. A very different, even opposite, sort of Cordoba Initiative.
Today the famous, many-pillared mosque of Cordoba, Spain, is an airy and beautiful mosque with a Catholic cathedral in the middle of it and chapels shuttered away in the alcoves on its periphery. It is a place for worshipping God, of course, but it is also a sort of parenthesis of stone, gilt and statuary, an architectural truce. The mosque/cathedral the mezquita feels much more like the end of a useless argument. It evokes not victory but unwinnableness. After all those centuries of religious conflict this was what you got: a stalemate, circa 1200. This was where everything ended.
Or so it seemed to me when I visited there in 1989, as the Cold War swords were being beaten into ploughshares. It was definitely a place for meditation but not peaceful meditation.
And now? Which Andalusia is next?
To my mind the most interesting thing Imam Rauf had to say this morning concerned his experience of America in terms of faith. When he was growing up in 1960s America, he said -- he's from New Jersey -- religion "was considered passé, a crutch for the feeble-minded." This made him think about religion as something to be actively pondered and chosen (or rejected). He sees this understanding of religious faith to be particularly American; he went from thinking the United States was particularly irreligious to thinking it was the most religious place he'd been precisely on this ground of individual, affirmative choice. He said that, in a way, he felt that America had given him his true understanding of Islam.
This was too specific and complicated a thought not to be somewhat true. It is also pretty much the thought of 16th-century Protestantism (and a few other religious reformations down the years).
David Shasha: Collateral Damage: Jewish Fratricide and the Demonizing of Córdoba
Rabbi Naomi Levy: Noa and Amara: A Real Interfaith Dialogue
Andalusia was a shining light for the world, producing great scholars like the philosopher and scientist Ibn Rushd, also known as Averroes, who some credit with being the founding father of secular thought in western Europe, and the great Islamic mystic Ibn al-Arabi. Ibn Haldun laid out the foundation for modern management, psychology and sociology. Abu al-Qasim, known in the West as Abulcasis, is regarded as the father of modern surgery. Had Nobel Prizes existed during that era, many Muslims would have won them.
From Dozy's 1861 4-volume "History of the Musselmans in Spain"
All the churches in that city [Cordova] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent, but the possession of this fane [church or temple] had been guaranteed by treaty. For several years the treaty was observed; but when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque. The [Muslim] Government having approved of the scheme, the Christians were compelled to hand over half of the edifice. This was clearly an act of spoliation, as well as an infraction of the treaty. Some years later, Abd-er Rahman I [i.e., the “Muslim prince” in Ghosh’s redacted narrative] requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral…
The fact this is not allowed is the best reason why we should not allow a mosque into the Ground Zero Complex. It is not good boundaries, and when we think we are setting an example by doing this, we are actually looking naive and weak because we are so far away from how they view interfaity coexistence.
Let's be good friends and start the dialog with mutual steps, and on our side, start with a step that is commensurate with their first step.
America has 100s of 1000s of troops and operatives throughout the Muslim world, engaging in all kinds of activities, including assasinations, plots, and spying. This particular reality is conveniently ignored so Americans can pretend to be morally superior.
America is a global empire, and its empire is evil. Its been declared that America doesnt have friends or enemies, only interests. America has no right to have its troops engaging in imperial operations throughout Muslim countries or propping up potentates that repress Muslim people but serve America and American interests.
The unwashed American masses have been feeding on the teets of the Muslim world for generations. the American Dream is fed by the Muslim world, by cheap oil. And the servant king of America, the Saudi monarchy, is now going to spend $60 billion in oil money to buy American weaponry which it won't use- the price of the entire Persian Gulf War is now being handed over to America again.
From oil, to carpets, to cars, to infrastructure, even to furniture and clothes in America are made from oil which belonged to the Muslim people but was sold by dictators who serve America. This is the reality of the American relationship with the Muslim world.
BTW, the Muslim world has always known this. The Council for Foreign Relations know this. Its the American masses, steeped in bigotry, greed, selfishness, who cry for churches in Arabia.
What does "Muslim" have to do with anything? The oil is under ground above which "some" Muslims happened to have pitched their tents. Were it not for Westerners, the Arabs would never have known it was there and would have continued to be preoccupied with slaughtering each other in their incessant Islamic religious feuds. Westerners explored and developed those oil fields, paid the Arabs for what they extracted, and thereby provided them an unparalleled opportunity for economic development that not many societies get.
And what did the Arabs do with the huge windfall they received simply by virtue of an accident of geography but otherwise did absolutely nothing to earn? Did they use it to develop their countries, to build infrastructure, to diversify their economies, to build modern societies? Or did they fritter it away on useless baubles adorning their existing tribal structures, on supporting the nonproductive extravagances of Arab rulers and their multitudinous families, on financing the spread of Islam? No, like you, many of them loudly complain along the vein of "What have you done for me lately?" or worse.
In Israel, most land isn't owned, but leased for a period of 49 or 98 years from the Israel Land Administration (which owns 93% of land), with the option of renewing that lease. However, only Jews are allowed to lease land (the legal definition in this case is the same ancestry-based definition used in the "Right of the Return". Therefor, Christians cannot lease land in Israel.
Using your ridiculous logic, we should deny American Jews, many of whom are from families that are several generations deep in America, the right to own/lease property until Israel changes it's policy. You could also say the same thing about Japanese property rights, or many other countries as well.
This is absurd precisely because we're talking about AMERICAN CITIZENS, and what you're advocating is a violation of the constitution: that we shouldn't recognize constitutional rights for Americans because of the actions of someone who shares their religion in another country.
"Let's be good friends and start the dialog with mutual steps, and on our side, start with a step that is commensurate with their first step."
This statement seems completely disingenuous, given what you just said.
Yes-Create a platform where the voices of moderate Muslims will be amplified!!!
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Pls consider to build this platform in Saud Arabia or Egypt.
Do it the Arab language.
This is the effective way to amplify the moderate Muslims ideas to the 1.3billion Muslims
It will not be effective in English in an infidel country.
Pls define as well the values that will be promoted.
Will you deal with the main issues difference separating all world 21 century cultures and Muslims?
Leading to the worldwide arm conflicts between Muslims and all the other cultures?
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!!! 21 century cultures narrative is based on:
All culture can coexist peacefully.
No one demands world supremacy.
Human rights and opportunity for all.
!!!! Muslim narrative:
Islam worldwide supremacy by sward.
No human rights, freedom of speech/
No equality to non Islam religions.
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From:-- India to Russia--Philippines to England--Thailand to New York--Uganda to Nepal--Argentina to China--France to Kenya-all 58 Muslim countries
Islamist worldwide kill attacks summary
15.981 Islamist attacks since 9/11
811-Aug
1060-Jul
556-Jun
742-May
Have you seen any Muslim demonstrating against this ideology?
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Thank you for reading.
Could you reply to the above simple questions?