Well, it looks like the Ground Zero Mosque — I’m sorry, the “Muslim Community Center and mosque just coincidentally around the corner from Ground Zero, where debris from one airliner landed, and a considerable distance from any residential community” — has overcome the last major legal obstacle, and will go forward.
I have to say I think this was the right legal decision. The argument of the opponents in this case — that the former Burlington Coat Factory was a historic building and should hold landmark status — was an exceptionally weak one. The real argument was that the mosque was a calculated, deliberate insult and assertion of Islamic supremacy, and that simply doesn’t hold any legal weight.
So it looks like it’s going up. And the whole process has been a tremendous lesson for all concerned.
During the arguments leading up to yesterday’s decision, the builders and backers of the Cordoba Mosque simply refused to address the concerns and arguments of their opponents. No, at each opportunity they insisted on their rights, denounced their critics as bigots, and simply would not address the very real concerns and legitimate questions the whole mess raised.
Such as, say, what “community” would be served by the mosque that is currently not being served by the 100-odd mosques already located in New York City.
Or why the mosque was being named in honor of a former symbol of Islamic conquest over the West.
Or why the scheduled date of the opening is the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Or where the $100 million in funding for building the mosque is coming from.
No, the only thing that matters to the Mosque backers is that they get their way, that they get this building in this place (as others have noted, a building that not only was damaged in the attack, but was literally bathed in the ashes and dust from the attacks that killed almost 3,000 people) on their time frame — and the concerns of anyone else be damned.
They not only refused to discuss the sensitivities of New Yorkers (and, for that matter, all Americans), they refused to even acknowledge that they even existed.
This is an incredibly valuable experience. It is Islam — militant, aggressive, in-your-face Islam — at its purest, putting the lie to the “Islam is a religion of peace” canard. This is a reminder that in the Islamic world, the unbelievers have no say, no value, no rights except what Muslims deem to grant them.
Last night on Fox News, Charles Krauthammer stated that the mosque will not actually be built. He said that New Yorkers will simply refuse to cooperate — construction companies will decline to build, banks choose to not finance, contractors not deliver, and the like.
I think he’s wrong. That might occur, but I think the mosque backers will find a way around it. They will find some builders who they can bully or bribe into doing the work. Some bank — probably one based in the Middle East, but with a New York presence — will handle the financial paperwork. (They’ve already got the cash, but won’t say who gave it to them.) Threats of discrimination lawsuits will get them the supplies they need. Cries of “persecution” and “backlash” will get them police protection from “potentially violent” protesters. And so on. The opening might be delayed past the 9/11/11 scheduled date (A Sunday, of all days), but I’m fairly certain that some kind of ceremony will be held on that day anyway.
No, the main thing the mosque will do is provide those of us who oppose militant Islam with a target. A focus. A centralized point.
This victory by militant Islam will, in the long run, cost them. It will stand as a constant reminder that Islam is not interested in co-existing with the “unbelievers” except on Islam’s terms. That sensitivity and respect and tolerance is a one-way street — we owe it to Islam, but it owes no such things to us.
And now the people of New York have a place to hold their protests the next time another atrocity is committed in the name of Allah. (That it will happen is pretty much a given.) We now have a place to show up with our giant Mohammed cartoons, a place where we can demonstrate our “respect” for the Koran, a place where we can demand that the Muslims of New York City show where their sympathies lie — with those who act in their faith’s name, or civilization.
In other words, where we can act like a lot of Muslims do on a fairly regular basis, in full protection of the law.
Enjoy this victory, enemies of civilization. It will turn to ashes in your mouth.
Ashes like those that once covered that site. Ashes created by those claiming to act in the name of Allah. Ashes from the remains of two great buildings and almost 3,000 innocent people.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.
