An interfaith group gathered in Washington this morning in an event organized by the Muslim American Society and expressed concern that Democrats were joining many of their colleagues in the Republican Party in calling for the Cordoba House project to be moved from its planned location near Ground Zero in New York City.
The group said it was worried that political concerns were overriding moral ones in the national debate about the project, and they said it looked to them like President Obama and many other Democrats were getting swept up in the stream.
“It’s interesting how this evolved,” Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society’s Freedom Foundation, told reporters. Bray said opposition to the Cordoba House project began on “known Islamophobic websites” before spilling into the tea party and then into mainstream conservatism. From there, he said, it quickly became “a political football.”
“I think it speaks to the worst of politics to use that issue to maybe advance” a political agenda, Bray said. He lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who he said was trying to “out-oppose the mosque” with his opponent in the Nevada Senate race, Republican Sharron Angle.
Bray said he was “disappointed” by the direction the political debate has taken and said he was concerned by Obama’s recent “couching” of his statement about the rights of Muslims to build religious sites where they wanted. Bray told me he still considers Obama “an ally of the [moral] right” when it comes to Cordoba House.
“I don’t think the president is an ally of the project. I think, more importantly, he’s an ally of religious freedom as enshrined in the Constitution,” Bray said. “That’s sufficient.”
Bray said Cordoba — and the religious leaders who support it — still have plenty of political allies. He cited New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, members of the city council in New York and Rep. Gerry Nadler (D-NY), whose district includes Ground Zero.
Cory Sailor of CAIR said that, so far, the strongest political allies for Muslim proponents of the Cordoba House project in Manhattan have been “our friends in the interfaith community.” The press conference today included strong words of support for Cordoba from Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, Interfaith Alliance President Dr. C. Welton Gaddy and Ron Cruz of Pax Christi, a Catholic peace organization.
I asked Cruz why the Catholics he represents were able to embrace the idea of Cordoba House, when so many non-Muslim politicians seem unwilling to make the same gesture.
“I think we have common values, common teachings that tell us our faith is about ‘the other’ — you cannot judge people,” he said. Cruz said he preferred to focus on Obama’s support for the First Amendment than on any disappointment over Obama’s later statements about the wisdom of the project.
He added that the common scriptural bonds of Judaism, Christianity and Islam — as well as the universal rights of the Constitution — govern the actions of groups like his when it comes to Cordoba House.
“It’s not political grandstanding for privilege and influence,” Cruz said.
But in the temples to democracy in Washington, Bray said, it’s clear that politicians on both sides are attempting to use public opposition to the Cordoba House for political gain.
“People are using this as a wedge issue to try to advance their own political agendas,” Bray said. “I don’t know any other way to say it — I think it’s just really despicable.”
Correction: This post originally misstated Bray’s title. We regret the error.
