I wanted to flag two articles this morning on the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ controversy. First is a short piece by Rick Hertzberg in the New Yorker. No big comment from me. Just go read it. It’s good.
Next is a piece in the New York Times. It’s a good piece in a lot of ways. The gist is how much the organizers of the project simply were not prepared and did not adequately plan for the firestorm their community center and mosque project eventually engendered. One issue, that I’ve actually heard from other Muslim activists in New York City, is that the key players, Imam Faisal, his wife Daisy Khan and real estate developer Sharif El-Gamal, were not that tied in to the existing New York Muslim community. Not unknowns but just not that plugged in and, importantly, they had not extensively canvassed for support for the project within that community.
There’s lots of interesting information in the Times piece — including one I had not heard before which was that the original idea for the community center/mosque actually preceded 9/11 itself. The idea first emerged in 1999 when Faisal and his wife tried to buy the McBurney YMCA on 23rd Street to build the project. (Oddly, the Times refers to it as “the former McBurney Y.M.C.A on 23rd Street.” But as far as I know it’s still there. Until about two years ago I swam there most nights. ed.note: Actually my brain was a little scrambled on this one. I used to go to the McBurney on 14th Street where presumably it moved after it left 23rd. But since I now live on 23rd Street I think I got the two mixed up in my head.)
In any case, lots of interest stuff. But what struck me most about the piece was an odd lacunae as big as an empty warehouse on the West Side. Through the piece there’s only one short and awfully cryptic reference to just who whipped up the hysteria against the project. Here’s the only reference …
On top of the fear and confusion in New York about Islam after 9/11, a movement had begun to spring up against Muslims seeking a larger role in American public life. In 2007, Debbie Almontaser, a Muslim educator, had been forced to resign as the principal of an Arabic-language public school in Brooklyn after such groups helped paint her as supporting terrorism.
But the center’s organizers said they had little indication they were flying into a storm.
Now there’s a paragraph that could use some unpacking if I ever saw one. “A movement had begun to spring up against Muslims seeking a larger role in American public life.” It would be wrong to deny that there are organic aspects to the wave of Islamophobia afoot in the country today. But really. Fox News, Newt Gingrich, Liz Cheney and perhaps as much as any others Pam Geller and a guy named Robert Spencer, the tagteam hate squad that’s been behind more of this most people could even begin to know.
There is a constant temptation to publish articles like this that delve into the lesser known details of a topic or look at the small ways in which the mosque organizers, naively, brought some of the trouble on themselves. But there’s nothing subtle or probing about glossing over who actually led the scurrilous jihad against this project in the first place.
