There is, as Richard Hofstadter put it many years ago, a paranoid style of politics. While, he came up with this notion in his examination of American politics, McCarthyism and its predecessors, I am struck how this sort of politics can be found in just about every democracy.  The paranoid knows that enemies surround us.  We must be vigilant and protect ourselves, limit or eliminate immigration, impose loyalty oaths, arm ourselves.  For, “they” are out to get us.  The complexities of the world are explained by the machinations of “them.”  (A most popular them these days are Muslims.)

The paranoia continues: we will resolve the problems posed by them only through vigilance.  Those who don’t see this are naïve, in some ways worse than the enemy itself.  You’re either with us or you’re against us: our country right or wrong, love it or leave it.  The National Front in France, the Swedish Democracy Party, the Austrian Freedom Party, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, the Bulgarian Ataka party,  Hungary’s Jobbik party, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the British National Party, the League of Polish Families, among others in Europe and beyond, including the Tea Party in the U.S., utilize this style of politics, the populist, xenophobic kind. (link) (link)

In each country, the health of democracy, it seems to me, will be determined by whether the paranoid style is marginalized, and remains so through time, or if it seeps into the political mainstream.  When a right wing coalition ruled in Poland and included the League of Polish Families, the prospects for Polish democracy dived, only reviving when that coalition was defeated in the polls, and , indeed, to mention Hofstadter’s immediate concerns, when Dwight Eisenhower’s Republican Party turned against McCarthy, American democracy was strengthened.  A pressing American concern today has to do with the paranoid style of politics in the Tea Party and in the anti-immigration movement.  Our fate is tied to how we respond to the Park Islamic Community Center and other such activities around the country.  There are other places the cat of paranoid politics is getting out of the bag, threatening democracy in even more dramatic and potentially deadly ways.  Indeed, I have been thinking about all of this while observing recent events in Israeli politics, to which I will turn Sunday.

A Conversation Remembered

He recalled our conversation:

The mosque. If I remember correctly our conversation, my argument was that officially and legally, there is no doubt that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the initiative to build the mosque where planned and that President Obama as defender of the American constitution did the right thing when he made his speech and supported it. My concern was as a hopeless symbologist and on the symbolic level. Hence, having said that legally Muslims are within their constitutional rights, I was concerned whether it was absolutely necessary or wise to have a Muslim mosque so close to where radical Muslims massacred thousands of innocent Americans. You put my concern there to rest.

In our discussion, I essentially made the argument I have been making in posts here, most crucially my first one considering the raw facts , but also my more recent post The tragedy of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. My key point, which convinced Nachman, was that the Cordoba House was actually a respectful initiative, made by people of good will, who sought respectful dialogue between Muslims and their fellow Americans.  Yet, Nachman still was uncertain, having to do with his own expertise.

My other symbolic concern was with the name chosen for the mosque…”Cordoba House.” Now this raises another complex issue. Cordoba was a name of a Muslim battalion that won – fair and square – a battle against Christian armies. But, the emirate of Cordoba was also a showcase of Islam’s ability to promote cultural growth. This growth was under a religious-political regime of a caliphate (that is non-democratic), but that is how things worked at those times. Contemporary Christians were not democratic human rights lovers either at that time. Thus, the name Cordoba could have three historical meanings: one, a decisive Muslim military victory over Christian armies and another, a place and period of significant cultural growth and blooming. My concern was which one of these historical and symbolic meanings will be made dominant? And in whose mind?  A third possibility is an implicit implication that cultural growth follows Islamic military victories, under an Islamic rule.

These potential complex meanings of the name “Cordoba House” caused me to ponder. I suspect that it is possible that these symbols will not escape radicalized Muslims and I was just wondering whether it was not a good idea to have the mosque being built some decent distance from the 9/11 site, plus, perhaps re-consider a symbolic complex tell-tale name of the mosque. I am not sure, of course, and as I wrote – there is absolutely no legal problem with either building the mosque where planned or calling it “Cordoba House.” My only symbolic concern was whether it was wise doing it in this way and whether an initiative whose aim is to promote peace and inter-religious dialogue is not rolling on a track that can be interpreted in a contradictory fashion and that raises so much negative feelings.

Deliberate Considerations

Nachman’s concerns are serious. Clearly Feisal Abdul Rauf, in his statements about the community center, does not use the term as Nachman fears:  “Our name, Cordoba, was inspired by the city in Spain where Muslims, Christians and Jews co-existed in the Middle Ages during a period of great cultural enrichment created by Muslims. Our initiative is intended to cultivate understanding among all religions and cultures,” Rauf explained in his op-ed piece.

But there is always uncertainty about the meaning of symbols, and perhaps for this reason, while Rauf continues to use Cordoba as the name of the community center.  The developer behind the center prefers Park 51, so that the activities of the community will define its meaning, rather than a historical reference with possible contradictory historical meanings.  This is the sort of accommodation to community sensibilities that make sense to me.  And I would love to hear a discussion between Rauf and Ben Yehuda about the meaning of Cordoba, best would be at Park 51, when it opens.  I hope in the not too distant future.

While I have been observing  Feisal Abdul Rauf’s actions and reactions to the public controversies surrounding his work as the the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative and the imam of the Farah mosque in Lower Manhattan, I have been thinking a lot about my book, Civility and Subversion: The Intellectual in Democratic Society.  I think that in democracies, intellectuals are talk provokers who help the general public confront and address serious political problems by informing discussion.  I think that they do so by civilizing differences so that enemies can become opponents and opponents can become collaborators, and by subverting commonsense that hides problems, so that these problems then can be discussed.  I, of course, know that no one intellectual is always a subversive, and no one intellectual is always an agent of civility.  Yet, certain key intellectuals have primarily played one or the other role.  This for example is how I think about the intellectual work of Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King Jr.

The tragedy of Feisal Abdul Rauf is that he has intended and has dedicated his life to the role of civility, while more brutal figures in our public life, perhaps Newt Gingrich is the primary culprit, have intended to turn the persistently patriotic imam into a subversive.  He has been labeled an agent of Islamic, indeed radical Islamist, subversion of the good moral order, just when he has done everything in his public pronouncements and actions to support the good pluralistic moral order that he understands, along with many of his fellow Americans including his President, to be the great American achievement.

Thus consider deliberately Feisal Abdul Rauf’s words in his recent op-ed piece. He is even willing to see this episode in which he has been systematically and viciously slandered as a positive development in the project of civil religious interactions:

“Lost amid the commotion is the good that has come out of the recent discussion. I want to draw attention, specifically, to the open, law-based and tolerant actions that have taken place, and that are particularly striking for Muslims.

President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg both spoke out in support of our project. As I traveled overseas, I saw firsthand how their words and actions made a tremendous impact on the Muslim street and on Muslim leaders. It was striking: a Christian president and a Jewish mayor of New York supporting the rights of Muslims. Their statements sent a powerful message about what America stands for, and will be remembered as a milestone in improving American-Muslim relations.

The wonderful outpouring of support for our right to build this community center from across the social, religious and political spectrum seriously undermines the ability of anti-American radicals to recruit young, impressionable Muslims by falsely claiming that America persecutes Muslims for their faith.”

Yesterday, in an interview on the ABC news program, “This Week,” the imam expressed his dilemma.  He is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t, and therefore he states if he had known the controversy he has provoked would happen he would have never proceeded.   He wanted to civilize differences, instead he has provoked them. He has against his own sensibility revealed the ugly virus of hatred, as he was trying to nurture civilized understanding. This is tragic for him as an individual, but reveals something critical for us, his fellow citizens.

In order for us to be true to our principles, Park 51 must be built, as President Obama suggested in his most recent remarks at his news conference.

“With respect to the mosque in New York, I think I’ve been pretty clear on my position here, and that is, is that this country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal; that they have certain inalienable rights — one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely. And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.”

I fear that this clear message we should tell ourselves and others about ourselves may not be sent.  American civilization warriors, those who seek a war with a world religion, may get their way.  It may be suggested that moving the mosque just a bit uptown is a reasonable compromise, a small price to pay for social peace at home.  This is the “modest proposal” (in the sense of Jonathan Swift in my opinion) of Governor David Paterson. (link)

But as an American, as a New Yorker, as someone who works in lower Manhattan and lost a dear friend in the World Trade Center, I think this is exactly wrong and not moderate at all.  We will not only be less safe as a result, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s major concern, we will also be diminished as a country dedicated to fundamental civil and democratic ideals.

The day after Obama presented his Iftar remarks, in a statement made in passing to a reporter, he “clarified” his position. He was not specifically endorsing the project, he maintained, but was standing on principle and trying to emphasize what the stakes are. (link)

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”

This statement was interpreted as a reversal of position by the center’s opponents and by those who are critical of Obama’s every move, but also by relatively objective media reports.  And some of those who had most passionately celebrated Obama’s remarks were dismayed by his apparent change of position.  They all paid attention to the first sentence of his second statement and not to the second two sentences, which, I think, were more central.  They paid attention to the apparent implications of the statement, but not to its meaning.

As the controversies about the center have raged, Obama’s fundamental position has been lost to the political noise. While the politics around the controversy always revolved around the question, for or against the “Ground Zero Mosque,” he at all points emphasized that free and diverse religious practices are an American right and definitive of American identity.
We have paid attention to the politics of the moment.

Will it hurt the Democrats and help the Republicans? Will Rick Lazio’s bid to be the Senator from New York sink or swim on this? Will this episode confirm the suspicions about Obama coming from the left and the right?  But we have not considered seriously the broader politics, beyond the obsessions of the here and now, beyond our national borders.  In his second statement, Obama wanted to emphasize his concern with such broader issues, as he has tried to distance himself from the immediate controversy.  The condensed nature of the passing comment led to confusion.  He was trying to thread a needle, but the sensibility of public discussion was too coarse for this to be successful.

For immediate political reasons he may have wished to stay away from the controversy.  He does not have public opinion behind him.  But given his long term commitments and his principled position, I think, he needs to return to the issue and clarify his position.

The issue is not whether there should be an Islamic community center on the “hallowed ground” of lower Manhattan.  The President must address further the emerging problem for our identity and security – how do we marginalize the growing xenophobia among Americans directed against Muslims, how do we retreat from a clash of civilizations, which many on the loony right are provoking.  Or else, we will have met the enemy and it will be us, to paraphrase Walter Kelly in his Pogo comic strip.

In his remarks at the Iftar Dinner at the State Dining Room of the White House, President Obama continued to discharge his responsibilities as Storyteller-in-Chief with distinction.

He clearly illuminated fundamental principles of the American polity. He highlighted their long history, and he applied the principles with their historical resonance to a pressing problem of the day.
Yet, the politics of the day, concerning the so called “Ground Zero Mosque,” confused matters, and his attempt to respond to the politics has added to the confusion.  I hope in the coming days and months he addresses the confusion.   But, in the meanwhile, we need to remember what the issues are apart from the silly interpretations of the 24/7 news machine.  His remarks should be deliberately considered.

Today, remembering the significance of the speech.  Tomorrow, a consideration of the confusion which followed. Obama welcomed his guests, including members of the diplomatic corps, his administration and Congress, and offered his best wishes to Muslims from around the world for the holy month of Ramadan.  He recalled the several years that the Iftar dinner has been held at the White House, as similar events have been hosted to celebrate Christmas, Passover and Diwali.  He observed how these events mark the role of faith in the lives of the American people and affirm “the basic truth that we are all children of God, and we all draw strength and a sense of purpose from our beliefs.”  The events are “an affirmation of who we are as Americans,” with a long history, illuminated by Obama by citing the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Virginia Act of Establishing Religious Freedom and remembering the First Amendment of the Constitution.

This tradition of religious diversity and respect has made the United States politically strong and open to vibrant and multiple religious traditions, the President noted, making us “a nation where the ability of peoples of different faiths to coexist peacefully and with mutual respect for one another stands in stark contrast to the religious conflict that persists elsewhere around the globe.”

Yet, he recalled, there have been controversies, most recently concerning “the construction of mosques in certain communities -– particularly New York.”

And then he pronounced his strong commitment.  “As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. (Applause.)  And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.  This is America.  And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.  The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.  The writ of the Founders must endure.”

He continued to explain the implications of his commitment.  We must remember the tragedy of 9/11 and honor those who risked their lives in response to the attacks.  We must remember that our enemies do not respect the rights that are fundamental to our country.  “In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion – and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims killed on 9/11.”  And recalling his Inaugural Address, he emphasized that “our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus —- and non-believers.”
Did the President then endorse the Park51 community center?  Actually if one reads carefully, he did not. But he did, more importantly, declare that he viewed the building of such a center as not only an American right, but also as an affirmation of American political identity –  this without endorsing the specific details of the construction of such a building in such a place.

My recent reflections on the debate over the Park Islamic Cultural Center have been fueled and inspired by my personal experiences surrounding the September 11 attacks and their aftermath.

After 9/11, I despaired.  As I put it in The Politics of Small Things, it hurt to think.  I knew that the people who attacked the World Trade Center really were a threat, but the political responses to the threat seemed to me to be wrong.

The attack hit very close to home.  Two close friends were in the Towers, one survived, a childhood friend, Steve Assael, but one was killed, Mike Asher, my closest adult friend . On that fateful day, I didn’t know what had happened to either of my friends.  In the days, weeks and months that followed, as I attended to personal consequences of the attacks, I was dismayed by the public response.

A war on terrorism was declared which didn’t make much sense, as the very real threat of Al Qaeda was not sufficiently recognized by anti-war critics.  Terrorism and anti-terrorism seemed to be replacing Communism and ideological anti-Communism (the most radical and resolute form of which were Fascism and Nazism), and many who were critical of these tendencies were not realisticly facing up to the challenges of the day.  Simple Manichaeism again overlooked global complexity across the political spectrum. There did not seem to be any alternative, as the Republican President was getting carried away, pushed by a broad wave of popular support, and the Democrats in Congress, and reporters and commentators in the media, dared not question the patriotic effervescence.

My book, which was dedicated to Mike, was an attempt to explore how alternatives on the margins did provide grounds for hope.  Specific small interactions provided alternatives to faulty grand narratives, people meeting each other on the basis of shared concerns and commitments, speaking and acting in each other’s presence, developing a capacity to act in concert, i.e. constituting political power in the sense of Hannah Arendt.  I knew how important such power was in the development of the democratic opposition in Poland as it formed and supported the development of the trade union Solidarity.  I examined how the same sort of power developed in the anti-war movement and the Dean campaign, opening space for the cultivation of critical opinions and policies among people who were concerned about the state of world affairs.  Obviously, the same sort of power supported the Obama campaign, as I have explored on earlier posts.

I was very impressed to see how a focused political campaign provided coherence to a broad array of dissenters, observable in anti war demonstrations and on many websites.  But the strength was not just the unity. It also was grounded in the diversity of experiences, opinions and actions that made up the movement.  People concerned about a broad array of immediate circumstances came together in opposition to the Bush administration and its policies.  But as important as the opposition was, their primary concerns were perhaps even more important.  A broad coalition concerned with a broad set of issues, foreign and domestic constituted an impressive social movement and political campaign leading to the election of Barack Obama.

And herein lies the significance of the Park 51 Islamic Community Center.  It is a local example of the politics of small things.  Those involved have rejected civilizational conflicts and are promoting civilized inter-religious and inter cultural dialogue.  They have planned a community center in their community, with places for people to hear lectures, discuss problems, play and exercise, and pray.   They are clearly open to discussion, already engaging in it with their fellow New Yorkers.

In the planned activities and in the way they have engaged the broader community to date, they enact dialogue as the alternative to clashes of civilizations.  This is ground zero of the opposition to terrorism and ideological anti terrorism.  These are important facts on the ground that are in opposition to dogmatic truths of the Islamic and the Islamophobic fundamentalists.  Intelligently thinking about their activities, taking them seriously beyond simplistic ideology doesn’t hurt at all. It is a way that honors my friend and many others who were lost on that bright and sunny September day.

Why is an Islamic community center dedicated to intercultural and interreligious understanding in any way a desecration to the memory of the victims of the attacks?

Why is the planning of the center provocative or insensitive?

There are problems with facts and truth, as I have reflected upon in my previous posts, but there are also problems with interpretation and evaluation.  Given the facts, the community center can only be considered an affront if there is something fundamentally wrong with one of the great world religions.  This center is clearly not the work of radical fundamentalists.  Its goal is dialogue and understanding.  If these are jihadists, all Muslims are.  If we publicly speak and act with such interpretation, we are effectively declaring a religious war, playing the game of the religious fanatics.

And isn’t it odd that it is now, 9 years after the attacks of 2001, and not in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, that a broad fear of Muslims seems to be sweeping the country? So many major political leaders are complicit in the Islamophobia: from those who are stoking the flames, Gingrich and Palin and their media facilitators at Fox and company; to those who fear opposing the hysteria, Harry Reid and the like?

Even President Obama has not been clear about the problem (more about that in a later post).  I think that Islamophobia, not Islam, now presents a clear and present danger to American democracy, not only because it compromises our fundamental principles, but also because it challenges our security.  See for a report on this issue: U.S. Anti-Islam Protest Seen as Lift for Extremists

The battle between intelligence and ignorance has intensified since the election of Barack Obama, and it often has a surreal partisan edge, centering around the biography and the identity of the President.  A disturbing report in today’s New York Times: “a new poll by the Pew Research Center finds a substantial rise in the percentage of Americans who believe, incorrectly, that Mr. Obama is Muslim. The president is Christian, but 18 percent now believe he is Muslim, up from 12 percent when he ran for the presidency and 11 percent after he was inaugurated.” (link)

This is puzzling.  “Obama is a Muslim.”  “He is not an American citizen.”  Can people seriously believe such things?  Apparently they do.  They ignore the facts to the contrary, either cynically or because they allow their convictions to blind them from the stubborn truth of factuality.  Mostly this seems amusing.  The material for nightly satires on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  But in that a major source of news, Fox News, regularly confuses fabrication with facts and many people base their opinions upon this confusion, suggests that there is a cultural crisis, a cultural war worth fighting.

It is not primarily a partisan battle, or at least it shouldn’t be.  It is a struggle to make sure that factual truth is the grounds for public life.  It is in this context that I think the case of the so called Ground Zero Mosque should be understood.   The controversy itself indicates a major cultural and political defeat.  The struggle is to get beyond the controversy, and it seems to me that the only outcome must be to build the Park Islamic Cultural Center.

It should be clear to anyone who wants to know the facts that Barack Obama is an American citizen, born in Hawaii, raised by his mother and grandparents, with an absent father from Kenya.  He became a practicing Christian as an adult in Chicago.

It should also be clear that the Islamic Center planned is the work of Muslims who are seeking inter-religious understanding.  It is two city blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center.  It is modeled after the 92nd Street Y, and has been planned in consultation with 92Y officials and representatives of a broad range of religious and cultural groups in New York City.  It is planned to be a fifteen story structure, with a prayer room on two floors, but also included will be a library, a gym and a restaurant.

Far from being a mega mosque in the shadows of the former World Trade Center, in that neighborhood, in lower Manhattan, it is a modest structure.  Far from being a monument of Muslim triumphalism, everything the planners of the center have said and done indicate it is dedicated to oppose such a position; they are against Fundamentalism.

The religious leader behind the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a Sufi Imam, who has worked and continues to work with the State Department, both of Barack Obama and George Bush, in the attempt to win the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world.

These are indisputable facts.  These facts about the planned Islamic Cultural Center are as solid as President Obama’s citizenship.  When political positions are asserted that deny facts, a sensible democratic politics becomes impossible.  More thoughts to come.