The controversy surrounding the Cordoba Islamic Centre has disgraced the US and its much cherished constitutional rights, respect for all faiths and freedom of worship. Moderate and well-meaning Muslims who represent the Islamic mainstream have been alienated. As the Economist rightly opined, "Cordoba House is not being built by Al Qaida.
To the contrary, it is the brainchild of Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, a well-meaning American cleric who has spent years trying to promote interfaith understanding, not an apostle of religious war like Osama Bin Laden. He is modelling his project on New York's 92nd Street Y, a Jewish community centre that reaches out to other religions".
Furthermore, the poisonous atmosphere, the pandering and the politicising of the issue has cast a shadow of doubt over the US, and its relationship with its Muslim minority, as well as the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, while President Barack Obama wanted to press the reset button and usher in a "new start". This unpleasant controversy has dealt a serious blow to that attempt and set the relationship back to its tumultuous phase.
Ironic behaviour
What does the controversy tell us about the status of religious tolerance in the "land of the free and the home of the brave"? What happened to the first constitutional amendment and the freedom of religion?
What happened to the country that lectures other nations on the need to respect diversity and other faiths and issues an annual report on the freedom of religion and treatment of minorities in 180 countries?
Why is it that detractors and those who are using the issue for narrow political gain in an election year are speaking the loudest? Why is it that two prominent Repulicans, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, are leading the chorus?
Palin has campaigned against the mosque, and called on "peaceful Muslims" to "refudiate" the "ground-zero mosque" because it would "stab" American hearts.
On Gingrich, the Chicago Tribune opined, "We realised that a policy debate had lost its bearings this week when Newt Gingrich compared the Muslim leaders who want to build a mosque near ground zero to genocidal soldiers".
Gingrich had said: "Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington ... There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Centre".
The Economist took aim at Gingrich's assertion that "there should be no mosque near ground zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia". It said: "Why hold the rights of Americans who happen to be Muslim hostage to the policy of a foreign country that happens also to be Muslim?"
Why are the Democrats so silent and ducking for cover? They have only distanced themselves from their president and the leader of their besieged party, who spoke at an iftar dinner at the White House of the rights of Muslims to build their Islamic Centre — before relenting under pressure from opportunistic Republicans and conservatives. He backtracked despicably less than a day later.
It is the ignorance of the American public that these politicians and strategists bank on. A new poll from the nonpartisan Pew Research Centre found that the number of Americans who believe that Obama is a Muslim has increased significantly since his inauguration and now accounts for nearly 20 per cent of the nation's population — up from 11 per cent in March 2009. Forty-three per cent said they don't know his religion, while 34 per cent correctly identified him as Christian.
Unfortunate rhetoric
Recently, Gary Leupp, associate professor at the Department of History at Tufts University, wrote "People with power and influence in the US have been saying some very stupid things about Islam and about Muslims since September 11 ... Some of it is rooted in conscious malice, and ethnic prejudice that spills over into religious bigotry.
But some is rooted in sheer historical and geographical ignorance. This is a country, after all, in which only a small minority of high school students can readily locate Afghanistan on the map, or are aware that Iranians and Pakistanis are not Arabs".
Fifty-five per cent of respondents to a new Time-SRBI poll said they would accept a Muslim community centre and place of worship two blocks from their own home. The anti-Islam sentiment was clear, however, when 61 per cent of American respondents to the poll opposed building the Cordoba centre.
Nearly twice as many people said the centre, and its mosque, would be an insult to 9/11 victims than said it would be a symbol of religious tolerance. In the same poll, 25 per cent said most Muslims in the United States are not patriotic Americans.
Responsible and well-meaning opinion- and decision-makers have to defuse such unfortunate episodes and promote reconciliation. They should realise that Muslims, like other groups in the US, are Americans first and foremost. Otherwise, bigoted Americans and Al Qaida will have something to agree about — and that would truly disgrace America.
Professor Abdullah Al Shayji is the chairman of the Political Science Department at Kuwait University.
