The little mosque in Manhattan

Tuesday, 14th September, 2010

E-mail article   Print article

Dr Opiyo Oloya IT is not about the little Mosque in Manhattan, stupid! Instead, the big brouhaha, about the Imam who wants to build a mosque in New York City that is pitting Americans against Americans and threatening to spill out into the larger world, has everything to do with Americans persisting in their inalienable rights to remain blissfully ignorant of the world in which America is quickly becoming just another bit player, rather than the dominant player. It is about the American credo of the rights to life, freedom, happiness and the pursuit of ignorance. For instance, look at the facts of the Islamic Cultural Centre that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is trying to build that suddenly has become the lightening rod in American politics. Fact number one, the proposed centre is actually two full blocks away from the hallowed ground zero where the twin towers of the World Trade Centre once stood. Fact number two, there are already two mosques within spitting distance of ground zero. Founded in 1970, Masjid Manhattan located on Warren Street is just four blocks away. Meanwhile, Masjid al-Farah stands about 12 blocks from ground zero on West Broadway. But to hear the conservative pundits and talking heads put it, you would think that Imam Rauf was planning his little centre smack in the middle of the ground where terrorists committed the most heinous crimes on September 11, 2001. The mosque, according to failed former presidential candidate Sarah Palin, is “a stab in the heart of America”. She did not add the phrase “by aliens encouraged and abated by the President of United States, Barack Hussein Obama”. She did not have to because that is the level of discourse that American politics has taken lately. A number of polls taken this past summer indicate as many as 20% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. It was precisely such ignorant, inward-looking, let’s-circle-the-wagon mentality that Florida pastor Terry Jones seized on when he threatened to burn the Holy Quran in front of his very small church. With a congregation numbering a meagre 40 parishioners, Pastor Jones was not an aberrant or erratic Neanderthal who happened to wake up in the 21st Century to find that the world is multi-ethnic and multi-religious. He is foremost channelling the energy of ignorance that has sustained many Americans for far too long, and which is now being challenged by a global community drawn ever tighter at the hip by dwindling resources and shared destiny. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 took thousands of innocent lives and shattered the sense of invulnerability that America had built around itself. Sadly, though, instead of engaging in deeper introspection on why it was the target of such hate-filled terror, some conservative Americans took the easy route — they hate us because they are evil. The Quran is evil. Muslims are evil. With such shallow insight into what motivates and feeds anti-Americanism, it was futile to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks, and that the information on weapons of mass destruction was simply fraudulent. Ignoring all the facts, President George W. Bush pushed for war with a country that was best left alone. Thousands of lives later, Americans woke up to the realisation that the bogeyman they created in Saddam Hussein was not the one they wanted all along. It was somebody else, but they could not quite get into focus who that somebody was — al-Qaeda, Taliban or simply terrorists became the catch-all name for the new villain. Of course, the election of President Obama offered a sober opportunity for America to understand the larger world which it seeks to conquer and annihilate without really knowing. Obama was candid — America needed to begin to relate to the world in a way that builds bridges rather than destroy them. This message was repeated in Obama’s trip to the Middle East in the summer of 2009, and often enough. However, to the conservative America that never accepted the election of a black president to begin with, this was another attempt to sell America down the river. To this large element of American society, the notion that America needs to reach out to alien cultures was hard to swallow. The push-back against a more world-connected America which began in earnest in the summer of 2009 was cheered on by conservative media personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Buzz phrases such as “patriotic Americans”, “duty and honour”, “real Americans” began to seep into the discourse. It is within this racially-tinged, culturally charged atmosphere that conservative politician Newt Gingrich accused president Barack Obama of harbouring “Kenyan, anti-colonialist mentality”. Even as the right cheered the apparent insult, none stopped to ask how an American who mostly grew up in America, and only visited Kenya once or twice, could have a Kenyan mentality. What is a “Kenyan anti-colonialist mentality” anyway? Indeed, having chosen the path of ignorance as the only way forward, the segment of America that defines its politics as “patriotic” took on the little Mosque in Manhattan which it saw as threatening the very fabric of America. The reality though is that the Imam planning to build the Islamic cultural centre is one of the very first Muslims to condemn violence and to call on moderate Muslims everywhere especially in America to repudiate the notion that equates Islam with violence. Unfortunately, while conveniently forgetting that Muslims also died at ground zero on September 11, conservative Americans have hijacked the building of the prayer centre as an assault by aliens on what is pure, white and organic in America. They would not put it that way — but you know that is what they are thinking. Sadly, their thinking is wrong, but then what should one expect from a segment of society that believes in the inalienable right of being ignorant? Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca