YMCA: Young Muslim Community Association? (updated)

Should a community-center-mosque be built near the site of the World Trade Center (WTC) aka Ground Zero?  This question was taken up by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in New York City.

According to Margot Adler with NPR, in a tension filled community meeting in lower Manhattan, visceral shouts burst out opposing a plan for Cordoba House.  The proposed building location is on the site of the former Burlington Coat Factory located two blocks from ground zero.

The Cordoba House has been a long held vision of Feisel Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan who see a kind of community resource organization like the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) or Jewish Community Center (JCC) – not simply a house of Muslim worship.  The later two organizations have a long history of promoting community activities for families, businesses and other organizations.

Imam Rauf is an orthodox Sufi Muslim who does not share the extremist position of those who attacked the WTC.   At present, their offices are found in Riverside Church a liberal-interfaith church.

Numbered among the proponents of the community-centered-mosque project were Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer and 8^th district Congressman Jerrold Nadler.  Nadler’s district includes the west side of Manhattan from the Upper West Side down to Battery Park, and the WTC site. Other presentations were given supporting the initiative.

Rauf’s wife Daisy stated, “Our religion has been hijacked by the extremists.” “This center will create a kind of counter momentum which will amplify the voices of the moderate Muslims. If we have to defeat the extremists, Muslims have to be leading that effort.”

Vocal opponents outnumbered proponents, according to reports (3:1), and believe the BCF building should be “landmarked” making it a permanent undeveloped site.  Landmarking a building is a rather common practice in New York City according to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

“…it’s a fact that of the 22,000 landmarked buildings or sites in NYC, some 6% have been designated because of their historical significance alone.

Among the structures landmarked for historical reasons:  a building that signifies the importance of the rise of the Labor Movement and the struggle for workers rights, a site to promote equality based upon sexual orientation, a clinic where Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, is remembered for her advocacy of abortion rights, and even a building where the terrorist organization, Weather Underground, detonated a bomb.”

Approval of the landmarking measure would create a roadblock to the proposed Muslim community center.  Justifying landmark status, Barbara Paolucci offered, “The landing gear from one of the planes of the Sept. 11 attack crashed into that building.” Sam Nunberg of the Center for Law and Justice likened the Islamic community center to erecting a Japanese memorial in Pearl Harbor.  “It would be like removing the sunken ship in Pearl Harbor to erect a memorial to the Japanese kamikazes killed in the attack.”

Adler also reports results from recent polling on the question of the Islamic community center project.

“A recent poll on the question of the mosque showed that 52 percent of New York City residents opposed the center. In more liberal Manhattan, 46 percent of residents approved it and 36 percent were opposed.”

Maurice Carroll of the Quinnipiac poll says the most noteworthy statistic is that while 55 percent of New Yorkers say Islam is a peaceful religion, “22 percent say that it encourages violence. They would not say that about Jews or Catholics, or Protestants and the explanation of that has to be that the terrorists have poisoned people’s minds.”

Sekulow’s organization is attempting to block the Muslim community center and mentions among the reasons, suspicions about Imam Rauf’s goals.  Sekulow, reviewing a recent book by Imam Rauf, bluntly states, that counter to the claim that Rauf’s book is attempting to “cultivate mutual respect between Islam and America. It is not.”

Among Sekulow’s noted concerns he lists Rauf’s advocacy for Shariah Law in the U.S.  He points out that Rauf has written, “[It] also would not be a violation of church-state separation to have a subsidiary entity within judiciary that employs religious jurists from diverse religious backgrounds to comment on the compliance of certain decisions with their religious laws and to provide guidance to their religious communities on how kosher or Shariah-compliant these decisions are.”

Rauf’s proposal amounts to establishing a religious organ within the judiciary to determine compliance with Shariah, and so crossing an unacceptable line according to Sekulow.

Among Rauf’s additional activities he leads The Shariah Index Project.  The mission of the project is to build a rating index to assess the compliance of a nation to Shariah law.

Rauf is not alone in his desire to recognize Shariah law.  Shariah law is considered to be the basis of human rights according to the 57 member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) who tried last year to install an anti-defamation resolution through the U.N.  The idea is to make a ban on criticism of Islam mandatory worldwide.  Full implementation would ban “criticism” of religions worldwide.

According to Linda Vessey the advocacy director for Open Doors,  “authoritarian governments (would have) virtually unrestrained power to attack individuals whose message they don’t like.” Open Doors President Carl Moeller recently describes what could happen under the proposal.  The resolution would “silence words or actions that are deemed to be against a particular religion, and that religion is Islam. While the stated goal seems relatively innocuous – blocking defamation of people’s deeply held religious beliefs – in practice the statement is used to silence those whose only crime is to believe in another faith, or no faith at all.”

Religious free speech would have been compromised at least on the U.N. books had the resolution been adopted.  Despite its failure, the OIC continues to pursue the resolution.  The OIC resolution is based upon the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which urged “that all rights are subject to Shariah law,” and makes Shariah law the only source of reference for human rights.

Imam Rauf’s vision for a Muslim community center at the heart of the 9/11 attack might be just a kind of Muslim YMCA with the mission of impressing upon Americans the peaceful side of Islam.  According to others, however ,it is not only a slap in the face to 9/11 victims but also represents the continuing efforts to lay the groundwork for Islamic jurisprudence in U.S. territory.  Ironically, in the week following the heated LPC meeting, Elana Kagan, the Supreme Court nominee recently confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, while dean of Harvard Law School, supported Sheriah.

Update: First Hurdle to Mosque Cleared

The New York City LPC on August 4^th has denied landmark status to the site of the former Burlington Coat Factory located two blocks from ground zero.  The LPC rejected the request unanimously in a 9-0 vote.  Despite the fact that a landing gear from one of the ill-fated hijacked air-liners crashed into the building, the panel did not grant landmark status.

Should the LPC allow a Muslim community center near Ground Zero?  Let NEST know!

By: John M. DeMassa