August 5, 2010--Mosque In My Town

Not noted for either rhetoric or passion, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, more than rose to the occasion after the City removed the final obstacle to the construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero when he, confronting the outrage among some that this be allowed, with deep emotion said:

To cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists--and we should not stand for that. The attack was an act of war--and our first responders defended not only our city but also our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending these rights--and the freedoms the terrorists attacked.

It is no surprise that many posturing Republican politicians from Newt Gringrich to Sarah Pailin and their media flacks have been demagoguing this issue. Jerry Falwell, no friend of Babylon on the Hudson, has stepped in to condemn the project as the work of Satan--about which from his personally checkered life he is well informed.

Even the Anti-Defamation League, which should know better, since it has been historically devoted to tracking down and exposing any evidence of anti-Semitism, has chimed in in oppposition, displaying its own version of Islamophobia. (See linked New York Times article.)

This has got my New York blood boiling.

For most of the past two years I've been living only part time in the Big Apple; but this mosque business, which would be walking distance from my apartment, is reminding me how much of a New Yorker I remain.

First of all I don't want to be lectured about New York matters by the likes of Falwell, Gingrich, or Palin. If any of them cared about us--and by us I mean New Yorkers and Americans--they should have shown up right after 9/11 and helped the grieving and displaced families or tended to the men and women who were literally risking their lives on the Pile while searching for survivors and then remains. I don't recall seeing any of them even making a fly-by visit, though I do recall their hot speeches and personally passive and craven behavior. Anything to cash in on other people's anguish, rage, and fear.

So Newt and Jerry and Sarah and the ADL too--stuff it!

And then I also want to hear what Barack Obama has to say about this. I know he's busy celebrating his birthday with Oprah, but why has he been silent about this inflaming issue? We in large part elected him because he was good at speaking about complicated things of this kind and helping us understand them as well as to reconcile us to our differences. But, New Yorker that I am, I know why: he doesn't want to give Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh any more ammunition to claim he's really a Muslim. His reelection campaign is only two years away and, above all, he needs all the votes he can muster.

I much prefer Mayor Bloomberg's courage. He may be a little boring but he might be the kind of leader we need. I hope that he too is thinking about 2012.