Lincoln’s party now the party of prejudice

The Muslim community center to be built just blocks from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan cleared its final hurdle on Tuesday and was approved for construction.

As a pleasant surprise, New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 9-0, denying historic protection for the building that currently occupies the site where developers plan to build the $100 million center, which will include a mosque.

Though this news should hardly be noteworthy, it unfortunately is.

Since its incipient stages in July 2009, when a Muslim-run real-estate development company purchased the damaged, vacant building and land where the new center will be built, the project has sparked controversy and debate.

Repugnant Republican and conservative leaders and pundits have lashed out against the project, criticizing it as provocative and insensitive to the families of 9/11 victims. How could popular political leaders ever dare to speak out against religious equality in the United States?

They can, unfortunately, because they are simply saying what the many Americans are thinking. Polls indicate that 52 percent of New York City voters are opposed to the center and mosque’s construction.

Among the prejudiced right-wingers who have spoken out against the building, the most prominent are potential Republican presidential candidates such as 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Palin said the mosque and Muslim community center would create an “unnecessary provocation,”  and went on to tweet: “Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.”

Her position is completely ignorable, based on her unintelligible contention — “refudiate” isn’t even a word.

Gingrich said he opposed the construction, though “it’s not about religion and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive,” he said.

He went on to posit that since the complex would be dubbed the Cordoba House, its name would be a symbol of Islam triumphing over Christianity, recalling the Moorish conquest of Spain during the eighth century.

The thinly veiled prejudice in Gingrich’s attack relies on a deliberate misinterpretation of the name.

The Cordoba House recalls Cordoba, Spain, as the capital of the Caliphate of Cordoba during the period of Muslim rule of Spain when the nation prospered and inter-faith diplomacy with Christian kings flourished.

The name is a symbol of religious pluralism, not the subjugation of one faith by another.

Romney’s opposition is the most worrying and hypocritical. Using his specious logic, Romney has conflated all Muslim terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida, with the Islamic faith itself. His statements and ideas thus smack of intolerance, stereotyping and naked prejudice.

In 2005, Romney called for what would have been unprecedented surveillance of certain mosques and other places of worship. These actions come from a former and probably future presidential candidate — and member of a religious minority, the Mormon church — who has trumpeted respect for all faiths in hopes of increasing his chances in future elections.

Worse yet, the tattered building that was bought by the Muslim real estate company had been owned by a subsidiary of Bain Capital, a company Romney founded in 1984.

So it’s OK if his company can profit off the sale of the land, but he’s ideologically opposed to how Muslims can use it.

Other prominent groups, such as the American Center for Law & Justice and the Anti-Defamation League have cited similar arguments in their opposition to the building of the center and mosque.

Yet, now that building can begin without any more approval hurdles, all those who opposed its construction will be desperate to clear their names as a part of this vile opposition. No one wants to be remembered as having been against equality, especially religious equality.

However, just like 9/11 must never vanish from the minds of Americans, we must never forget this intolerance and prejudice.

The GOP, the party of Abraham Lincoln, lost its civil rights appeal when it dragged its heels during the 1960s and the following decades.

The opposition to this mosque and community center by GOP leaders confirms that the party is irreparably obsolete and anachronistic.

Conservatives should find a new party to be a part of, because as the minority population in the United States multiplies, the GOP will become only a menacing shadow from the past.


E-mail: yzchaudh@indiana.edu