To build or not to build, is that REALLY the question?

Just when I believe that I've seen it all, that the crazy people who literally seem to be coming out of the woodwork everywhere in my country cannot get any worse or embarrass those of us who are at least within "normal" definitions of sanity - whatever those may be - any more than they already have, the airwaves are flooded with the latest distraction du jour.  And just what is this distraction du jour?   The fact that Muslim Americans wish to build a Muslim community center on property that they own that happens to be located a couple of blocks from "Ground Zero" in lower Manhattan is driving the wingnuts absolutely bonkers.  It is leading from one rhetorical excess to another.  The thinly disguised racism and bigotry in that inflammatory rhetoric are largely being given a pass by the US mainstream media (MSM) - and even worse, by politicians who should know better.

The project was initially reported by the New York Times in December 2009.  As the article reported:

"The location was precisely a key selling point for the group of Muslims who bought the building in July. A presence so close to the World Trade Center, 'where a piece of the wreckage fell,' said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric leading the project, 'sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.'
'We want to push back against the extremists,' added Imam Feisal, 61.
Although organizers have sought to avoid publicizing their project because they say plans are too preliminary, it has drawn early encouragement from city officials and the surrounding neighborhood." (emphasis mine)

From that quiet beginning, thanks largely to the fearmongering efforts of what Salon (one of the few publications that still gives me hope for US journalism) describes as a "right-wing, viciously anti-Muslim, conspiracy-mongering blogger, whose sinister portrayal of the project was embraced by Rupert Murdoch's New York Post" comes a ridiculous brouhaha.  The name of its begetter is Pamela Geller.  Even before this latest media-manufactured "controversy," Ms. Geller had also been described as "the looniest blogger ever" by at least one individual who specializes in finding such loons.  Just going by the New York Post's own juxtaposition of Imam Faisal and Ms Geller, I find Ms Geller the scarier of the two.  By far.

Ms Geller has also earned a prime place on my personal Noxious Persons list, which I am sure will bother her not one whit.  But enough about her, she will have her own karmic destiny to endure at the appointed time, as will we all.   The Salon article is an excellent one and I encourage all to read it and the links it includes here.  It provides a timeline for how this story - largely positively received even by conservative personalities like Laura Ingraham - evolved and notes how the project was approved by the New York City community board committee.  Of course, the approval occurred before Geller and her vicious sycophants and cohorts got to work in earnest and ratcheted up the fear level.  Now Ingraham has fallen into line and is against the project.  Sigh - it seems that hate and fear are all too easily ratcheted up in America today.

The Founders of this Nation, who were largely Deists, understood the real problems that can occur when a religion controls or otherwise interferes with the functioning of a State.  They had studied history and the Classical philosophers, as well as the more recent philosophers of the Enlightenment.  The Enlightment had taught them that reason, not superstition or religion, should be the basis for legitimacy and authority.  Still, they believed in a Supreme Being and understood that most individuals need not only to believe in one but take comfort and inspiration from that belief, hoping in time to become worthy of being united with their God.  They also believed that the State should not interfere with the rights of individuals to choose which religion to practice.  That right was so important to the Founders that the right to choose and practice one's religion of choice (or, as it was also later interpreted, not choose and not practice) was enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The text of the First Amendment is very simple.  It is also very profound.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Evidently, Ms Geller and co - and the 70% of Americans who reportedly are against the building of this center - believe that the First Amendment does not apply to Muslims.  They deny that, of course.  Their disingenuous response is that the center should simply not be built at that particular location.  Apart from that, they conveniently forget that New York City approved construction of the center and approved it for that location. Moreover, the center is to be on private, not public, property.  Their standing to object is decidedly lacking.  But that is perhaps too "rational" for them to understand.

The question here is not really "to build or not to build."  It is rather what kind of nation have we become, when the political rhetoric, fear-mongering and promotion of hatred, diviseness and "other-ness" have become more reminiscent of 1930s fascist and Nazi leaders than of our Enlightenment-inspired Founders?  What kind of nation indeed?