The proposed mosque at Ground Zero, two blocks from the site of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center twin towers on September 11, 2001, would not have minarets or resounding muezzin calls to prayer emanating from it. If it comes up at all – and despite fervent opposition by its critics and detractors it is likely that it will do so after the influential and decisive Landmark Preservation Commission voted unanimously for construction to commence – it would perhaps in time become testimony to the fact that above all, above religion, above politics, above a thousand protests, the city that never sleeps loves and prides a good financial investment, one that would add another embellishment: a shining, vertical structure able to provide with world class facilities and entertainment; another hotspot for connoisseurs of the arts. The 15-story $100 million Cordoba House Community Center and mosque has plans for a performance-art center which will have a 500-seat auditorium, a gym, swimming pool, apart from restaurants and a bookstore. It's a project envisioned by the Cordoba Initiative, an advocacy group that promotes improved relations between Islam and the West. Unlike a traditional mosque, it would not permit muezzin calls; only a prayer room for Muslims.
Perhaps some Muslims might cringe at the thought of going to pray at a mosque – which does not look like a mosque – housed in a site also for staging arts and culture, and a popular venue for people from all walks of life and religions to mingle. Some might travel specifically to the site to offer prayers; to rejoice and jubilate. The Cordoba House might in the future evoke as many different reactions and mixed sentiments from Muslims as it is doing now amongst those who favor it against those opposed to it. What would be the sentiment of liberal Muslims who might offer prayers at the Cordoba House one evening, and then decide to join a congregation gathered to listen to a panel discussion in the same building only to discover that there are some radical speakers, extreme preachers, who advocate and spew hatred and revenge?
What would be the reaction of conservative Muslims who offer prayers at the House, but get dismayed and disgruntled by what they feel is popular immersion of their beliefs by those running the center; those who feel humiliated and hurt that Muslims have to kowtow to the West and its popular culture in the garb of running a mosque. Would an orthodox Muslim allow his daughter to swim at the pool or workout in the building while he is busy in his prayers?
Would the Cordoba House help to assuage the hurt of the liberal Muslims who feel they have been ostracized in America after the 9/11 attacks? Would it help New Yorkers in better understanding Islam? Some might feel what would be the point of trying to understand Islam at the House when on television screens there are images of yet another suicide bombing in the Middle East or yet another guerilla attack on American soldiers in Afghanistan; when America is waging two wars in Islamic states. Or yet another Al Qaeda warning on vengeance on the West is broadcast and the terror alert goes up nationwide. Would the mosque help to re-inculcate America's image as a true secular, democratic nation, capable of permitting the unthinkable in perhaps any other country? That the country is tolerant of Islam and its practitioners? Yes, for sure; and would be yet another welcome signal for Muslim immigrants that New York City is perhaps the best multicultural place to live in the world.
Those immigrants who did not already admire Mayor Michael Bloomberg would cite his words to their children as proof of why they continue to live here: "This city was built on openness and tolerance and we're not walking away from it," advocating building the Cordoba House.
But America has to also live with the knowledge that more Muslims in the world hate them than love them. More Muslims were killed during the partition in 1947, and in subsequent communal riots in India, than America will likely ever have in its history, but more Muslims will blame America for atrocities against Muslims today, than against India.
Last week, America got a taste of the venom in the Muslim community against it, despite their best of goodwill efforts at international advocacy for Islam.
Rashad Hussain, President Barack Obama's special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, bore the brunt of it. On a visit to Mumbai to deliver a lecture titled "The Obama Adrninistration's Outreach to the Muslim World," he had to listen grimly, in stoic silence as Akhtar Hasan Rizvi, a prominent local builder and entrepreneur, cited grouses the Muslim community has held for decades against the US, said local news reports.
"America gave birth to terrorism and the Jewish policy needs to be controlled," Rizvi told Hussain, harping on America's backing of Israel during the Palestine crisis in 1967. He continued his tirade: "You gave weapons of mass destruction to Iraq against Iran and then you went hunting for them and could not find them...You made nuclear bombs, nuclear weapons in order to control the whole world. First, America should correct that wrong and stop the supremacy policy." There will be many more such conversations America will have to hear, and counter.
The man behind the Cordoba House project, Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who helped found the Cordoba Initiative following the 9/11 attacks, is now being sponsored by the US State Department on a religious outreach trip to the Middle East, to Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, where he will discuss Muslim life in America and promote religious tolerance. He is likely to get many similar responses like Hussain received in Mumbai. Conservative lawmakers have criticized this move, pointing out that Rauf had blamed America for the 9/11 attacks, in the past. But the Kuwaiti-born Rauf is also the man who now wants to bridge the divide between Islam and the West. It's a fascinating tightrope walk for America, to get its image right in the world.
Opposition to the mosque is fierce; the debate continues to rage. Next week, some New York City public transport buses will feature ads that oppose the building of the mosque. The ads feature an image of an airplane headed toward the burning World Trade Center, along with a high-rise building that's labeled 'WTC Mega Mosque' and the words 'Why There?'
Perhaps the answer to that question lies in the financials of it all: that somebody paid the almost $5 million for the building which housed the Burlington Coat Factory two blocks from Ground Zero, that is going to be demolished to bring about a new shining building in its place: the Cordoba House.
For those who are opposed to building the mosque at the place they see as a burial ground for the victims of the terrorist attacks, one that should he made into a museum, or for those who see it as a victory for the Islamic fundamentalists at the place they waged war against America, the answer perhaps is that they did not get a financier to buy that building spot and make it the way they wanted it to be.
