SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010
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Keep ideology away from Ground Zero I
By Neda Bolourchi
have no grave site to visit, no place to bring my mother her favorite yellow flowers, no spot where I can hold my weary heart close to her. All I have is Ground Zero. On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11,
2001, I watched as terrorists slammed United Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, 18 minutes after their accomplices on another hi- jacked plane hit the North Tower. My mother was on the flight. I witnessed her murder on live television. I still can- not fully comprehend those images. In that moment, I died as well. I carry a hole in my heart that will never be filled. From the first memorial ceremonies I
attended at Ground Zero, I have always been moved by the site; it means some- thing to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace. That is why the prospect of a mosque near Ground Zero — or a church or a synagogue or any religious or national- istic monument or symbol — troubles me. I was born in pre-revolutionary Iran.
My family led a largely secular existence — I did not attend a religious school, I never wore a headscarf — but for us, as for anyone there, Islam was part of our
FAMILY PHOTO
The author’s mother, Touri Bolourchi Hamzavi, was a passenger on United Flight 175.
I worry that a mosque near the World Trade Center site would become a symbol of victory for militant Muslims.
heritage, our culture, our entire lives. Though I have nothing but contempt for the fanaticism that propelled the terrorists to carry out their murderous attacks on Sept. 11, I still have great re- spect for the faith. Yet, I worry that the construction of the Cordoba House Is- lamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site would not promote tolerance or understanding; I fear it would become a symbol of victory for militant Muslims around the world. When I am asked about the people who murdered my mother, I try to hold back my anger. I try to have a more spir- itual perspective. I tell myself that per- haps what happened was meant to hap- pen — that it was my mother’s destiny to perish this way. I try to take solace in the notion that her death has forced a much-needed conversation and reeval- uation of the role of religion in the Mus- lim community, of the duties and obli- gations that the faith imposes and of its impact on the non-Muslim world. But a mosque near Ground Zero will not move this conversation forward. There were many mosques in the Unit- ed States before Sept. 11; their mere ex- istence did not bring cross-cultural un- derstanding. The proposed center in New York may be heralded as a peace of- fering — may genuinely seek to focus on “promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion
through arts and culture,” as its Web site declares — but I fear that over time, it will cultivate a fundamentalist ver- sion of the Muslim faith, embracing those who share such beliefs and hating those who do not. The Sept. 11 attacks were the product
of a hateful ideology that the perpetra- tors were willing to die for. They be- lieved that all non-Muslims are infidels and that the duty of Muslims is to re- nounce them. I am not a theologian, but I know that the men who killed my mother carried this message in their hearts and minds. Obedient and dutiful soldiers, they marched toward their promised rewards in heaven with utter disregard for the value of the human be- ings they killed. I know Ground Zero is not mine alone; I must share this sanctuary with tourists, politicians, anyone who choos- es to come, whatever their motivations or intentions. But a mosque nearby — even a proposed one — is already trans- forming the site from a sacred ground for reflection, so desperately needed by the families who lost loved ones, to a battleground for religious and political ideologies. So many people from differ- ent nationalities and religions were killed that day. This site should be a neutral place for all to come in peace and remember. I believe my mother would have thought so as well.
The Iranian revolution compelled my family to flee to America when I was 12 years old. Yet, just over two decades lat- er, the militant version of our faith caught up with us on a September morning. I still identify as a Muslim. When you are born into a Muslim fami- ly, there is no way around it, no choices available: You are Muslim. I am not ashamed of my faith, but I am ashamed of what is done in its name. On the day I left Ground Zero shortly
after the tragedy, I felt that I was aban- doning my mother. It was like being forced to leave the bedside of a loved one who is dying, knowing you will nev- er see her again. But I felt the love and respect of all those around me there, and it reassured me that she was being left in good hands. Since I cannot visit New York as often as I would like, I at least want to know that my mother can rest in peace. I do not like harboring resentment or
anger, but I do not want the death of my mother — my best friend, my hero, my strength, my love — to become even more politicized than it already is. To the supporters of this new Islamic cul- tural center, I must ask: Build your ideological monument somewhere else, far from my mother’s grave, and let her rest.
Neda Bolourchi lives in Los Angeles.
They won’t stand for it
“The idea of a 13-story building set up by a group,many of whom, frankly, are very hostile to our civi- lization — and I’m talking now about the people who organized this, many of whom are apologists for sharia, which is a form of law that I think we cannot allow in this country, period.”
— Newt Gingrich
“Let’s have some respect for who died there and why they died there. Let’s not put this off on some kind of politically correct theory. I mean, they died there because of Is- lamic extremist terrorism. They are our enemy —we can say that, the world will not end when we say that.”
— Rudolph Giuliani
“People come here to have babies. They come here to drop a child. It’s called ‘drop and leave.’ To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child’s automatically an American citi- zen.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES As the debate over immigration heats up, some activists want a reexamination of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born in this country.
“I’m not sure exactly what the drafters of the [14th] Amendment had in mind, but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is
forever an American citizen.” — Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)
Mosques, anchor babies and other scapegoats fear from B1
verses. Views of the world turn zero- sum: If he wins, what do I lose? Any kind of change looks like decline — the end of a “way of life.”
One of the striking things about this
particular shift is how quickly it has come about. Many expected racial ten- sion during the 2008 presidential cam- paign, but it barely materialized. How- ever, as unemployment and foreclo- sures have increased in the years since, so have trivial, race-based controver- sies, such as those surrounding the New Black Panther Party and Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod. Similarly, the mosque controversy is not a continuation of the dynamics that started on Sept. 11, 2001, but a sharp re- versal of course nine years on, one that’s antithetical to the approach during the administration of President George W. Bush. Then, leading conservatives were careful to portray the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks as a targeted cam- paign against a minority group of mur- derous fanatics, not a broad cultural conflict with Islam. They appreciated that the latter approach would amount to a strategic and moral disaster. The same abrupt slide toward xeno- phobia can be seen on immigration. As recently as 2004 and 2008, both parties nominated candidates who promised a path to citizenship for illegal immi- grants. Today, President Obama is over- seeing a skyrocketing rate of deporta- tions, while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) — formerly the leading
pro-immigration Republican — are among those who want to hold hearings reconsidering the 14th Amendment. The shift has come so suddenly that the Republican Party hasn’t even had time to amend its Web site, which as of this writing still touts “Republicans Passed the 14th Amendment” as one of the GOP’s signature accomplishments. At the same time, the number of Americans with doubts about the loca- tion of the president’s birth appears to be on the rise. An Aug. 4 CNN poll found that only 42 percent of Amer- icans are now sure he was born in the United States, way down from July 2009 polling that showed 77 percent of adults expressing certainty on this score. Despite clear evidence that he was born in Hawaii, Obama too is cast as an outsider. Benjamin Friedman, an economist at
Harvard whose 2005 book “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth” ar- gued that growth tends to foster liberal sentiments and open societies, whereas slowdowns undermine them, says this summer’s events “are predictable con- sequences of this kind of sustained eco- nomic downturn.” “Manifestations like these have ap- peared in the U.S. at such times before,” he told me, “most obviously in the 1880s and early 1890s,” when a sustained pe- riod of economic stagnation coincided with the abandonment of the Recon- struction-era commitment to civil rights, the widespread adoption of anti- Chinese legislation and a nationwide wave of lynchings directed not only at blacks, but also Catholics and immi-
SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Controversy has surrounded plans to build an Islamic center, including a mosque, not far from Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.
grants. For progressives, this dynamic will
take some getting used to. After the 2008 election, many liberals saw the re- cession as an opportunity for change. Rahm Emanuel’s statement that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” was widely quoted, and compar- isons to Franklin Roosevelt’s first term proliferated. In reality, though, recessions lead to
illiberal populist nationalism, not pro- gressive reform. If anti-immigrant sen- timent was somewhat muted in the ear-
ly ’30s, it was because the doors from Europe had mostly been shut 10 years earlier, during another moment of eco- nomic dislocation — the recession that followed the end of World War I. And, muted or not, anti-immigrant bias nonetheless inspired the Mexican Re- patriation Program, which Herbert Hoover launched in 1929. That program would continue throughout the Depres- sion, deporting hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican ancestry, many of them U.S. citizens. What’s often forgotten about the New
Deal is that 1934-37 was the fastest four- year run of economic growth in Amer- ican history, outside of World War II. In other words, it was the steep recovery from the Depression, not the Depres- sion itself, that powered FDR’s agenda forward. The other high-water mark of liberal- ism, the Great Society — including the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and the passage of the Civil Rights Act — was similarly a child of rapid growth and prosperity, not of crisis. The lesson is simple: The current controversies are ultimately byproducts of our economic morass. To really dispel the atmosphere of suspicion, what’s needed are ideas about how to boost the economy to bring unemployment down and earnings up. Finding policies that do all this will not be easy, but it is the only way to turn the national mood around. Those who support an open, plural- istic society won’t get very far wading into these controversies one by one — but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The economic roots of our summer of fear will hopefully prove transitory, but the rise in xenophobia may nonetheless inflict serious and permanent damage. A betrayal, even a fleeting one, of Amer- ica’s commitment to religious freedom could do lasting harm to the country’s relationship with a billion Muslims around the world. And while altering the text of the 14th Amendment would be extremely difficult, and is therefore unlikely, the shouting matches now un- derway still stand to permanently scar our national identity.
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