The New York Times Laments "A Sadly Wary Misunderstanding of Muslim-Americans." But Really Is It "Sadly Wary" Or A "Misunderstanding" At All?

“five bureaus”

You meant five boroughs didn’t you?

I agree with much of what you said about the New York Times, but please get an EDITOR to look over your posts before you press the POST button?

good catch jackson. The New York Times treats the four boroughs beyond Manhattan as if they are alien foreign news bureaus, so maybe Peretz picked the mistake up from the fading Gray Lady.
The demographics of the NYT poll are skewed (more Protestant and African-American than the NYC population) to favor support for the GZM, which might explain the deep disappointment of the editors. The comments most recommended by readers show a fine range of the various positions in the five boroughs, and across the world. I hope the NYT Editorial Board reads these comments to learn how out of touch they are, as reflected in their news coverage by reporters being spoon-fed politically correct storylines by public relations firms.
A weird time when it is the tabloid New York Post that has journalists at work exposing the various tax schemes and thuggery of the trio behind whatever is intended for what they now call Park51. El-Gamal insists it his vision, and Rauf has but a minor role. They all went silent this past week after Daisy's one-bedroom apartment on West 85 was revealed to be an IRS approved mosque serving 500 people in prayer five times a day, followed by the local CBS affiliate report that the El-Gamal's main investor is expert at creating shell companies who bill unnecessary medical procedures to auto insurers.

The reader's recommended comments are at (yes, I am #19 in 19th place. People are still reading and recommending the comments as I type):
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion...

“five bureaus”

For some reason, the voice and image of Emily Litella just came to mind.

9/11 falls on a Saturday - what will Saturday Night Live do? Will Geert Wilders speak at the 9/11 GZM protest? What will Muslims be doing?
"...Eid al-Fitr, a joyous holiday marking the end of Ramadan, will fall around Sept. 11 this year. Muslim leaders fear festivities could be misinterpreted as celebrating the 2001 terror strikes. ..."
from "For US Muslims, a 9/11 anniversary like no other" By RACHEL ZOLL (AP) – 2:00 p.m. 09 04 2010 NEW YORK — American Muslims are boosting security at mosques, seeking help from leaders of other faiths and airing ads underscoring their loyalty to the United States — all ahead of a 9/11 anniversary they fear could bring more trouble for their communities. ..." www google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jYMr4MEm1Vu6my2WD-agJeNrLTOAD9I1876G0

"Of course, Muslims and Arabs do not not act in America as they do in the increasingly Islamicized but non-practicing Christian and democratic sovereignties of Europe."

A minor detail, to be sure.

"Why do not Muslims raise their voices against these at once planned and random killings all over the Islamic world? This world went into hysteria some months ago when the Mossad took out the Hamas head of its own Murder Inc."

Andre Gluckmann calls it 'The Jerusalem Syndrome":

"“…On the scales of world opinion, some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tonnes. Two measures, two weights…. why do the 200,000 slaughtered Muslims of Darfur not arouse even half a quarter of the fury caused by 200-times fewer dead in Lebanon? Must we deduce that Muslims killed by other Muslims don’t count? This conclusion has its weak spots, because if the Russian Army - Christian, and blessed by their popes - razes the capital of Chechnian Muslims… killing tens of thousands of children in the process, this doesn’t count either. The Security Council does not hold meeting after meeting, and the Organization of Islamic States piously averts its eyes. From that we may conclude that the world is appalled only when Israelis kill a Muslim.

Should we thus presume that the public at large implicitly endorses the ideas that Ahmadinedjad shouts at the top of his lungs? And yet so many of those sceptics who display consternation over bombings in Lebanon seem shocked if you suspect them of anti-Semitism. I want to trust them. We don’t want to imagine that the entire planet is mired in anti-Jewish paranoia! But then the matter becomes even more puzzling. What is the source of this hemiplegia? Why is the world frightened by Israeli bombs alone?” (Sign and Sight)

___________________

"But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. "

"In an August 6, 2008 column in the UAE daily Al-Ittihad, Dr. 'Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of Islamic law at the University of Qatar and prominent liberal intellectual, attacked the Arab lawyers' unions for defending oppressors like Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein while ignoring their victims in Darfur and Halabja. [-]

"We will not be hearing the voice of the Lawyers' Union, which mobilized to defend accused presidents, [speaking out] for the weak and the marginalized. ... It is the victims of Darfur and the millions of the crushed and pulverized who are most in need of the legal support of masses of lawyers."

"... 300,000 people were killed in Darfur, and ... two million fled their homes after their villages were destroyed by the Sudan-backed Arab Janjaweed militias. Who is for them? Who is for the widows? Who is for the orphans? Who is for the displaced?

"These victims are all Muslims, and their only offense is that they are not Arab, the ethnicity of their rulers! If they find no support among those who are supposed to defend rights and help the weak, then to whom can they turn for shelter and protection? Is the international community to be accused if it intervenes to extend a helping hand?

"For five bloody years, the people of Darfur have been ruined and expelled, and the satellite television channels have broadcast horrific scenes that tormented the hearts of the world and make their consciences bleed - except for the Arab conscience, which was on vacation, and except for their [Arab] League, which remained comatose, and except for their media, which neglected to cover and broadcast the facts. " (MEMRI)

"...the question of whether America is "Islamophobic" - now bandied about so casually, as though opposition to the mosque has revealed a nasty strain in the American psyche, akin to the terrible racism or anti-Semitism that once ran wild - is so deeply offensive. This loathsome term is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.

Muslims are everywhere in this country, doing practically everything. ...
how did the narrative of "oppression" and so called "Islamophobia" take root so strongly among American Muslims? ...
This sense of victimization has now reached a point - especially given the consistent rhetoric of groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations - that many rank-and-file Muslims now genuinely believe that they are a persecuted and oppressed group. ...

But is there any consistent pattern of systemic discrimination akin to what other groups have seen at other periods in American history? Absolutely not.

Black Muslim leadership has foisted an ideology of victimization on immigrant Muslims, and it has stuck. Now we see these same leaders, fearing they have outlived their usefulness to the immigrant Muslim establishment, announcing the formation of a "Coalition of African American Muslims" that supports the mosque. It includes anti-Semitic race-baiter Louis Farrakhan and Siraj Wahhaj, who has defended the 1993 WTC bomb plotters and called the FBI and CIA the "real terrorists."

Critics of the Park51 project should see this for what it is: an attempt to conflate all opposition to this particular mosque with blanket hatred of the Muslim religion.

That's a devious tactic, and it must not succeed."

Abdur-Rahman Muhammad is a Washington, D.C.-based writer who was once the Imam of a mosque. Though still a Muslim, he now works to combat Islamic extremism in the American Muslim community.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/09/05/2010-09-05_whether_or_not...?

Today's NYT "World Trade Center Complex Is Rising Rapidly" on Ground Zero: "...So many conflicting demands were imposed on the site — it was to be a solemn memorial, a soaring commercial complex, a vital transportation hub, a vibrant retail destination and the keystone in Lower Manhattan’s revival — that none could advance. And the many competing players seemed unable to break the logjam for long. ... The progress since then [2008] has been visible, tangible and audible. ..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/nyregion/05zero.html?hp
[includes link to 20-slide show showing what is finally being built on Ground Zero, where the National 9/11 Memorial will be open by 9/11/2011
Some of the opposition to Park51 is because so many people think Park51 will be built before the actual 9/11 Memorial park, where eventually 400 white swamp oaks will provide an 80 foot canopy surrounding the two waterfall pools that are being built on the footprints of the Twin Towers. The compromise of making a graveyard both respectful of the dead while acknowledging that commercial life returns, on the edges of the Memorial, while the Museum is deep underground]

The Pew Poll of American Muslims in 2007 found that 17% thought that suicide bombings and other attacks on civilians were sometimes justified and another 5% said justified but only "rarely". To be sure, these are not high percentages; but they still amount to a startling 22% of those polled.

New York Times: Do you really think these are the same percentages one would find among non-Muslim Americans? Or are the American people you obviously think of as Islamophobic rabble actually correct in their perception that there is more support for terrorism against civilians in the American Muslim population than in the general population?

The same poll that only 40% of American Muslims believed that 9/11 was carried out by Arabs. 32% had no opinion as to who carried out the slaughter. And 28% were certain that 9/11 was a plot by non-Arabs (i.e., Jews? the U.S. Government?).

New York Times: Do you really think these Muslim percentages--I note that in a classic example of double-think, these percentages contradict the simultaneous significant support for terror attacks on civilians--are those one would find among non-Muslim Americans?

Source (but you have to read between the lines): http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1445/little-support-for-terrorism-among-musl...

(In the actual article this becomes "small pockets of support" for terrorism, but then if one reads carefully it turns out to be almost a quarter of those polled.)

I'd wouldn't be so disturbed by the significance of the "9-11 was a govt conspiracy etc" results as there is a noticeable slice of non-Muslim Americans who believe the same in the face of obvious questions that a ten-year old would ask. Certainly, however, there seem to be some obvious and ominous peculiarities about the results in which the aggregate numbers form a larger fraction than perhaps immediately obvious. Without dismissing the implications, I wonder, however, to what degree these questions are answered as abstract, philosophical questions rather than queries as to current conflicts and struggles.

For example, "I am against armed attacks on civilians" as an absolute statement of principle could have as a logical consequence the position that the Allied bombing of German cities in WW2 was illegitimate as a wartime policy (a position held by a number of people neither Muslim nor Arab, incidentally), so I might respond to such a question by picking an option that said "in certain well-defined circumstances" or something like that. My answer, stripped of historical context, would then flow into an aggregate of "not completely against attacks on civilians" and I couldn't do anything about it.

Likewise any survey that uses the term "terrorism" in a casual way can often obtain distressingly nuanced responses from people who either come from, or know a lot about, parts of the world where e.g. national independence wars have been prosecuted by forces that the ruling colonial power described as "terrorists" -- such people are justifiably cautious about applying the label without thinking.

I don't know enough about the surveys in question, but having seen some odd results over time I remain skeptical about apparently clear aggregate responses to what might well be poll questions that an intelligent individual might have difficulty with. For example, a survey of Irish-Americans in the 1970s and 1980s could have generated, without much difficulty, a substantial slice of open support for not only the goals but also the tactics of the IRA. But it wasn't the case that Irish-Americans simply embraced terrorism, it was that the IRA had some historical legitimacy going back 70 years and a lot of people weren't interested in the complications of the the Irish-British relationship, or the fact that the IRA was illegal in the Republic of Ireland, or the question of Northern Irish Protestant loyalties -- they just responded in a kind of cultural-tribal way. Polls of, say, Somali-American immigrants might be showing a similar characteristic.

Ironyroad, the parallel with the IRA may or may not work because as I understand it, and without romanticizing the IRA Provos and the Real IRA, they rarely struck at civilian targets without sending a warning first so that civilians were not killed. This is as opposed to the Islamist terrorists whose goal is, precisely, to kill as many civilians as possible. The clearest examples of IRA warnings are Bloody Friday in 1972, the Manchester Shopping Center bombing in 1996 and the Omagh bombing in 1998. Of course, sometimes they didn't send warnings. That's a fact.

But my point is that if one asked the Pew Poll question of Irish-Americans in the 1990s, you would be talking to them about groups that at least had the *reputation* for sending warnings and not wanting to kill civilians. It's simply not the same question, then, if one asks Muslim-Americans about suicide bombers.

In any case, the Times' point is that Muslim Americans are like ordinary Americans in the level of their condemnation of terrorism, and to believe anything else--as most ordinary Americans do--is Islamophobic. The Pew Poll of 2007 shows, however, that it is The Times editorial board who are ignorant (as well as insufferably arrogant and de haut en bas), and not the American public.

I'm catching up -- couldn't miss the beautiful day we had today in NY.

What I get from all the polls and surveys and babbling blowhards across the political spectrum is simple and depressing: counting the fringes and whackos of both the left and the right, easily half the country is blissfully, willfully ignorant of anything approaching factual accuracy on pretty much every issue from health reform to the mosque/cultural center/whatever it is today. And these folks have zero interest in rectifying their ignorance. The nut jobs are taking over. Time to duck for cover.

Sigh.

Insistence that the only valid criteria for debate, and for ending the debate, is Constitutional legality, makes the New York Times like one of the blind men trying to describe an elephant, a story from the Jain, which should be the religion building their temple at 45 Park Place:

"ELEPHANT AND THE BLIND MEN"

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.

"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.

"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."

"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have different perspective which we may not agree too. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, "Maybe you have your reasons." This way we don’t get in arguments. In Jainism, it is explained that truth can be stated in seven different ways. So, you can see how broad our religion is. It teaches us to be tolerant towards others for their viewpoints. This allows us to live in harmony with the people of different thinking. This is known as the Syadvada, Anekantvad, or the theory of Manifold Predictions. "

http://www.jainworld.com/literature/story25.htm

Instead, the NYT now shows how little they understand (or tolerate) Evangelical Christians. On Sunday, evangelist Bill Keller preached his inaugural sermon at his "9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero". The NYT titled the article "From the Other Side of Ground Zero, Anti-Muslim Venom" and did everything possible to characterize Keller as an extremist ex-con, quite a contrast with the NYT ongoing refusal to note any of the sordid activities and double-speak of Rauf and Khan and El-Gamal, all of whom remain silent since last week's revelations of tax-dodging, and further evidence of a general contempt for civic decency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/nyregion/06mosque.html

TNR.com discarded the Captcha!

To add to the "get an editor" department:

...But the Times survey does infer some knowledge about this matter....

Mixing up imply and infer: that's embarrassing irregardless of your musings--I use "musings" loosely--and which musings I refudiate irregardless of any incorrect use of irregardles.

Malahat: where ya' been?

If you have a minute I'll tell you of my experiening Cindy Lauper doing Crossroads Blues with the great Johnny Lang

Hi Basman,

Cindy Lauper doing a Robert Johnson song with Johnny Lang...this I gotta hear about!

ProfEthan,

You'll find this clip relevant to your IRA vs AQ comparison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxYzQtSxoKE

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth blind man, named basman, who touched the ear of the elephant.

..."It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth blind man, named basman, who touched the ear of the elephant...

Say what?

Off topic:

A while ago we heard about the case of "rape by deception" in Israel which came with the charge of institutionalized racism. It seems the story has come apart now, with new revelations.

http://lisagoldman.net/2010/09/06/a-rapist-who-dodged-jail-or-a-man-unju...

http://lisagoldman.net/2010/09/06/a-rapist-who-dodged-jail-or-a-man-unju...

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/believe-in-each-other-1.312429

To be a tad anti climactic about it: I saw them perform together on the Tonight Show about a week or so ago.

Lauper has a new record out, Memphis Blues that she's promoting. I don’t know if Lang plays on it but he was with her on the show nonetheless. And so was Charlie Musselwhite. What I noted was the almost complete focus on Lauper by Leno after she performed with the barest nod to Lang. (In fairness to Lauper, herself, she gave Lang generous playing and singing time.)

To me, albeit the 4th blind man, there was an unmistakable contrast between the tricked out, glittery looking Lauper, with her faux, Patti Labelle-lite, histrionic intensity—a Bonnie Raitt , or a Susan Tedeschi, she is not—and the dour dressed down, laconic looking Johnny Lang, jeans, untucked, unbuttoned flannel shirt over a T shirt, playing the blues great and singing the blues like he meant it and felt it, with genuine emotion conveying pain. Then they finish and out comes Leno to do his thank yous, and he’s all over Lauper, as I noted, with only the slightest nod to Lang. So it goes with celebrity, even of the attenuated Lauper variety, such that superior talent gets relatively overlooked.

And worse: the phenomenal Charlie Musselwhite, a legend, really, played brilliant harp and didn’t even rate a mention, at least not that I heard.

Makes the point even stronger, I think.

That's all.

photos of "the scene at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, yesterday as Muslims around the world celebrated Ramadan"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1309385/Hundreds-thous...

one assumes all the construction cranes in some of photos are for lodging for the pilgrims.

[apologies to those clutching and waving the First Amendment as the sole reason to shut down debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, a debate which is now morphing into a debate about whether Islam can be separate from Islamism]
"Lion's Den: Americans wake up to Islamism: "What began as a local zoning issue has morphed into a national debate with potential foreign-policy repercussions. " By DANIEL PIPES 09/06/2010 23:19

"The furor over the Islamic center variously called the Ground Zero mosque, Cordoba House and Park 51 has large implications for the future of Islam in the US and perhaps beyond.

The debate is as unexpected as it is extraordinary. One would have thought that the event that made Islam a national issue would be an act of terrorism. Or the discovery that Islamists had penetrated the US security services. Or the dismaying results of survey research. Or an apologetic presidential speech.

But no, something symbolic roiled the body politic – the prospect of a mosque in close proximity to the World Trade Center’s former location.

What began as a local zoning issue has morphed into a national debate with potential foreign-policy repercussions.

Its symbolic quality fit a pattern established in other Western countries: Islamic coverings on females spurred repeated national debates in France from 1989 onward.

The Swiss banned the building of minarets. The murder of Theo van Gogh profoundly affected the Netherlands, as did the publication of anti- Muhammad cartoons in Denmark.

Oddly, only after the Islamic center’s location had generated weeks of controversy did the issue of individuals, organizations and funding behind the project finally come to the fore. Personally, I do not object to a truly moderate Muslim institution near Ground Zero; conversely, I object to an Islamist institution being constructed anywhere.

Indeed, building the center in such close proximity to Ground Zero, given the intense emotions aroused, will likely redound against the longterm interests of Muslims in the US.

THIS NEW emotionalism marks the start of a difficult stage for Islamists in the US. Although their origins as an organized force go back to the founding of the Muslim Student Association in 1963, they came of age politically in the mid-1990s when they emerged as a force in US public life.

I was fighting Islamists back then, and things went badly. It was, in practical terms, just Steven Emerson and me versus hundreds of thousands of Islamists. He and I could not find adequate intellectual support, money, media interest or political backing.

Our cause felt hopeless.

My lowest point came in 1999, when a retired US foreign service officer named Richard Curtiss spoke on Capitol Hill about “the potential of the American Muslim community” and compared its advances to Muhammad’s battles in seventh-century Arabia. He flat-out predicted that, just as Muhammad had prevailed, so too would American Muslims.

While Curtiss spoke only about changing policy toward Israel, his themes implied a broader Islamist takeover of the US. Disconsolate, I could not fight his prediction.

But 9/11 provided a wake-up call, ending Emerson’s and my sense of hopelessness. Americans reacted not just to that day’s horrifying violence, but also to the Islamists’ outrageous insistence on blaming the attacks on US foreign policy, their blatant denial that the perpetrators were Muslims, and the intense popularity of the attacks among Muslims.

Scholars, columnists, bloggers, media personalities and activists became more knowledgeable about Islam, developing into a community focused on the Islamist threat, a community that now feels like a movement.

The Islamic Center controversy represents the movement’s emergence as a political force, offering an angry, potent reaction inconceivable just a decade ago.

The energetic push-back of recent months finds me partially elated: Those who reject Islamism and all its works now constitute a majority and are on the march. For the first time in 15 years, I feel I may be on the winning team.

But I have one concern: the team’s increasing anti-Islamic tone. Misled by the Islamists’ insistence that there is no such thing as “moderate Islam,” my allies often fail to distinguish between Islam (a faith) and Islamism (a radical utopian ideology aiming to implement Islamic law in its totality). This amounts not just to an intellectual error but a policy dead-end. Targeting all Muslims conflicts with basic Western notions, lumps friends together with foes, and ignores the inescapable fact that Muslims alone can offer an antidote to Islamism. As I often note, radical Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution.

This lesson learned, the defeat of Islamism can come into sight."

The writer (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=187326

Basman, There ain't no justice. Cindy Lauper is to the blues as Pat Boone is to rock and roll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8dx0oE--VI

Thanks for inspiring me to get reacquainted with Charlie Musselwhite and Jonny Lang. And this is great writing, imho:

"...there was an unmistakable contrast between the tricked out, glittery looking Lauper, with her faux, Patti Labelle-lite, histrionic intensity—a Bonnie Raitt , or a Susan Tedeschi, she is not—and the dour dressed down, laconic looking Johnny Lang, jeans, untucked, unbuttoned flannel shirt over a T shirt, playing the blues great and singing the blues like he meant it and felt it, with genuine emotion conveying pain. .."

Thanks malahat, and for the link too.

There are nearly 600,000-800,000 Muslims in New York City's five boroughs, according to the local demographers. There are approximately 100 mosques.

The great mass of Muslims appear hard working and family oriented. There quotidian lives have changed the City's five boroughs, somewhat.

New York has always been viewed as exotic to the rest of the country. Some Americans have great fear of coming to New York, even for a short visit. The presence of
600,000 to 800,000 Muslims, in the five boroughs, underscores their fear, anxiety and loathing, of the five boroughs.

I think the up-scale Wall Street-Lower Manhattan Muslim crowd is just a little too ambitious, too cool, and too much like their Abrahamic cousins. The US population continues to grieve over 9/11; the Culture Center is insanely too large; and it is too close for comfort. Not that Park Place is sacred ground with its Mac Donald's, gentleman's strip club, and the rest of the profane and common place commercialism of a typical marginal block in Lower Manhattan.

I'm not a fan of the political coloration of the anti-culture center extremists. I am concerned that the current proposal is splashy, driven more by ego than faith and premature.

(I'm with LISAH).

What a characteristically illiterate, ignorant post from a bigoted little man. You really need to cool it on the booze drinking and writing Marty, its getting worse every day.

My Muslim friends here in the city (part of a tight-knit set of friends here on the Upper West side that included many devout Jewish friends) are the finest people I know.

Very few New Yorkers are paying attention to this vulgar media chum. This is a childish, manufactured melodrama and it says everything about Marty that he jumps right in.

Hey Marty, you might still be able to get a cheap ticket to Florida to burn Qurans with the hate filled wackos you belong with. Maybe you can get FOX to to interview you on live TV!

Peretz writes about how the NYT reacted to the NYT poll conducted 8/27-31/10 of 892 adults who live in the five boroughs of New York City. 19% live in Manhattan.
Question #5. How much have you heard or read about the planned building of a mosque and Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero -- a lot, some. not much, or nothing at all?
A lot: 66% Some:20% Not much: 8% Nothing at all:5% DK/NA:1%

One can extrapolate from WandreyCer's "Very few New Yorkers" comment that most Manhattanites are in the 14% of respondents who have not heard or read much or nothing or do not know about this very real controversy.

Must be all of us ignorant residents of Queens, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island who have nothing better to do than oppose the tax dodging slumlords behind the alleged Mosque at Ground Zero. The self-indulgence of the Upper West Side latte-drinkers reminds me of why I moved away from the most liberal zip code in America in 1991.

I love most everything that comes from TNR - except Mr. Peretz. And this is case in point.

He strains to climb up on the cross and hammer in his own nails, graciously granting constitutional rights to Muslim citizens, even though they're so terribly unworthy because in his opinion they haven't protested against other members of their religion sufficiently. He has gauged the sentiments of American Muslims towards violence by... wait a second. What's this?

"Where does the Times get reliable data on the feelings of American Muslims (or, for that matter, Arab Americans) about terrorists and terrorism? Forgive me: I don't think such data even exists."

Oh. Well, we'll take his word for it that they aren't repulsed by the violence, and take action to "defend western society" against Islam. Attention American Muslims: you are no longer a part of our society, we've drawn up the battle lines. Report to your terror mosques for duty.

"So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."

Jeez Louise, Peretz. No one is asking you to honor anyone. Worse, the First Amendment is a privilege? A privilege granted to those that won't abuse it? Krikey, Peretz. Were you home schooled by a donkey? The First Amendment gurantees rights granted to everone to say anything they want. It protects you, the shouter standing on the box in front of city hall, the blogger who thinks little green men have climbed into his cranium, and me, just to name four.

Of course, under your reading, if you keep abusing your privilege, we'll have to pretend you are not worthy.

Dan

K2K - it frankly isn't any of your business - mine either. The people of the neighborhood who approved the project are the only people whose business it is.

It's not "ignorant" to pay attention to this nonsense, but I will say you're making different choices as to what to spend your energy on than me or anyone I know in New York City (many of whom live in the boroughs, as I did for many years). We're all disgusted at the bigotry being unleashed in the most diverse, successful, immigrant-driven city in the country - by outsiders who have no idea what New York stands for or that this is simply a place where people are working and raising their kids like anyone else. It is not OWNED by the media industrial complex and the fools triggered by it.

So yes, anyone NOT actively fighting that is adding to it and that disgusts me. My co-workers newly married 24 year old son was accosted on the subway the other day. He's in law school and hopes to join the FBI. Fight it or add to it, there is no inbetween K2K.

To me, ANYone taking the bait on this transparent media event is being played for a fool by demogouges, stupid polticians with nothing better to say or offer this country and the media industrial complex.

You want to spend your time being manipulated and having your lowest instincts triggered so someone else can make a buck or gain power off the misery it causes - be my guest. Don't expect me to support or respect that. I will fight it with everything I have and you should too.

>So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

How is that not either racism or religious bigotry? The anti-Arab tone in this magazine is becoming ever more alarming. What would TNR say if the comment above were made about Jewish Americans?

Good for you Jill.

Well put in strong posts.

Iggy Pop--a very funny video (a British audience laughing and clapping for the IRA--who were English gentlemen compared to what we face now, says the comic).

WandreyCer--the mosque/Islamic community center was never purely a local issue because it was intended to be 600 feet from Ground Zero, and 9/11 was a national trauma, not merely a New York one. And if it wasn't *much* of a national issue before, it sure is now, in good part because the President has now made it into a national issue with his comments. His position seems to be: Imam Rauf has a perfect legal and Constitutional right to build the "Ground Zero" mosque/Islamic community center, but the wisdom of doing so is another matter. Sounds reasonable to me.

An ignorant nonsensical article founded purely in hatred and racism, written by a shallow laughingstock of a writer. And I say laughingstock not just because I've disagreed with Peretz's articles, but because they are genuine embarrassments: the musings of a fifteen year old blogger with a thesaurus and a grudge.

If he wasn't so transparently idiotic I'd accuse him of spreading the same intolerance and cheapness that he is irrationally wailing against.

If you're looking for abuse of the first amendment look no further than this article. It shouts fire in a crowded theatre, when there is no fire to speak of.

floyd - its just Marty. He's an infamous bigot and represents no one else's views at TNR than his. I understand he's universally loathed by the writers there.

Here's a pretty good article by Eric Alterman calling out Marty for his racism, its fairly old and there are others. At least he's burying himself, his credibility is evaporating daily. Good riddance to a true blight on this fine magazine.

I do think he seems drunk alot too - his writing has been erratic at best lately, although he can be lucid at times, maybe when sober. Perhaps if he joined AA he'd become a more self-reflective human being. One can hope.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=my_marty_peretz_problem_and_...

"...anyone NOT actively fighting that is adding to it and that disgusts me. "

What disgusts me is this propagandistic attempt to turn the rich and well-connected and tone-deaf initiators of this Cordova Project into victims whose "misery" deserves to be addressed in no less than Niemoller's famous homily about the wages of indifference.

It is like someone here was trying to suggest that the protests against this mosque are of the same moral import as the opposition to desegregation in the South was.

"9/11 was a national trauma, not merely a New York one"

In some ways that's very true, of course, but it should be noted too that a significant number of Americans tend to discover their affection for New York and their sensitivity to its recent history only when someone wants to build a mosque there. Otherwise they detest the place with a venom that used to be (?) reserved for any community filled with Jews, Irish, and blacks.

Rich and connected noga? What does that even mean and why does it matter? Does someone have fewer rights because they do or do not have money?

Perfect analogy to the South actually. The bigotry spewing towards this project is exactly same. I see no concrete argument on your part otherwise except some an attempt to bring up irrelevant class issues. Thanks for the analogy though, perfect.

I don't remember any national outpouring of affection for NY when more than a 100 mosques were being built in it in the past.

“New York City has more than 100 mosques, compared with 10 in 1970, and more than 800,000 of its 8.21 million residents are Muslims, said Philip Banks III,” chief of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau."

http://www.foxnewsinsider.com/2010/08/09/growing-number-of-mosques-in-ne...

There must be something about this particular mosque that grates on people's sensibilities.

"rich and well-connected" reminds me of nothing so much as "money and the ethnic vote" courtesy of good old jacques parizeau, who I am sure Noga holds in high regard.

WandreyCer; It wasn't my analogy. We have beaten that horse already. Someone else, of your ilk, brought it up and tried to make the case that it was a "perfect analogy" without much success.

As for "Does someone have fewer rights because they do or do not have money?"

No one is arguing for depriving these entrepreneurs of their rights. You have come late into this conversation which has been taking place in many, miles-long threads. Everyone agrees that constitutionally they are untouchable. But you tried to present them as victims of a persecutive society which they are not. They want to build a hubridic project which does not meet with popular acceptance for reasons having to do with sensibilities, recent suffering and sheer bafflement at the irrationality of the choice of location. They can go on to build their center, ignoring the people and nothing will happen to them as far as the law is concerned. But you are not happy that they can do whatever they like, are you? You wish to force people to accept this project even if it sticks in their craw and when they refuse, you accuse them of being party to crimes against humanity. For that is the gist of what you said "...anyone NOT actively fighting that is adding to it and that disgusts me." isn't it?

Arendt once wrote that people do not understand that justice is for those who live in palaces as well as those living under bridges. She said it in the context of Robespierre who created the justice for the oppressed. Thus any aristocrat or anyone opposing or protesting against the justice of the guillotine was summarily beheaded. She also applied it to rich Jews for whom no pity was spared when they were sent into the gas chambers.

Can you provide the proper justification for applying this principle to the case of the Cordova Initiators? Are they persecuted? Are they in danger of being brought to court for building an Islamic center? Are they in danger of being exterminated for being Muslims?

If you can't make that case then please try to restrain your enthusiasm. You are not defending a vulnerable minority denied its rights. You are defending a pretty smug, arcane, well-heeled Islamic initiative which has been given full institutional support. In fact one wonders what exactly you are defending here.

Actually, miceelf, if you read my comment immediately above you will see that it's the mosque initiators that are comparable to Parizeau in this case. He tried to portray the poor defeated Quebecois as victims of rich Jews. Yet he was the one with the power, heading the cessationist movement, and in control of the provincial machinery, the money, the people, the establishment and the law. That's why his statement was so outrageous. That's why I find the attempt to portray Rauf, Inc as a persecuted minority such a chutzpa.

Noga - I just took my little out for ice cream on Broadway and thought about what you said about moneyed interests.

I'm afraid the moneyed interests here are what have created such a hate storm. Who has made more money off of this than the elite right wing media and their politicians? No one. They've made chumps of all of you.

Not victims of rich Jewish folk, chumps of Robert Murdoch and his brethren. When will people learn that these people laugh all thway to the bank with these diversions?

I really did enjoy your posts on this though, you are so learned and interesting.

"Who has made more money off of this than the elite right wing media and their politicians?"

How about the elite Left wing media and their politicians??

I really don't think "follow the money" is the crucial thing in this. It's not always the case that exposing the "seeding" of particular protests or ideological epiphenomena does away with them, because the feeling surrounding an issue may transcend the attempt to instrumentalize it, if you see what I mean. To put it bluntly, even if the whole thing is a covert GOP and Fox News scam, that still doesn't resolve the issue entirely.

Obviously some deeper unease about this project has been tapped into, and I think it's a lot to do with . . . miscommunication, but I don't mean that in the normal sense of a misunderstanding about the meaning of a term or something one can clear up. It's more that two different sets of assumptions are at work here, but there is a level of debate that assumes it's only one set.

I don't want to leave it there -- it's not deliberately vague -- but I have to head out.

noga is too kind with "What disgusts me is this propagandistic attempt to turn the rich and well-connected and tone-deaf initiators of this Cordova Project into victims"
Based on their own words in various interviews, and the publc record, I came to the opposition because the "tone-deaf initiators of this Cordova Project" are tax cheats, abusive landlords, and social-climbing whiners who get all the see-no-evil politically correct faux-journalists into telling these people they are victims when these con artists should be under investigation by Federal and NYS tax authorities. Maybe I should get IRS "church status" for my one-bedroom apartment by claiming I have 500 people praying in it five times a day so that I do not have to even file a tax return. That will give me free time to get Mike Bloomberg to steamroll my project for a privately owned non-profit, financed by tax-exempt municipal bonds, 15-story Druid-themed community center on another bit of Bronx parkland that Bloomberg wants to use his power of eminent domain as a favor to someone else he takes a fancy to...just as soon as I find a Bronx medical clinic owner as my primary investor, one raking in the fees from Medicaid and auto insurance fraud who has not yet been caught.

Actually, I would rather stop anyone from destroying the sole architectural legacy in Manhattan of two men who led New York City to it's first era of economic greatness by pioneering steam powered shipping, Paul Spofford and Thomas Tileston, who built 45 Park Place in 1858. It disrespects everything great about New York City for Spofford & Tileston to be forgotten:
As Walter Barrett wrote on page 221 in 1864 "The old merchants of New York City, Volume 5"

"...The house of Spofford, Tileston & Co. has been one that brought wealth and honor to New York. The partners have been very successful. They have never failed in business. They have performed together the same untiring round of commercial duties,and have never wearied until death set them free. ... I trust the old house and even the old and honored name of Spofford, Tileston & Co. will be continued or unchanged by their clerks, as partners, and successors for a hundred years more."

I wonder if the historian for JPMorganChase knows that Thomas Tileston was president of Phenix National Bank, first founded in 1812, and thanks to Tileston's leadership, and men like him, Phenix National Bank survived until 1921 when it started merging, finally becoming part of JPMorganChase.

I'm canceling my subscription right now.

irony: "...significant number of Americans tend to discover their affection for New York and their sensitivity to its recent history only when someone wants to build a mosque there. Otherwise they detest the place with a venom..."
irony is usually so careful about facts.
The venomous detesters surely exclude the more than 47 million tourists who visit New York City every year, with 2010 on track to set a new record. The 9/11 NATIONAL Memorial and Museum currently under construction, is scheduled to open on 9/11/2011, with estimates of SEVEN million visitors per year, mostly from outside NYC. No one ever watches Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on tv, or wants to see the Statue of Liberty, or a Broadway play, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Bronx Zoo, or see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center (the holiday gridlock is surely a myth), or Ellis Island, where "over 100 million Americans - one third of the population - can trace their ancestry to the immigrants who first arrived in America at Ellis Island before dispersing to points all over the country." wiki