One thing we tend not to see a lot of in these political discussions about Islamic-Western relations is the actual voice of Islamic people. It tends to be a debate within the context of non-Islamic society about religious tolerance vs. concerns about encroachments on our Western way of life.
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid is the general manager of Al-Arabiya television. Mr. Al-Rashid is also the former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, and the leading Arabic weekly magazine, Al-Majalla. He is also a senior Columnist in the daily newspapers of Al-Madina and Al-Bilad.
Yesterday, he published a column where he called President Obama's statement Friday in support of freedom of religion for the developers of the Ground Zero mosque, "unnecessary and unimportant, even as far as Muslims are concerned" . . .
Mr. Al-Rashed:
I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district. Is there a side that is committed to this mosque? The fact is that in the news reports there are names linked to this project that costs 100 million dollars!
The sides enthusiastic for building the mosque might be building companies, architect houses, or politicized groups that want suitable investments?! I do not know whether the building applicant wants a mosque whose aim is reconciliation, or he is an investor who wants quick profits. This is because the idea of the mosque specifically next to the destruction is not at all a clever deed. The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery.
What the US citizens do not understand is that the battle against the 11 September terrorists is a Muslim battle, and not theirs, and this battle still is ablaze in more than 20 Muslim countries. Some Muslims will consider that building a mosque on this site immortalizes and commemorates what was done by the terrorists who committed their crime in the name of Islam. I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a symbol or a worship place that tomorrow might become a place about which the terrorists and their Muslim followers boast, and which will become a shrine for Islam haters whose aim is to turn the public opinion against Islam. This is what has started to happen now; they claim that there is a mosque being built over the corpses of 3,000 killed US citizens, who were buried alive by people chanting God is great, which is the same call that will be heard from the mosque.
http://www.aawsat.com/...
Al-Rashid, IMHO, does a good job in reframing the debate. It is not a question of whether the proposed Islamic cultural center would be a symbol of Islam, or of Muslims in general. I think we can all agree that there is and should be a place in America for Muslims and Islam. The question posed by al-Rashid is more particularly whether it will be a symbol of terrorism waged in the name of Islam.
Maybe Al-Rashid is only forced to see it that way because of the uproar that it has already caused. It could be argued that it has only become a symbol of Islamic terrorism insofar as the right wing noise machine has made it so. But it could also be argued that given the psychic weight of 9/11 within the American consciousness, establishing an Islamic center at the site of a building that was literally destroyed by pieces of the very same planes that brought down the towers at the World Trade Center would inevitably lead to the kind of reaction cited by Al-Rashid as reason not to build it.