At Salon, Justin Elliott explains how the phony “ground zero mosque” issue was fired up by pathological whackjob Pam Geller and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. The article begins,

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.

In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy.

There really isn’t. But now that it’s been jacked up into a Big Bleeping Deal, the Right is determined to continue Osama bin Laden’s dream of terrorizing America into destroying itself. As Michael Daly writes at the New York Daily News, blocking the building of the Islamic center is exactly what Osama bin Laden wants.

And it’s way past time to say plainly that Pam Geller is Osama bin Laden’s tool, agent, and spokesperson. Plus some other things I don’t say because I don’t care for vulgarity.

At Time magazine, Mark Halperin asks the GOP to not exploit the emotions fueling the “ground zero mosque” controversy as they campaign for the midterm elections. “Do the right thing,” he says. However, Halperin doesn’t make an argument that the issue won’t work for the GOP politically, so he’s whistling in the wind. Decency? Respect for human values? From today’s GOP? On what planet?

Halperin also repeats the assumption, and the fiction, that blocking the building of Cordoba House is “backed by the families of the 9/11 victims, in their most emotional return to the public stage since 2001.” One more time: No one has polled the families. We don’t know what they think. Yes, some of them have loudly denounced the project, while others have more quietly expressed support for it. Two major family organizations, Families of September 11 and the September 11th Families Association, have not taken a stand, one way or another.

Please, everybody, stop assuming that the survivors of the 9/11 victims are against the “mosque.” They are not all of one mind, and we have no way to know what a majority think.

This prediction doesn’t come from polls or from the I Ching. It comes from Bill Kristol, who writes,

The left has collapsed.

Its political support has collapsed. Public opinion polls point to a historic repudiation of the president and the Democratic party this fall—something on the order of a 60-seat Republican gain in the House. The GOP has an outside shot at taking the Senate as well.

There are three sure things in this world — death, taxes, and Kristol being wrong.

Also: At least one recent poll disagrees with Kristol.

Update: TBogg responds to Kristol with his usual measured subtlety.

Under a crassly misleading title “9/11 Families Stunned by President’s Support of Mosque at Ground Zero,” Andy McCarthy of National Review quotes Debra Burlingame as being “stunned,” as if she and she alone speaks for the 9/11 families.

She doesn’t. She claims to speak for some of the families though an organization called 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, but from the group’s own website I can’t tell if anyone beside Burlingame, let alone other 9/11 survivors, belongs to this organization. Whatever her following, she has been the ringleader of a group of people opposed to any sort of memorial on the Ground Zero site that doesn’t reflect their extremist right-wing political beliefs and their vengeful, hateful views. She is, in short, a nasty piece of work.

Let’s review. First off, once again let me remind everyone that no one has polled the survivors, although plenty of people who were no where near Manhattan on September 11 keep presuming to know what they think and to speak for them. And if I were a survivor of one of those killed and not a mere eyewitness to the atrocity, I’d be looking for a lawyer who would sue the asses off anyone who presumed to speak for me.

Of the three principal 9/11 family associations — none of which are affiliated with Debra Burlingame —

The Families of September 11 have made no statement about the Islamic Center that I could find on their website.

The September 11 Families’ Association has taken no stand on the issue, but in a recent addition to the website have said only “Currently, there is a firestorm of opinion on this issue, with September 11th families coming out strongly on both sides.”

The September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group founded and steered by families of September 11 victims, has issued a strong opinion in support of the Islamic Center.

May 20th, 2010

New York – Today, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a nationwide group founded by family members of those killed on 9/11 issued the following statement, which may be attributed to their spokesperson, Donna Marsh O’Connor:

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows strongly supports efforts to bring an Islamic Cultural Center to lower Manhattan, near the Ground Zero site. We believe that welcoming the Center, which is intended to promote interfaith tolerance and respect, is consistent with fundamental American values of freedom and justice for all.

We believe, too, that this building will serve as an emblem for the rest of the world that Americans stand against violence, intolerance and overt acts of racism and that we recognize that the evil acts of a few must never damn the innocent.

And I’d like to point out that a few days ago, when I wrote a blog post about the statement above, I titled it “A September 11 Family Association Supports the Islamic Center.” That is accurate. I don’t presume that this one organization speaks for all family members. (However, the names of several survivors are listed on the website as members, so at least I am reasonably certain the organization represents more than one person.)

But let Debra Burlingame flap her lips, and National Review says 9/11 Families Stunned by President’s Support of Mosque at Ground Zero, as if Debra Burlingame were the designated spokesperson for all of them. And righties everywhere will point to what Debra Burlingame says as PROOF that ALL SEPTEMBER 11 FAMILIES are opposed to the Islamic center, and that their tender sensibilities are being crushed under the weight of those liberal “elitists” who actually take religious liberty seriously.

But the truth is, it’s the Right that is arrogantly assuming they know what the September 11 families think and presuming to speak for them. This is nothing but arrogance; it is their usual small-minded view that theirs is the only correct opinion, and anyone who disagrees is not a real American, and possibly not even a real human being.

Anyone who genuinely respects what the September 11 families suffered will shut up and let them speak for themselves. I understand that Debra Burlingame lost a brother that day, and she is welcome to speak for herself and those people who choose to associate with her. But that leaves out the majority of the September 11 families.

It’s obvious that the many survivors of the victims of September 11 are not all of one mind about the proposed Islamic center, either in favor or opposed. We can see from the public record that some are very much opposed to it, but others are very much in favor of it. For example, this was recently reported in the New York Times, about Mayor Bloomberg’s outspoken support for the center:

In a widely watched address, Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker who has worked with the mayor on education reform, criticized the planned center and encouraged Mr. Bloomberg to change his mind.

But Mr. Bloomberg was heartened to hear that some of the families of 9/11 victims supported his position; they told him so a few weeks ago at a fund-raiser for the memorial at the site.

“One hundred percent of them in the room kept saying, ‘Please keep it up, keep it up,’ ” he recounted. “ ‘Our relatives would have wanted this country and this city to follow and actually practice what we preach and what we believe in.’ ”

Please, do not let the twisted, bigoted haters like Debra Burlingame become the only September 11 family member whose voices are heard.

Update: What Josh Marshall says:

No doubt the president’s advisors would much have preferred not to address this at all, wish it had never come up. But it’s difficult to imagine any president doing otherwise. We learn again that saying you’re for “democratic values” and freedom actually means being for “democratic values” and freedom. Are we in the tradition of the opening and plural societies of Amsterdam and London and America? Or the closed and authoritarian ones of Madrid and Moscow? The infrastructure of the Republican party has chosen to hoist its sail to religious bigotry. There’s no other way to put it. The president has done the only thing he could possibly do which is to state clearly that we’re Americans and we don’t discriminate on the basis of religious belief.

Right now about half of rightie bloggerdom is arguing to the effect that we are not bigots and we support religious freedom but we want to stop the building of this [alleged] mosque because it upsets us and we don’t like it. In other words, they are in favor of religious freedom except when they disapprove of it.

For example, at a site called neo-neocon there’s an argument that while some Sufis may have a right to build an Islamic center in lower Manhattan, it’s wrong for them to do it because it upsets a majority of Americans.

And if the blogger at neo-neocon drops by here — toots, I was in lower Manhattan on September 11. I’m an eyewitness. Where were you? If the answer is “watching on television a long way away” I say my opinion overrides yours.

And I say “rights” are meaningless unless they can be exercised. To say of course they have a right to build the mosque, but we must bully and intimidate them and throw all kinds of fits and stir up all the enmity we can so they don’t do it — um, no. That is not “principle.” That’s a “mob,” even if it’s virtual.

Reminds me of —

JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?

LORETTA: I want to have babies.

REG: You want to have babies?!

LORETTA: It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.

REG: But… you can’t have babies.

LORETTA: Don’t you oppress me.

REG: I’m not oppressing you, Stan. You haven’t got a womb! Where’s the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!

LORETTA: crying

JUDITH: Here! I– I’ve got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans’, but that he can have the right to have babies.

FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.

REG: What’s the point?

FRANCIS: What?

REG: What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies?!

FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

So, neo-neocon is all in favor of a symbolic freedom of religion, as long as people she doesn’t like don’t try to express that right in ways that make her uncomfortable. Then, they’ve got to be stopped. Like most other of the bigoted Right, she stops just short of declaring that the government must stop the building of the mosque, but she wanted President Obama to come out against it.

But when Obama defends the building of the mosque in freedom of religion terms (”I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”) he is refusing to make the obvious distinction most ordinary Americans have managed to draw: that just because there’s a right to do something doesn’t mean it should be done.

This is like saying you have a right to express your opinion, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to let you do it if we disagree with you. And people wonder why I don’t try to reason with these people. You might as well teach metaphysics to rocks.

At a Ramadan dinner at the White House last night, President Obama came out in support of the Cordoba House cultural center:

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

We must never forget those who we lost so tragically on 9/11, and we must always honor those who have led our response to that attack – from the firefighters who charged up smoke-filled staircases, to our troops who are serving in Afghanistan today. And let us always remember who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for. Our enemies respect no freedom of religion.

I’m far from the first person to note that parts of the American Right come across as the American Taliban. Really, the most extreme of the whackjobs are just mirror images of the jihadists they oppose. If they are not as viscous and destructive as the Taliban it’s only because they know they’d do jail time if they got caught.

As you might imagine, this story triggered a paroxysm of Obama hate on the right blogosphere. They are certain more than ever that the “ground zero mosque” is just part of Obama’s plot to turn America over to the Caliphate.

If you think about it, U.S. history is mostly a struggle over who we are. The Founders launched the country with all of the highest ideals of the Enlightenment, yet they lacked the spine to abolish slavery or even free their own slaves. And from then on, we’ve gone through one spasm of racial violence and xenophobia after another — against African-Americans; native Americans; Catholics; Jews; Irish and eastern European immigrants; ethnic Chinese, both immigrant and native born; German Americans during World War I; Japanese Americans during World War II; etc. etc. Later generations look at the raging ignorance of their forebears and recognize that it was wrong. And then they pick a new group to victimize.

So, once again, we are challenged to determine who we are. Are we the idealists who respect liberty and the rule of law? or are we the brainless mob driven to destroy whatever it is we hate and fear?

And if any righties stumble onto this site and are reading this: The people who are trying to stop the building of Cordoba House are the brainless mob. The people who support it are the freedom-loving idealists. Keep that straight.

Ever since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, religious conservatives have tried to get around the very first provision in it — Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. “Establishment of religion” was understood to mean making any one religion the official state religion. Thus, Congress may not write laws that favor one religion over another, and the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended this restriction on the power of government to the states (per Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 [1925] and other SCOTUS decisions) and any government chartered by a state.

And it’s interesting that this clause is the very first of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. No doubt the founders were already concerned that religious factionalism was going to be a big issue in future America. They also had fresher memories of the religious wars of Europe than we do today.

As several of the Founding Fathers made clear (see, for example James Madison’s Federalist #10) they were concerned that some religious faction could take over the United States government. The First Amendment is our protection that even if followers of one particular religion did take over the White House and Congress, they could not write laws favoring their religion and imposing their beliefs on everyone else.

And for the past 219 or whatever years, American religious conservatives have complained about not being allowed to use government to enforce their religious beliefs and practices, while at the same time expressing fear that if X religious faction became a majority, those people might enforce their religious beliefs and practices.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I remember people speaking against John F. Kennedy for president in 1960 because they believed a Catholic president would take orders from the Vatican and allow the Pope to rule America. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about this, “What seemed to me most deplorable was not the fact that so many people feared the strength of the Roman Catholic Church; it was that they had no faith in the strength of their own way of life and their own Constitution.” (h/t)

Yeah, pretty much. So in their ignorance and fear, the bigots (and y’all haters are bigots, whether you like it or not) form a howling mob to destroy the Bill of Rights, and tell themselves they’re doing it for “freedom.”

So over the past several days here on this blog I have documented that within a three-block radius of the area called Ground Zero there are at least two strip clubs, plus a number of bars (one popular with lesbians). This morning through googling I found a lingerie and porn video shop about two blocks south of Ground Zero that a reviewer calls “grimy” and “sleazy.” Those establishments have existed in close proximity to Ground Zero lo these many years, and no one seemed to care.

Yet talk about putting up a cultural center within this same area, one that won’t even be visible from the Ground Zero site, and suddenly people start squawking about “hallowed ground” and “sacrilege.” Give me a break.

At First Things, a Catholic site apparently dedicated to making Catholics look like bigoted, sanctimonious pricks (I’m not saying they are, of course), someone has published “Everything you need to know about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (Ground Zero Mosque Imam)” without bothering to mention that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf Is a Sufi. That’s kind of a big oversight, unless your intention was not to provide useful information but to propagate hatred. I don’t think Jesus would approve.

Betsy of Betsy’s Page writes,

But of course, our betters such as the Mayor and the White House which posted his remarks all think that the only reason that people would oppose such a mosque is due to unthinking prejudice against Muslims. Because, in their view, only someone of deep-seated bigotry would be against such a mosque. Well, then the majority of Americans are bigots.

I think that if most people could be taken on a tour of lower Manhattan to see where the Islamic Center will be built and its actual proximity to the World Trade Center site, and also what the Islamic Center actually will be, they’d realize it’s nothing to get worked up about. It’s obvious people are envisioning a big, classic mosque with a dome and minaret either on the Ground Zero site or across the street from it. Instead, it’s going to be a multi-purpose building tucked away on a narrow street where no one will be able to see it unless they happen to go down that street. Once again, it won’t be visible from Ground Zero.

However, sometimes a majority of Americans are bigots. Why else did it take so long to get rid of Jim Crow, for example?

Joe Klein writes,

Today, he [Krauthammer] invents a concept that can only be called “Intolerance Zoning.” His argument: we create areas where certain types of behavior are allowed or not–commercial and non-commercial, alcohol or no; we also make decisions about whether certain forms of usage–a Disney theme park near the Manassas battlefield–are appropriate or not. But all these decisions have one thing in common: they concern activities that are not protected by the Constitution. Freedom of religion is protected. Period. (Even by Krauthammer’s standard, the Mosque will be located two blocks away from Ground Zero–in a heavily commercial areas filled with office buildings, bars [some topless, if I recall], fast-food stores, betting parlors, cheap clothing stores…would his “hallowed zone” be impinged upon by those activities–or it just the presence of Muslims that defile a place where innocent Muslims were among those who died.)

Klein describes the neighborhood well. This is what the wingnuts are trying to protect as “hallowed ground.”

The New York Times has an article today on why Mayor Bloomberg is so adamantly in favor of the Islamic center. His family was subjected to anti-Jewish bigotry when he was a boy, and he’s taking the “mosque” controversy personally.

In a widely watched address, Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker who has worked with the mayor on education reform, criticized the planned center and encouraged Mr. Bloomberg to change his mind.

But Mr. Bloomberg was heartened to hear that some of the families of 9/11 victims supported his position; they told him so a few weeks ago at a fund-raiser for the memorial at the site.

“One hundred percent of them in the room kept saying, ‘Please keep it up, keep it up,’ ” he recounted. “ ‘Our relatives would have wanted this country and this city to follow and actually practice what we preach and what we believe in.’ ”

Finally, see Jonathan Chait, “When Shuls Were Banned in America.”

An Aussie living in New York City writes about the Islamic center controversy for the Sydney Morning Herald. His basic point is that most of the hysteria is coming from outside New York City, which is true.

Oddly — but understandably — New York is not the nucleus of American rage over the mosque. The shrillest voices of opposition are far off. And the consequences are enforced in small American towns and cities where there are not the experiences of living tightly alongside the world’s races and creeds and nor the louder voices of tolerance. …

…Yet in New York, which lived through the epic destruction and terror of that day in September 2001 and has tens of thousands scarred by the losses of loved ones and colleagues, one senses the mosque would be allowed to rise without the rancour felt outside the city. Indeed it is possible to envisage that a thriving mosque in the shadow of the tragedy will speak more eloquently of memory, sorrow and forgiveness than a museum that looks to the past and a memorial that is still.

September 11 is different for New Yorkers. It was experienced differently; it is remembered differently. It’s hard to explain how it’s different, but it is.

A lot of righties are pointing to a diary at Daily Kos as an example of leftie obliviousness, and I have to say I was a bit put out with it also. Something the Dog Said wrote,

Given that they are such a small minority in this nation, it is odd that so many of our fellow citizens see them as such a threat. Yes, the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they were more about optics than actual harm. The economy was already taking a hit before the Twin Towers fell. The reaction of the nation to seeing two major buildings in New York fall on T.V. has boosted the attack out of proportion. While the loss of even a single life is to be condemned and the devastation these deaths caused the families of those killed, more than this number of teens are killed every year incar crashes. These are also tragic losses but we do not make the kind of high profile issue of it that the 9/11 attacks are.

There was genuine massive and deep trauma suffered by people in New York City. It may have been about “optics” for those watching on television, but for some of us it was a real-world experience, and there was actual harm. To say that 9/11 “more about optics than actual harm” is a colossally stupid and insensitive thing to say.

That said, I appreciate the point that I think What the Dog Said was trying to make. The threat from jihadists is indeed blown way out of proportion, in that all the jihadists on the planet put together could not pose an existential threat to the United States. The only way they could destroy the nation is if they frighten us into destroying ourselves.

But we don’t need jihadists for that. We’ve got wingnuts.

If we tried, we might come up with a number of strategies that might effectively undermine the tea party movement. This is not one of them. Although I suspect the real purpose of the F*ck Tea initiative is to raise some money selling coffee mugs and T-shirts.

Remember the Bigger Asshole Rule: To win the hearts and minds of the American public, your first job is to make your opponents look like bigger assholes than you are. Thus, trying to match your opponents in asshole-ness is counterproductive.

A blogger for the American Family Association (AFA) has produced what must be the most ignorant, over-the-top, foaming-at-the-mouth hate post about mosque building yet. He wants mosques banned entirely from the United States.

When I opened the page, I got a pop-up ad for a book about the persecution of Christians.

I take it there’s a document called “An Explanatory Memorandum” attributed to the Muslim Brotherhood that has taken on a role analogous to that of the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The document is not necessarily fraudulent; the Muslim Brotherhood is an extremist Sunni transnational organization that might very well be planning for world domination. Of course, they are about as likely to achieve this goal as Pinkie and the Brain. And the Muslim Brotherhood does not speak for all of Islam. It doesn’t even speak for all Sunni jihadists; I understand there is a nasty rivalry going on between MB and al Qaeda.

Someone here had said that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the main guy behind the Cordoba House Islamic center, is a Sufi. This is a detail I have yet to see in a news story, but I can confirm it is true. He is the imam of a Sufi mosque in lower Manhattan, about ten blocks north of the proposed Cordoba House site.

Thus, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is not connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. I can say this because there is no way the Muslim Brotherhood, or al Qaeda, or the Taliban, or any other organization dedicated to enforcing dogmatic Sunni Islam would have anything to do with a Sufi. In fact, Sufis in the Middle East have suffered terribly from attacks by Sunni terrorists.

Earlier this year, suicide bombers destroyed a major Sufi shrine in Pakistan, killing at least 50 Sufi worshipers and injuring about 200 others. The Taliban were blamed, although a Taliban spokesman denied the charge. But the Pakistan Taliban have been attacking Sunni Sufi shrines and mosques as vigorously as they’ve been demolishing the remnants of the ancient Buddhist civilization there.

And then there is dogmatic Shia Islam. The Shia regime in Iran has been systematically oppressing Sufism in recent years.

Sufism is mystical Islam. Dogmatists don’t get mysticism. This is true of the dogmatists of all religions. It is often the case that mystics from different traditions understand each other better than the dogmatists of the same tradition.

The idea that all Muslims are somehow part of the same conspiracy is absurd enough, but to put Sufis in the same boat as jihadist is just plain ignorance.

Nice article from a June 2009 issue of time, “Can Sufism Defuse Terrorism?”

In 2001, one of the first things to happen after the Taliban was chased out of Kabul was that the doors of the Afghan capital’s Bollywood cinemas were flung open to the public. The language of cosmic love that animates Bollywood music and enchants millions of Muslims around the world, even if sung and acted out by non-Muslims, is a direct legacy of centuries of Sufi devotional poetry. At Sufism’s core, suggests Oxford University’s Devji, is an embrace of the world. “It allows you to identify beyond your mosque and village to something that can be both Islamic and secular,” he says. “It’s a liberation that jihadis could never offer.”