THE AUSTRALIAN: NOW that Tom Friedman in The New York Times has endorsed the construction of an Islamic centre at Ground Zero, no one can be against it.
But since he has not even made a real argument for it, aside from recounting his experience at a Broadway jamboree in the White House, where the only Muslim name was the President's middle one, which is nothing more than a non sequitur, the column stands alone with neither evidence nor logic.
Still, everybody is for it . . . except Abe Foxman and his Anti-Defamation League who are correct but had better keep quiet lest they bare the stigma of prejudice that comes from being against something whose only justification is that it has no reason.
So what is the real positive excuse for a mosque at Ground Zero? Perhaps to demonstrate that we don't hold anything against the men who did it.
Or to show that we have nothing against the culture from which they came. And nothing against the societies across all Islam that cheered the news of the 3000 dead.
But, of course, these are not accurate assertions of our emotions, then or now. Even as we try to understand them, we despise them. No mosque built on the ground where mothers and fathers, children and grandparents, relatives and friends and lovers were sacrificed will ever console or conciliate.
At best, it will remind of the cool brutality and fierce passion that animated these ghoulish people of faith to murder on a scale so huge almost to daunt the imagination. Ironically it will backfire because it will (rightly) remind visitors of the religious identity of the perpetrators. >>> Marty Peretz, The Australian | Tuesday, August 10, 2010
