Peacemaking at Ground Zero
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 3:00 PM
How about a non-controversial topic for a change?
The “mosque at Ground Zero” has dominated air waves the last few times I’ve turned on the radio.
It sounded obscene to me at first: a mosque with a minaret rising from the ashes of the World Trade Center?
And local politicians are all on board? This is a joke, right?
What gave me pause—a sense that perhaps that wasn’t the whole of the story—was talking to a relative who’s on the Lower Manhattan Community Board that recently voted in favor of the center. Their vote as it happens has no effectual power, but it does reflect the opinion of the community.
My relative reports that the true locals—including local Catholic and Jewish groups in the neighborhood—have respect and affection for Imam Feisal (leader of the project) because of his and his wife’s community service in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. She further reports that the last few community meetings have been overtaken by loud protesters against Cordoba House who garner only community resentment because a) they don’t live in the neighborhood, yet are trying to influence community decisions and b) they shout everyone else down.
Furthermore, the proposed “Cordoba House” will not be a mosque but a cultural center explicitly modeled on the famed Jewish-run “92nd St. Y,” an important community center on the opposite side of town. Cordoba House will include a Muslim prayer room and Muslim events, but it will also house a pool and host art exhibits and performances open to the public. And there will be no minaret.
It’s also not precisely at Ground Zero; it’s doubtful it will even be visible from Ground Zero once re-building at the site of the fallen towers begins in earnest. (Check out this video to see the distance under discussion.)
My relative complained that these outsiders “don’t own the neighborhood.” I would suggest to her (she is much beloved, but we rarely agree on politics!) that Ground Zero doesn’t belong to just the neighborhood anymore, but the preceding facts do temper my perspective. At least I can understand coming to a different conclusion than my initial one.
Nevertheless, whatever the good intentions of Imam Feisal and his community (and there remains an unproven allegation that Cordoba House is being funded by radicals), the whole debate has caused me to think back on the bitter response to a Carmelite convent founded on the grounds of Auschwitz in the ‘80s.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Bill McGurn had the same thought and expounded on it, offering John Paul II’s mediation of the dispute as a model.
He recalls the uproar after Carmelite nuns moved into a building on the edge of Auschwitz:
For Jews, Auschwitz is a symbol of the Shoah, and the presence of a convent looked like an effort to Christianize a place of Jewish suffering. Suspicions were further aroused by a fundraising brochure from an outside Catholic group, which referred to the convent as a “guarantee of the conversion of strayed brothers.” The protests mounted over the course of several years and various interfaith agreements, and pointed to the real strains that remained between Poles and Jews over a shared history with very different perspectives.
Many Catholics, not just in Poland, could not understand how nuns begging God’s forgiveness and praying for the souls of the departed could possibly offend anyone. There was also a nationalist element. Many members of the Polish resistance had also been murdered at Auschwitz. And again like our present controversy at Ground Zero, intemperate reactions and statements from both sides only inflamed passions.
I recall that debate very well—I was passionately on the side of the nuns, unable to understand how anyone could possibly oppose prayer of reparation,for heaven’s sake, once it was explained to them.
The Pope thought otherwise, however, and we can learn from his decision. Ordinarily local problems should be settled locally, but when the Pope saw that dispute had become intractable and was inflaming passions rather than doing any good, he asked the nuns to withdraw, even though this would be painful for them.
It wasn’t that they didn’t have a right to be there or that their desire wasn’t beautiful—just as there is a legal right for Muslims in NY to build Cordoba House and, taking their claims at face value, their desire to foster interfaith tolerance and cooperation is noble.
But sometimes legal right isn’t everything. As McGurn argues,
not all big questions can—or should—be reduced to legal right. Living together as neighbors in a free and inescapably diverse society requires more skills than just knowing how to hire sharp lawyers. Sometimes it requires leaders willing to sound a grace note, even yielding to the feelings of others who may not see our plans the same way we do.
However good our intentions, there comes a point where you are doing more harm than good and the graceful thing is to yield.
Without doubt Pope John Paul II did not share the more malevolent interpretations attached to the presence of the Carmelites at Auschwitz. By asking the nuns to withdraw, he didn’t concede them either. What he did was recognize that having the right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.
I have moderated my initial opinion. I no longer think of the project as an obscenity, but I still hope all involved will think better of it. It couldn’t be that hard to move it a few blocks further away, there has already been a public offer of help to do just that, and pushing the plans through against the sensibility of most New Yorkers (if not those in the immediate neighborhood) and many Americans doesn’t seem like a good starting note for a peace-building project.
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