Do Anti-Mosque Protests Breed Terrorism?

Politicians…

Yeah, yeah, politicians, what you said. Demagogues, rabble-rousers, etc.

You characterize [mosque] opponents pretty harshly, but their rhetoric and objections don’t come close to this caricature. Most of the protesters, as you pointed out, reasonably understand the Imam’s right to build, reject eminent domain to block it and are simply airing their opinions. Hate-filled bigotry is hardly an accurate description of their views.

They tried statist coercion first, and if it was still on the table they’d still be gunning for it. Why is it that we can condemn the media gasbags and politicians, but not the throngs (probably more like dozens, but I don’t want to argue that point now) of useful idiots who line up behind them (actually in front, since no important person really wants to go to jail if things take a turn)? If the purpose is merely to communicate some fatuous sense of indignation at the idea of a mosque several blocks from the WTC site, at what point will that communication be sufficient? When construction begins? After they’ve held their first worship services? At the beginning of our upcoming war with Iran? A decade into that war? We have a name for someone who stands outside a church or synagogue haranguing and cursing those who worship within. It’s called a bigot, and civilized people don’t care to know why a bigot chooses to be a bigot.

…even if they were as despicable as the Westboro baptists, cowering in fear of hypersensitive Muslim outrage is no way to run a free society. Whether it’s a cartoon of Mohammed or questioning the location of a mosque, why are the threats of religious zealots considered relevant?

Here we’re really talking past each other. I don’t care about the feelings of Al Quaeda; they’re cockroaches. I don’t care about the threats of Al Quaeda; hot dogs have killed more people. In fifty years all Muslims will publicly revile AQ in the way that half of them do privately today. I’m sure that many who defend the mosque do so out of fear, but that’s not why a libertarian would defend the mosque. A libertarian would defend the mosque because it will sit on private property, and statists attempt to prevent its construction. A libertarian would defend the mosque because no one should be afraid to worship, and the type of rhetoric we’ve heard recently has in the past been a prelude to bricks through stained glass and burning crosses. A libertarian would defend the mosque because this is the USA, and we were all immigrants once. A libertarian would defend the mosque because she roots for the right result, not for the right team.

Then a libertarian might well draw a picture of Mohammed. That analogy doesn’t work as well for the bigots as you seem to think. Drawing a picture threatens no one in and of itself. Building a church, a temple, or a mosque threatens no one in and of itself. It is the reaction of the emotional mob to these innocuous acts (or to what these acts represent to their personal sense of tribal morality) that harms those involved, and our society itself. So long as those reactions persist, we must keep drawing and keep building. (Call me a pessimist, but I think that means we have to keep drawing and building forever.)

Considering how relatively innocuous the protests have been, suggesting that we should be wary of their effects on terrorist recruitment seems foolish.

Predicting the actions of insane religious nuts might be difficult, but those of modern acculturated Muslims are easier to imagine. Fundies have been telling them for years that a universal freedom-oriented society holds nothing for them; they need the insular tyrannical bosom of a fundamentalist sharia-based caliphate to serve their needs. And now Americans are telling them that freedom thing isn’t really for them; they should go back to Michigan or at least to Egypt. We didn’t really mean it with that Bill of Rights thing; if you kneel in the wrong direction when you pray it doesn’t apply to you. This gross hypocrisy might not inspire everyone to strap on the C4, but it won’t hurt the latest AQ fund drive.

I’m sure it’s unfair for me to point at this report.

At this point, anti-religionists have several options. Either the linked anti-mosque protesters are somehow different than those under discussion here, or the planned mosque in the link is somehow the same as the one under discussion here. I’d recommend the latter option, as it has the virtue of consistency with reality. That is, the organizers and clergy of the Tennessee mosque have no more relation to terrorism than those on Park Place. There is no evidence for such a connection, and no official investigation under way to collect such evidence. The reactions to the two mosques are due to qualities of the protesters not qualities of the protested. QED: bigotry. In a nation of laws, the would-be mosque-builders are guilty of nothing other than offending people whose profession it is to take offense on behalf of the bigots who pay them.

Please note that I myself have been guilty of bigotry on multiple occasions, and regularly visit and break bread with many others whose bigotry is manifest on a regular basis. I don’t hate the sinner, just the sin. I find that until we recognize the existence of evil, even in so rudimentary a way as calling it by its own name, we are ill-equipped to combat it. Those whose morality is personalized and tribal may not appreciate this point, however. For some people, “us” and “them” are far more salient categories than universal ones like “good” and “evil”.

It’s highly disingenuous to demonize opponents as bigots using such broad strokes when there are clearly valid complaints that don’t pivot on a universal system of what is “right” and “wrong.”

I may be misinterpreting your last sentence. I read it as sort of a nationalist/race duty/Wahhabist apologetics, when perhaps it was meant as a bold Nietzschean condemnation of outmoded slave morality. (I also disagree with the latter reading, but it’s much cooler!)