The goal of the allegedly different parties is the same: to prevent the building of a mosque. You might contend that their motivations are different, but they are not different enough to matter. One group is just a bunch of rednecks (hey, me too!), and the other are cultured urbane cosmopolitans who just dislike one particular imam (who has never been charged with any crime and in fact has worked with multiple Presidential administrations and written multiple books about how Islam and the West may coexist and denounced 9/11 and is hated by Al Qaeda for those reasons). That is not a difference, in a nation of laws. If anyone has evidence that this man is a criminal or terrorist, I’m sure at least one of the dozens of police agencies with which we’ve been blessed will take an interest. Until then (actually, given a congregation that wants to worship, even after then) opposition is not legitimate. It is of course everyone’s right to speak, and in the unlikely event that right ever requires defense we’ll all be right there, but until then I’ll be speaking my mind too.

When the goal is bigoted, all those who share that goal are tarred by it, whether arsonists or not. The Tea Party, near as I could tell, was originally about the government spending less money. That is a legitimate goal, even if some people come to it via racial animus. Those who would wage a quixotic culture war against the Islamic world should find ways to do so that don’t directly contradict our Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion.

http://www.honor911victims.com/

Thank you and may God bless you.

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!)

Not quite, but I do think there are some basic points on which most reasonable people of either side can compromise. Up to this point, the leaders of the project have yielded to absolutely none of the protesters’ requests. That’s not exactly an auspicious tone of tolerant dialogue for a group claiming to “build [cultural] bridges.” There are certainly ways to make the mosque construction more palatable to the public and resuscitate this Imam’s suspicious image. No one is expecting him to be pure as the driven snow, but when a “moderate Muslim” can not even bring himself to unequivocally condemn and distance himself from organizations, such as Hamas, I think any rational American may find this objectionable. Just as there are folks who blindly support the mosque, there are those who oppose the mosque with little regard for facts; neither have logic on their side. 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 have some inkling of the source of your passion for preventing mosque construction in southern Manhattan. You object to the particular clergy involved, and you mistrust the sources of the $9,000 in the building fund. You object to the location, several blocks and around the corner from the WTC site. Is that all? Would you abide the mosque of a different, patriotically-American Muslim cleric? Would it be OK if Warren Buffett was paying for the whole thing? Would it be OK if the mosque were five blocks away? Ten blocks? Ten miles?

Do you expect all those opposed to construction to share this precise set of preferences? Do you doubt that some people think all mosques in the USA should be burned to the ground? Do you doubt that some people think all churches in the USA should be burned to the ground? (I’m confident that we would all disagree with the latter two viewpoints!) On the basis of what universal principle do we say that you are right and those who have a different preference with respect to others’ worship in their neighborhood or nation are wrong?

So I think we should be consistent with a message of respect for rights and when actions infringe on rights we should look to disable to conduct not inflame it.

My concern about the mosque protests is that they are inflaming false beliefs.

Well let’s make a few things clear. The opponents of the GZM have no qualms with building a mosque per se. In fact I would venture a guess that most of them are exceedingly tolerant of Islam within the US. But of course this house of worship isn’t being built just anywhere; it’s within shouting distance of the worst Islamist attack in American history. For many Americans, particularly those closest to the victims, this is a premeditated and insensitive provocation that unnecessarily opens old wounds. Is it not possible to oppose this mosque while harboring no ill will towards any other American mosque or even Islam? Is there a chance that these “prejudiced rubes” can distinguish between any other Muslim structure and a mosque deliberately planned by an Imam who refuses to condemn Hamas and equitably indicts the US in Islamist terror? And considering the project’s controversy even the most naïve and tolerant of us may find the Imam’s unwillingness to voluntarily disclose his funding suspicious and (excuse the pun) in bad faith.

This is not just any mosque and it’s not just any Imam. Given that, slandering all opponents of the mosque as bigoted, vicious, ignorant oppressors seems not only inappropriate but also a bit credulous and uncritical. “Support” whomever you want. If you can “hold your nose” and endorse a group with questionable intentions and such clumsy callousness, be my guest. As for myself, I will “support” the protestors as I would a boycott on a business of disrepute. Their methods of discouraging financiers and labor unions through negative publicity is well within the boundaries of “fair play” by libertarian standards.