Mosques come true

A mosque will be opened near the site of the September 11 attacks. She was conceived as a symbol of reconciliation, but became a bone of contention

The answering machine on Steven Suleiman Schwartz's phone greets with the phrase "salaam alaikum" and says "inshallah" at parting. A white American and hereditary communist converted to Islam in 1997. It was then that an Arabic “patronymic” was added to his Anglo-Saxon name and Jewish surname. Four years later, al-Qaeda terrorists crashed into the New York towers. Schwartz then did not disown the newly adopted religion. But with revolutionary zeal (in his youth he was a Trotskyist) he began to denounce the Wahhabis and glorify the liberal trends in Islam - Sufism and Hanafism. He now heads the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington.

Another liberal Muslim organization, the Cordoba Initiative, emerged after the September 11 attacks and also unites Muslims who hate Wahhabis. They chose as their symbol the Caliphate of Cordoba, the Muslim Moorish state on the territory of modern Spain, which was tolerant of other religions, especially Judaism. Supporters of the initiative argue that the Islamic world is not limited to a bunch of bearded people in Waziristan and that Islam actually preaches kindness and tolerance.

But there is one point where Schwartz and the Cordoba Initiative disagree. We are talking about the desire of the latter to build an Islamic center with a mosque 200 meters from Ground Zero, a foundation pit on the site of the destroyed twin towers. “Muslims should show respect for the feelings of their non-Muslim neighbors and those whose friends and loved ones died on September 11,” Schwartz insists in an interview with Newsweek.

Schwartz's opinion was shared by 51% of New Yorkers, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published on the same day as this issue. The core of this camp are the participants of "tea parties", manifestations of variegated ill-wishers of President Obama, to whom they remember with particular pleasure both of his Muslim names - Barack Hussein. The protests against the mosque have become for them what the “dissenting marches” are for the Russian opposition. And what scares the Democrats the most is that this movement unexpectedly has many supporters. Another survey conducted by the Marist agency showed that 21% of New Yorkers support tea parties. In early June, 10,000 people gathered at a rally against the construction of the mosque, and six times as many signed up for an online petition to Mayor Bloomberg demanding a ban on the project.

The huge Islamic center is to occupy the building of the former outerwear store at 45 Park Place. This house, partially destroyed during the attacks, was bought by structures associated with the founder of the Cordoba Initiative, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, a native of Kuwait. The creators plan to place here a hall for 500 people, a bookstore, a restaurant and, in fact, a mosque. However, they try to exclude the last word from their vocabulary.

"This is not a mosque, but a community center for culture and recreation, open to all New Yorkers regardless of religion," Daisy Khan, director of the American Society for the Advancement of Muslims and wife of Imam Rauf, told Newsweek. That is why, she says, the idea is supported by many representatives of the Christian and Jewish communities, as well as city officials.

Almost the most ardent supporter is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The construction of the center with a mosque has already been supported by the municipality of lower Manhattan. Now the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission has the final say. She is expected to give the go-ahead during the summer, and then the Islamic center will open as scheduled, on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The founder of the Unsung Heroes Helping Heroes Foundation, Marvin Bethea, was next to the twin towers that day and was one of the first to rush to help the victims. It was littered with the rubble of the first of the destroyed buildings. He still feels the consequences—he has serious problems with his lungs. The events of 9/11 are a personal tragedy for him, and he is confident that the construction of the mosque will partly help the Americans overcome it. “More than 300 Muslims were killed in those attacks. And to think that all Muslims are terrorists is insulting. I am black and I know very well what discrimination is,” Bethea tells Newsweek.

But many New Yorkers think so. For example, those who read the Jihad Watch blog of far-right commentator Robert Spencer. “Faisal Abdul Rauf is an outspoken preacher of Sharia, a code of law that gives non-Muslims second-class status and denies them equal rights with Muslims,” Spencer tells Newsweek. “And Mayor Bloomberg, in the name of religious freedom, is allowing the construction of a mosque that will teach radical doctrine within its walls.” intolerance towards other religions.

And he considers Islam intolerant in general. In his opinion, all Islamic history is connected with the suppression of other religions. Spencer long lists the famous mosques built on the site of Christian and Jewish shrines. True, at the same time he forgets about the churches in Spain and southeastern Europe, rebuilt from mosques.

President of the ACT! For America Bridget Gabriel opposes the mosque because she believes it will promote "the same ideology" in whose name the Twin Towers were destroyed. "It's like the Japanese government asking for permission to build a temple to its World War II emperor at Pearl Harbor, next to the wreck of the USS Arizona," she explains. Exactly ACT! For America is collecting signatures online. Another far-right commentator, William Mayer, goes further, comparing the New York project to the construction of "a museum of moderate Nazism near Buchenwald."

Among the enemies of the project is the infamous journalist Pamela Geller, who is fighting Islam on a broad front. Four years ago, she starred in a video in support of Israel and against "Palestinian terrorism", posing in a skimpy bikini on an Israeli beach. Her latest project is an action to help Muslims who want to leave their religion. Has a fatwa been issued on your soul? Is your family threatening you? Do you want to leave Islam?” asked posters that adorned New York City buses throughout June. Geller leads the Stop the Islamization of America. She believes that the main sign of this Islamization is the coming to power of President Obama. Post-American Presidency: Obama's War on America is the title of a book by Geller and Robert Spencer that will be released in late July.

These fighters against Islam are still censored, which cannot be said about the chairman of the Tea Party Express movement. Mark Williams said the mosque would serve as a memorial to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and a place where the like would "pray to their terrorist monkey god." And then he apologized to "the million Hindus who worship the god Hanuman, the real Monkey God."

Daisy Khan of the Cordoba Initiative reacts to all this with Olympian calm and insists that it is she and her husband, and not the tea parties, who are truly standing up to the terror. “We want the center to become a place where all communities come together and prove that the ideology of extremism is unacceptable for all of us,” she says. “We are all united in the fight to eradicate extremism.” It remains only to prove it to half of the New Yorkers.