Opinion: Who's Being Insensitive About the 'Ground Zero Mosque'?

(Aug. 26) -- Over the past few weeks as the furor over the Cordoba House project near ground zero has grown, opponents of the plan have seized on a novel argument to avoid the charge that they're seeking to constrain the religious freedom of American Muslims.

They argue that while religious groups have the right to build a place of worship anywhere they please -- and the government can't lawfully block such an effort -- the project shouldn't go forward because it rubs raw the sensitivities of the families of 9/11 victims.

Case in point is a recent op-ed by, of all people, Karen Hughes, who not only served in the Bush administration State Department with a special responsibility to conduct outreach to the Muslim world, but also sent the imam behind the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, overseas to tell the Islamic world what it was like to be a Muslim living in the United States.

Nonetheless, Hughes argues that "I believe that most Americans who oppose locating a mosque near Ground Zero are neither anti-freedom nor anti-Muslim; they just don't believe it's respectful, given what happened there."

On the surface, this all seems very reasonable. Build the center, just away from ground zero, out of respect for the victims' families.

But dig a little deeper and an uglier truth emerges.

Hughes' argument is predicated on the notion that American Muslims somehow bear collective responsibility for the behavior of the 19 Muslim men who carried out the 9/11 attacks and the relative handful of al-Qaida operatives who helped conceive and support the plan.

Inherent in this argument is the assumption that, at some level, all Muslims have terrorist sympathies until proven otherwise. Hence the repeated calls for Muslim-Americans to condemn jihadist or other Islamic terrorist groups as a means of proving their loyalty to the United States.

The Muslim community in America is being held to a far different standard than other religions. Earlier this month, a Gainesville, Fla., Christian minister proposed holding an "International Burn a Koran Day" to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And earlier this year, the United Nations issued a comprehensive report accusing the Israeli government of committing war crimes in its 2009 offensive in Gaza. But who would suggest that churches or synagogues across the country should be picketed? Who would consider it appropriate to blame all Christians or all Jews for the actions of their co-religionists?

And it's not as if anti-Mosque protests have been restricted to the "hallowed ground" of lower Manhattan. As I noted here a few weeks ago, protests have been launched against proposed mosques in Tennessee, Kentucky, Wisconsin and New York City's Staten Island. To make the argument that opposition to Cordoba House is about nothing more than sensitivities to 9/11 is to willfully ignore the growing wave of hatred and intolerance being directed against American Muslims in both red and blue states.

As Hughes is well aware -- and makes clear in her op-ed -- not all Muslims can be defined by al-Qaida and its fanatical followers. Indeed, it might come as a surprise to many Americans that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida are increasingly marginal players in the Islamic world, shunned by the vast majority of Muslims, including Muslim-Americans.

Considering the enormous divide between Islamic terror groups and supporters of the Cordoba House project (who have condemned the terrorist acts of al-Qaida and the hateful ideology that inspired it), the more appropriate response to this project from Hughes and others would be to explain those critical distinctions, rather than cater to ignorance and fear in the name of the 9/11 families.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that lumping all Muslims together -- as mosque opponents are doing -- will give comfort to bin Laden and his dwindling band of followers by bolstering his argument that America is at war with Islam.

To be sure, this isn't the first time Americans have been scapegoated or held collectively responsible during times of conflict. And the level of animosity directed toward Muslims today is hardly close to what occurred against the Japanese, say, during World War II or communist sympathizers during the McCarthy witch hunts. Nonetheless, the fact that so many Americans are willing to accept an argument that holds all Islamic believers responsible for the actions of a few represents a frightening trend in American society.

The simple fact is that the insensitivities in this debate are coming not from Cordoba House supporters, but from its opponents, who seem far too willing to paint all Muslims with the broad brush of jihadist terrorism.