As Terry Jones continues to grab headlines the world over with his crass publicity-seeking antics, we can see the downside of the 24/7, globalised rolling news cycle. Here’s a pastor of a tiny community with a shady past nobody had ever heard of, and overnight he becomes a celebrity.By threatening to burn copies of the Muslim holy book at his Florida church, he has held his country’s government hostage for days. Public officials from President Obama downwards have been urging him to refrain from his act of desecration. Mercifully, he has announced that he is cancelling the event, and did not go ahead with his stunt last Saturday. But until his announcement hours before D-Day, the world was on edge, with the threat of an explosion in the Muslim world a very real possibility.
The whole sorry affair underlines how vulnerable we are to images and words beamed into our homes from thousands of miles away. As we saw a few weeks ago, a page on Facebook (which has hundreds of millions of members) could cause riots in Pakistan because some idiot posted a blasphemous suggestion about Islam. Before that, the sacrilegious cartoons in a Danish newspaper caused an outcry across the Muslim world that resulted in many deaths and much damage to property. The Danish embassy in Islamabad was the target of a suicide bombing that resulted in several (mostly Pakistani) deaths.
Given how easy it is for somebody to post an offensive image or message on the Internet, are Muslims going to get worked up each time this kind of thing happens? The thing to realise is that there are many nuts out there in cyberspace. I should know as I get my share of hate mail and threats, but I find that pressing the ‘delete’ button on my laptop is a better option than getting annoyed or frightened. So collectively, why can’t we all just hit the ‘delete’ button instead of taking to the streets every time some nut posts something Muslims find sacrilegious?
The other thing to realise is that in most cases, Western governments do not have the power to prevent citizens from committing acts that are offensive to other faiths. Thus, even though President Obama can authorise death and destruction thousands of miles away, he cannot prevent a lunatic like Terry Jones from burning the Holy Quran. The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees complete religious freedom, and this includes the right of citizens to criticise other religions. Similarly, the Danish government could not prevent a newspaper from publishing offensive cartoons under the country’s freedom of expression laws. And the Internet, of course, is virtually free from any kind of government controls.
While the Terry Jones affair will hopefully recede into the background, the proposed Islamic centre at New York’s Ground Zero continues to polarise American society. To an extent, the matter has now become the latest battleground in the ongoing culture wars in America. Over the last decade and more, there has been a deepening divide between liberals and right-wing Americans. These differences were most recently evident in Barrack Obama’s election, but it was George Bush and his neo-conservative agenda that split America as never before.
The current flashpoint is the Islamic centre controversy. As many ordinary Americans registered their objections to the project, liberal citizens took up the cause in the name of the First Amendment, and the right of any faith to build a place of worship anywhere its followers choose.
While this is an admirable position to take in theory, the reality is that the project has put Muslims in America in a very difficult position. The depth and intensity of the anger that has been whipped up by rightwing media and politicians reveal the latent Islamophobia that has lain below the surface since 9/11, and has been building up ever since. As I argued in a recent article (The limits of tolerance), there are times when it’s better not to exercise a right if it gives offence.
By refusing to compromise and build his proposed centre somewhere less symbolic, Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam of the present mosque, is not doing his fellow-Muslims in America any favours. Those living in remote towns report a rising hostility among their neighbours where they had earlier found nothing but kindness and acceptance. Indeed, the project has become a lightning rod for all kinds of reactionary elements; but it has also caused ordinary Americans to take an anti-Muslim position for the first time. Polls are showing that over 70 per cent of all Americans oppose the project.
Assuming the project goes ahead, and the hundred million dollars needed to complete it are duly raised, it will continue to be criticised, and possibly attacked. Unfortunately, as we know to our cost, there is no shortage of violent nuts in America, or in the Muslim world. Should there be some kind of atrocity aimed at the Islamic centre, there will inevitably be a backlash among Muslims, some of whom will attack Western and Christian targets. Thus, this cycle of violence will escalate.
Instead of showing a degree of humility and tolerance, extremists in both camps are driving this increasingly strident debate. In the present climate of distrust of Muslims and Islam that is prevalent in America, Islamophobic rhetoric will alienate more Muslims across the world. And with congressional elections due in November, there is a real danger of the Republicans capturing both the Senate and the House. Should this happen, the authority of the Obama administration will be greatly reduced. Relations between the US and the Muslim world, already strained, will be far more difficult.
According to a recent poll, the majority of Republicans believe Obama to be a closet Muslim, and they are using this bizarre belief as a weapon in their armoury. By pinning the Islamic label on a very deeply believing Christian, Republican politicians and media talking heads hope to fool voters in turning away from the Democrats in November. And the Ground Zero Islamic centre is certainly not helping Obama as it is polarising huge numbers of Americans at a time when his party is already facing difficulties due to unemployment and a weak economy.
So I ask again: why can’t the project be relocated to a less controversial place?