A Test of Tolerance 

The "Ground Zero mosque" debate is about tolerance—and a whole lot more.

By Christopher Hitchens

From the beginning, though, I pointed out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was no great bargain and that his Cordoba Initiative was full of euphemisms about Islamic jihad and Islamic theocracy. I mentioned his sinister belief that the United States was partially responsible for the assault on the World Trade Center and his refusal to take a position on the racist Hamas dictatorship in Gaza. The more one reads through his statements, the more alarming it gets. For example, here is Rauf's editorial on the upheaval that followed the brutal hijacking of the Iranian elections in 2009. Regarding President Obama, he advised that:

He should say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution—to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faquih, that establishes the rule of law.

Coyly untranslated here (perhaps for "outreach" purposes), Vilayet-i-faquih is the special term promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to describe the idea that all of Iranian society is under the permanent stewardship (sometimes rendered as guardianship) of the mullahs.

Under this dispensation, "the will of the people" is a meaningless expression, because "the people" are the wards and children of the clergy. It is the justification for a clerical supreme leader, whose rule is impervious to elections and who can pick and choose the candidates and, if it comes to that, the results. It is extremely controversial within Shiite Islam. (Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, for example, does not endorse it.) As for those numerous Iranians who are not Shiites, it reminds them yet again that they are not considered to be real citizens of the Islamic Republic.

I do not find myself reassured by the fact that Imam Rauf publicly endorses the most extreme and repressive version of Muslim theocracy. The letterhead of the statement, incidentally, describes him as the Cordoba Initiative's "Founder and Visionary." Why does that not delight me, either?

Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism.

As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …

As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it's easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims—to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals.

This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.

From Ace of Spades:

Men such as Rauf continue to indulge in dishonest double-speak, blessed by their religion, they say, by the doctrine of taqiyya. There is no "outreach" to troublesome Muslims being practiced by Rauf -- he does not criticize them, or reject their support for terrorism, or demand they reform. For them, he only offers justification for their murderous resentment -- the US has killed more Muslims than Al Qaeda; the US is an accessory to the crime -- i.e., a legally-chargeable guilty party -- of 9/11.

His "outreach" extends in one direction only, to the West, where he asks for tolerance and speaks pretty words about peace and the virtues of Islam. Which is nice, but we have plenty of that already with daily government-approved official pronouncements about Islam being a "religion of peace" and the constant reminder that the "great majority" of Muslims do not support terrorism. (Perhaps true, but I'd like to focus a bit more on the 30-40% who do.)

Where is the outreach in the other direction? He instructs us that we should not blame all Muslims for the terrorist murders committed by some -- but where is the pointed statement to terrorist murders that infidels are not to be blamed for the collective grievances of aggressive, insecure Islamists, and, even if were to be blamed, it would be just terrific and super-appreciated if this blame did not come in the form of ball-bearing-studded car bombs?

It's odd -- Rauf will tell us that Muslims are not terrorists, again and again, but when asked if a provably terrorist organization -- Hamas -- is terrorist, he suddenly loses all interest in discussing "politics." I would find his reassurances about most Muslims not being terrorists (which is of course true) more satisfying if, confronted with actual Muslim terrorists, he would indulge me in a bit of "politics" and condemn them as the killers they are.

Note that Rauf could considerably help his own cause by delivering an unambiguous condemnation of terrorism, unadorned by all the nasty ornaments of American culpability. He doesn't do that -- and I read quite a bit into that.

Instead, I am only told by Daisy Khan that my saying mean things about Muslims, and agitating in what, at the end of the day, is a zoning dispute, constitutes the most hateful and contemptible actions imaginable.

And yet no one ever says that Muslims should be killed simply for disagreeing with us or taking provocative actions ...

The "outreach" I get from Rauf is that the major problem with Muslim terrorism is that I'm making too big a deal about it and ought to accept my own culpability for it, and if I'm getting that message of "outreach," I am quite certain the 30-40% of the world Muslim population we are most acutely concerned with is getting that message of "outreach" as well.

America is culpable in one manner: By our habit of apologism for third-world evil and tolerating the intolerable, making excuses for murder, we are in effect preventing the necessary argument that must be had within Islam. Terror and tribalistic hatred must be reformed out of it, and, just as with the housing market, we are propping up a bad system, delaying a necessary reckoning, by continuing to indulge in this happy-happy joy-joy apologism for Islamist evil.

We allow him to play this vile game, and by doing so, we are showing tolerance -- tolerance for murderers. And it should be little surprise then that the murders we are tolerating are continuing apace.

We have taken the ultimate step in defining deviancy down: We now pretend that mass murder is an understandable expression of Islamist rage, something we are just as responsible for as they (or more so), and little wonder then that the Islamist murderers take us at our word.

If you give someone moral license to kill you, you shouldn't be surprised if he gets the crazy idea you've given him actual license to kill you.


Continue reading