Opinion: Widely available ‘ground-zero mosque’ facts that won’t matter

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I don’t suppose this AP writeup on the myths and facts of the so-called ground zero mosque in New York will muzzle the cynical Islamophobes hoping to parlay the hysteria they’ve generated into electoral gains in November. Inarguable facts aside (which are easy to dismiss in an emotional debate), the piece contains something that generally doesn’t appeal to those so unshakable in their opinions: nuance.

Take, for example, the following few paragraphs on the boogeyman behind this whole project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf:

Even so, the project stirs complicated emotions, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a complex figure who defies easy categorization in the American Muslim world.

He’s devoted much of his career to working closely with Christians, Jews and secular leaders to advance interfaith understanding. He’s scolded his own religion for being in some ways in the ‘Dark Ages.’ Yet he’s also accused the U.S. of spilling more innocent blood than Al Qaeda, the terrorist network that turned the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon and four hijacked airplanes to apocalyptic rubble.... He has denounced the terrorist attacks and suicide bombing as anti-Islamic and has criticized Muslim nationalism. But he’s made provocative statements about America, too, calling it an ‘accessory’ to the 9/11 attacks and attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to the U.S.-led sanctions in the years before the invasion.

In a July 2005 speech at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center in Adelaide, Australia, Rauf said, according to the center’s transcript:

‘We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.’

While calling terrorism unjustified, he said the U.S. has supported authoritarian regimes with heinous human rights records and, faced with that, ‘how else do people get attention’?

The whole piece is worth a read. It points out, notably, that Muslims pray inside the Pentagon, a building that was itself attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

-- Paul Thornton