A Mosque in New York? Near the 9-11 site?! Are you nuts?

To Build The Mosque or Not to Build the Mosque – That is the Political Question
Steffen Schmidt

“GOP Senator Suggests Mosque Will Be Election Issue,” reads a teaser in the Sunday New York Times on line.

By now you and the entire world has heard that a Muslim charity wants to build a mosque and a community center two blocks from the hole where the World Trade Center stood in New York.

You have also probably picked up on the fierce debate that has erupted on whether this is an acceptable plan, that New York Mayor Bloomberg has given strong support for the plan, and that Pres. Obama has been waffling, weaving, and weaseling on this issue (surprised?).

First the White House Press Secretary said that Mr. Obama would not comment because this was a local issue in New York. Then the President gave strong support for the specific plan to build this center in New York and in general for religious freedom in the United States at a Ramadan dinner he threw at the White House. Then, seeing the massive backlash and reading the national polls more carefully the President said he was in favor of religious freedom and that it was up to New York to decide on where and when mosques could be built.

This is a tricky issue.

Islam is not exactly a Lutheran congregation. Some might complain about traffic congestion if a church was being built in their neighborhood. I also understand that there could be fierce and bloody Lutheran in fighting between different synods and flavors of Lutheran religion. Here is a list of these flavors from my most trusted source Wikipedia. It’s almost like Baskin Robbins! The following is the education unit of this article:

Churches
• American Association of Lutheran Churches (TAALC)
• Association of Free Lutheran Congregations (AFLC)
• Augsburg Lutheran Churches (ALC)
• The Church of Sweden
• Church of the Lutheran Brethren of America (CLB)
• Church of the Lutheran Confession (CLC)
• Concordia Lutheran Conference
• Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church (ECCL)
• Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD)
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brazil (IECLB)
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC)
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
• Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS)
• Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA)
• Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC)
• Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC)
• Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LC-MS)
• Lutheran Churches of the Reformation (LCR)
• Lutheran Church in Malaysia and Singapore
• Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (Germany)
• Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS)

In any case, Islam is different. Its practices are exotic to most Americans. It’s issues such as the role of women more edgy.

Then there is the matter of the Iran hostage taking of the US Embassy where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981 which was partly cost Jimmy Carter a second term (the news media counted off each day of the crisis every night on the evening news, thus emphasizing the helplessness of the carter administration).

Finally and mpst significantly there is the brutality of 9-11.

As they say, when was the last time a highjacking or act of terrorism was perpetrated by an elderly Norwegian from Wisconsin?

Like it or not the Muslim faith is viewed with apprehension by many Americans (and Dutch, Norwegians, Germans, French, Brits, Hindus in India, well you get the idea).

So, the issue of religious freedom aside, should Obama have been more circumspect on the issue of building an Islamic community center and Mosque, funded by unknown sources, with the involvement of an Imam who apparently is not entirely trusted by many who have studied this case?

In 2010, after 9-11, were the folks who have proposed building this center so close to the still scabby wound on America pretty clueless as to what the national reaction would be?

If Muslims wanted to, say, buy a piece of property in Iowa and build a summer camp for young Muslim boys/men, would Iowans react favorably or not? (This is a trick question: Such a project was proposed and the negative reaction was so great the idea was abandoned).

Is “A Mosque in New York” the name of an off Broadway play, a novel by Fareed Mohammed, or one more nail in the coffin of Obama’s public opinion approval ratings in the United States and an end to the Democratic majority in Congress (this is the correct answer).

Most Democrats running for election in 2010 have stayed at arms length, make that a mile, away from this issue because it’s just too hard to make a case that this is a matter of religious freedom, unfair as that reality may be.


Steffen Schmidt is University Professor of political science at Iowa State University, Blogs for the Des Moines Register and writes for InsiderIowa.com