by Further thoughts on the alleged parallel between opposition to the planned Islamic center (Park51) near Ground Zero and opposition about ten years ago to the building of a convent and the erection of crosses next to the Auschwitz death camps:
I wrote in my first post that the relevant question in neither case should be whether some people are “offended.” So, putting aside “offense” and “sensitivities,” why was it wrong to try to turn the area near Auschwitz into a Christian site?
Two reasons.
First, the presence of overbearing Christian symbols and institutions served (and were by some intended to serve) to deny the uniquely Jewish character of the Holocaust, and of Auschwitz as “Ground Zero” of the Holocaust. Of course, there were millions and millions of non-Jewish deaths in World War II, many of which, military and civilian, are rightly memorialized by crosses all over Europe. And, of course, even at Auschwitz, not only Jews were killed, and it is important to remember and honor all the victims, including the “brave Polish resistance army officer” who etched a cross “with fingernails during his imprisonment … in his death cell.”
Nevertheless, the Holocaust — as a singular genocidal event apart from the typical tragedies of war and evils of totalitarian murder — was centrally a Jewish event, distinct from but also the culmination of many hundreds of years of European Jew-hatred. And the large crosses erected and then removed at Auschwitz had a distinct purpose and effect — to change the very focus of Auschwitz as a place of historical memory, and thereby to change history itself. Antisemites, including some Polish clerics, continue to claim that Jews have used the Holocaust as a “propaganda weapon” to achieve “often unjustified advantages.” The crosses were their effort to fight back, so to speak.
Second, the crosses (more than the convent, I think) were — in their specific context — part of a larger effort to erase the Jewish presence in Polish history and culture, even apart from the Holocaust. Some Poles have a tendency, often in perfect good faith, to think of Poland as a “homogeneous” Catholic country. The Holocaust, tragically, makes that self-perception easier. For some, though, including prominent supporters of the Auschwitz crosses, this insistence on a single, homogeneous, Polish character linked seamlessly to a very ugly, very traditional, antisemitism. As the director of a radio station active in promoting the crosses put it, “Poland is a great nation, a nation with a single language, a single culture, a single religion, the minorities are sparse. This is unity and it is very dangerous to those who wish to divide us, those who are liars and murderers…” (Of course, many Poles find this vision not only morally reprehensible and historically blind, but also culturally self-destructive, which helps explain the renewed interest among non-Jews in Poland in the country’s Jewish heritage.)
So is there any parallel here to the so-called Ground Zero Mosque? Maybe, but not the sort of parallel the opponents claim?
First, the proposed Park51 center does not threaten to (and certainly is not intended to) distort the meaning of Ground Zero itself. To begin with, Park51 couldn’t possibly compete with the official Ground Zero memorial as a carrier of the meaning of what happened on September 11, 2001. And, in any event, whatever meaning the center does carry is perfectly consistent with the message of that memorial and the history of the day. The 9/11 terrorists hated Christians and Jews, but their main target was America and the West more generally, and this center and its sponsors are, as best as I can tell, testaments to American as well as Islamic values. More important, the larger American understanding of 9/11, as articulated (to his credit!) by George W. Bush from the very beginning, has described 9/11, not as an attack by all of Islam on non-Muslim Americans, but as an attack by a radical, deviant group of terrorists on all Americans.
Ironically, therefore, it is not the sponsors of the Islamic center, but their opponents, who want to change — indeed, want to distort — the accepted, and as it happens, true meaning of 9/11.
(Realizing, I suppose, that the comparison between a Muslim cultural center and the Auschwitz convent and crosses doesn’t quite work, Newt Gingrich has instead compared building an Islamic center near Ground Zero to Nazis erecting “a sign next to the Holocaust museum.” But of course the mystical and peaceful Sufi leadership of the Cordoba Initiative are better compared to anti-Nazi Germans than to the Nazis, and I can’t imagine that Gingrich would object to, say, an homage to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Holocaust Museum or on its web site.)
Second, unlike the Auschwitz crosses, whose point was to erase, or at least resist, the diversity and pluralism of Polish history and culture, Park51 is, if nothing else, an expression of American diversity and pluralism. And, here again, the real comparison is not between Park51 and the Auschwitz crosses. To the contrary, again, the better — in fact, almost uncanny, analogy — is between the Auschwitz crosses and the opposition to Park51.
This is an interesting, subtle, and provocative analysis of the issue– much more interesting and subtle than what I’ve been hearing on the news, etc. I’m not the right person to disagree. (My own tentative and pretty banal view has been, as somebody else said, that the promoters of the project have a “right” to build– or at least not to be denied permission to build on grounds of their religion– but that to say this is not to address the “wisdom” of building on this particular spot.) But I wonder what someone with a view contrary to Perry’s– the sort of person Perry is criticizing– would say.
I’m pretty confident that one point of disagreement would be over the characterization of the project and its promoters. Are the promoters “mystical and peaceful” and thoroughly in sync with core American values and commitments? That’s a factual question I can’t answer, but the objectors obviously don’t agree with that characterization. They might be wrong, but even so, given their view, they may not be guilty of the sort of irony Perry describes.
Second, there’s probably room to debate the relevance of “offense,” and of feelings. One of the valuable insights in Perry’s posts, I think, concerns the psychologizing of the law in this area. I myself completely concur in regretting this development. But there are occasions when “offense” (even if based on misperceptions) should count and occasions when it shouldn’t. If there is a need for promoting cultural understanding, and if that is supposed to be a central purpose of a particular project, then the fact that the project will cause large-scale offense seems pretty obviously relevant, at least to the “wisdom” of the project.
Steve Smith writes, very reasonably, that “there are occasions when ‘offense’ (even if based on misperceptions) should count and occasions when it shouldn’t. If there is a need for promoting cultural understanding, and if that is supposed to be a central purpose of a particular project, then the fact that the project will cause large-scale offense seems pretty obviously relevant, at least to the ‘wisdom’ of the project.”
True enough. But two observations:
First, one of the problems with “offense,” as demonstrated in this case, is that — particularly in these excruciatingly politicized times — it often feeds on itself. For a long time, the plans for what is now called Park51 were fairly uncontroversial. See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/nyregion/09mosque.html (Dec. 8, 2009). Even Laura Ingraham said “I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it.” Then some blog and papers got hold of the issue and it ended up spreading virally. (For one helpful timeline, see http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/08/16/ground_zero_mosque_origins/index.html ) At this point, distinguishing the genuine “offense” — the way that the plans for Park51 honestly tear at some people’s gut sense of the sacredness of Ground Zero — from the mere manufactured outrage of political and media opportunists, as well as from the mere groupthink, is next to impossible. (Regarding the issue of “sacredness,” see http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/blogs/rod-dreher/trespassing-on-sacred-memory )
When offense turns viral this way, assessing its moral weight (even if offense should sometimes have moral weight) becomes even more difficult. And giving in to it runs the risk of only fanning rather than tamping down the flames. After all, there will always be something else for the opportunists among the outraged to get offended about.
Second, the way of true “wisdom” is also becoming very difficult here. I might agree, in perfect hindsight, that the Park51 planners could have avoided this whole mess if they had picked a different site. But, now, what message do we send to ourselves and to the world about the basic character of America if the center does not get built?
Good observations, and good questions. These are indeed “excruciatingly politicized times,” and as a result it is very difficult to know what wisdom calls for. Much of the bitter arguing over this particular issue seems to me frustrating and puzzling, given that so many of the people who are arguing seem basically to agree (a) that the project’s promoters have a legal right to build the mosque and community center at the proposed site but (b) that it would probably be better and more prudent to build it at some other location. And yet people who agree on these points still seem to want to argue and accuse each other. Maybe the larger significance of the controversy is not what it shows about attitudes toward Islam or religious freedom but what if reflects about generally self-destructive tendencies in the political culture.