Unhallowed reflections

How helpful it is that our convictions on the “Ground Zero Mosque” now define our loyalty as Americans – and, for some of us, as Christians.

The term itself, of course, is an exploitive lie, calculated to incite the easily flammable jingoist passion that passes among the devoutly ignorant as patriotism. It’s a term that ought to be, but hasn’t been, handled with care; it’s slimed with red-meat drippings and Fox mucus.

The proposed Islamic facility in question is two city blocks from the site of the World Trade Center that a bunch of Saudi Islamofascists (Saudis, remember, are our allies. The good guys. Our petro-partners.) destroyed not quite nine years ago, along with the lives of a couple of thousand Americans – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists.

May every murderous barbarian even remotely responsible for that attack who isn’t dead already die a violent death or a slow and excruciatingly painful one, and fry in Hell forever after. Amen.

Meanwhile, some of the arguments for why American citizens who own that property shouldn’t build – in some shrunken minds, shouldn’t be allowed to build – a community center and mosque there are enough to numb mind and soul alike.

First, there’s the charge that this is “insensitive.” Let’s pass over for a moment the grotesque irony of that argument coming from, among others, those legendary paragons of sensitivity at Radio Right. The historic “sensitivity” of some people acting in the name of Christianity should curdle the blood today as readily as it has spilled blood in centuries past.

Oh, so you don’t want to be tarred with the Crusades or the Inquisition? Then don’t tar American Muslims with 9-11. How damn hard is that? Wasn’t it President Bush who said, soon after Sept. 11 and many times afterward, that Islam is not the enemy? It was perhaps the finest and most principled message of his otherwise disastrous presidency.

(On a purely personal, and probably irrelevant, note re the “sensitivity” issue: A fellow Methodist who thinks some of my political convictions are un-Christian once brought me – I swear to God – an Ann Coulter book. I’m sure reading it would have brought me closer to Jesus, perhaps by infusing me with the proper contempt for the terror attack widows Coulter called “9-11 whores.”)

Then there’s the “sacred” or “hallowed” ground argument. Politicians are big on this one.

I’ve got news for you: If a two-block radius around Ground Zero is “hallowed,” then the Reverence Police have apparently missed a few strip clubs, porn shops and other, more respectable caverns of commerce. (Wall Street, come to think of it, isn’t all that far away. How sacred is that?) If the Muslims are unwelcome in this sizeable “hallowed” chunk of lower Manhattan, there are a few hundred thousand money changers who need to be chased out of the temple along with them.

And I’ve heard enough tiresome variations on “Would the Taliban let Christians build a church?” to make a buzzard gag.

Aside from the reckless insult of conflating American citizens of the Islamic faith with a horde of violently misogynistic fanatics, here’s a point I must sadly conclude isn’t as obvious as I naively thought it would be:

Aren’t we supposed to be better than that?

A Muslim group wants to build a mosque and community center on American property they own as American citizens and taxpayers. And to listen to some of the noise, you’d think al Qaeda had planted a flag on the still-smoking WTC site and was dancing on the rubble.

And to think this self-righteous bile is being spewed in the name of American values and Christianity. Thank God – literally – if you don’t believe it represents either. If it did, what an ugly and damning indictment of both.

FOOTNOTE: On the regional front, meaning here in Georgia, the mosque issue has surfaced in two political races. In the governor’s race, both Republican Nathan Deal and Democrat Roy Barnes are against it. In a congressional race, both Republican Mike Keown and Democrat Sanford Bishop are against it.

So Republicans are fueling divisive resentment, while the Democrats are pants-wetting scared of being labeled “weak” or “soft” on something, thus reaffirming how weak and soft they are.

What else is new?

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