Editorial: Tolerance and a mosque

Editorial: Tolerance and a mosque
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
6:30 p.m. CDT, August 19, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-mosque-20100819,0,2518101.story


We realized that a policy debate had lost its bearings this week when Newt Gingrich compared the Muslim leaders who want to build a mosque near ground zero to genocidal soldiers. " Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington," Gingrich said. "There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center."

Tempting as it is to rebuff Gingrich, in truth all of us ought to thank him. His intemperate and strained metaphor offers calmer minds a genuinely useful reminder:

Our Constitution guarantees the freedom of all faiths. Not just the ones most of us are comfortable having as neighbors. Not just the ones that attract the most members or the ones whose faith traditions resemble our own. All faiths.

Yes, the notion of an Islamic center two blocks from a site many New Yorkers view as sacred ground is sure to produce visceral responses. But visceral responses don't dictate, or obliterate, what our minds hold true.

If Gingrich wanted to evoke the wounds of World War II, he might have used a different touchstone: It wasn't easy for Americans to speak up for the First Amendment when neo-Nazis wanted to march in the streets of Skokie. Any more than it has been comfortable to protect the rights of people to burn the American flag as an exercise of free speech.

But protecting the unpopular is what our Constitution assures that we do. And a community center, mosque or no, is a remarkably far cry from anti-Semitic parades or flag-burnings. To the extent that this Islamic center is a symbol, it's a symbol not of al-Qaida or the Taliban, but of a religion. A faith. A system of belief.

We've already said why we favor allowing the mosque to be built. We support the developer's right to build on private property as law permits. Local officials green-lighted the project by a 29-1 vote. That should be that.

But the issue keeps simmering because some politicians see a "wedge" issue — a way to galvanize voters in the November elections.

They're right that ground zero is emotional for many Americans.

Wedge issues by definition are disruptive, but not always predictably. They can attract some voters but alienate others. And they can mark those who drive the wedge as dangerous agents of harm. The peril in this case: stoking religious intolerance against Muslims.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wisely warns his fellow Republicans against "overreacting" and painting "Islam with a brush of radical Muslim extremists that just want to kill Americans because we are Americans." Not that they would value his words, but Christie also ought to share his admonition with Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, an opportunist who, with full appreciation of public opinion, evidently thinks his opposition to the center will help his re-election campaign in Nevada.

It's fine to wish the imam and developer advancing this project had chosen a less sensitive site. It's fine to wish they had spoken with New York Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, about alternative siting. It's even fine to flat-out resent this project as a provocation or worse. Think what you will. This is … a free country.

It's not fine, though, to take the next step, to thwart creation of this center because some among us — maybe many among us — find it objectionable. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg a Republican, deserves credit for his unequivocal stance: This is about religious tolerance, period.

We're encouraged that many Americans understand this. A recent Siena College poll showed 63 percent of New Yorkers oppose the construction of the mosque at the site, but roughly the same number believe the project's developers have the constitutional right to build there.

We don't deny or diminish the pain some respondents surely felt when they acknowledged that right.

But they are on the right side of history. America's history.

In this country, we don't poll-test our constitutional liberties to determine when they do and don't apply.

The politicians and talking heads now fueling the anti-mosque firestorm have put their own prospects before this nation's principles. They should use this moment to teach, not to exploit.