Redecorating Other People's Houses
I’d like to associate myself with Matt Yglesias’ comments earlier today on the Cordoba House business.
[O]ver the weekend some kind of hair-splitting distinction opened up between the idea of publicly and forcefully acknowledging the legal and constitutional right of the organizers to place their community center at 51 Park Place in Lower Manhattan and supporting construction of the mosque. I sort of see what the distinction is. People have the right, legally speaking, to go stand on the sidewalk outside my office and scream obscenities at me when I go to lunch. But I really wish they wouldn’t do that, and I think sensible people would condemn the decision to behave in that manner.
But when it comes to matters of religion, I think this distinction gets a bit confusing. I’m after all not a Muslim. And if pressed, I’d have to say that I think Islam is a false doctrine. It’s not the case that there’s is no God but Allah, nor is it true that Mohammed is his prophet. If everyone collectively decided that nobody should ever build a mosque anywhere again, that would be fine by me. Which is just to say that people simply don’t actively support the construction of other people’s religious monuments. You don’t expect Jews to stand up and applaud the construction of new Mormon temples, but I do expect them to acknowledge the right of Mormons to build temples and to stand up to demagogues who would try to abridge that right. And this is what we have going on in Lower Manhattan today.
That’s correct. But it’s is also why I’m wary of the argument that we should be especially supportive of the Cordoba House because it’s being run by the right kind of Muslims – and, more generally, that we need to be actively engaged in promoting “moderate” Islam and opposing “radical” Islam. I have no idea whether “allowing” Cordoba House to be built sends a positive or a negative “signal” to the Muslim world – and, in general, I question our ability to signal effectively at all. The absolutely craziest things go totally viral all the time, and we can’t stop them, and facts about which there is an absolutely universal consensus among anybody with any knowledge at all – say, that the Holocaust happened, or that the universe is billions of years old – remain stubbornly controversial despite our best efforts. Any debate should be about who we are, not about who they are or what we want them to think of us.
And as for Mormons, I think this gets Romney off the hook, doesn’t it?
What you said, RE: the “message” that “we” are sending to…whoever by building or not building this thing. In the arguments I’ve had over this, I’ve been told more than once that jihadis will be “dancing in the streets” – IN THE VERY STREETS – should the CH go up. I somehow doubt it, but my objection isn’t with the substance, but the premise: who gives a rat’s ass what they think?
— Handsome Dan · Aug 16, 09:45 PM · #
The thing most of my conservative relatives seem to resent is that while muslims can build mosques here they can’t build churches in Mecca….that is muslims can proselytize in America, while christians cannot proselytize in MENA. Actually we have attempted proselytizing judeoxian democracy in Iraq and afghanistan for nearly a decade with zero success.
the reason for this is that when christianity evolved as a CSS, it evolved proselytization and preaching as a strategy to increase reps. Islam, evolving from both christianity and judaism, evolved anti-proselytization strats. Apostacy punishment, coopting the sacred texts and congregants of the other two abrahamic religions, and outlawing the act of proselytizing.
The Caliphate had freedom of religion of sorts….jews and christians, the people of the book, were citizens. But proselytization by christians was forbidden.
So christians are wired to proselytize ……and muslims are wired to be resistant to proselytization.
That is why we are so unsuccessful at “implanting/proselytizing western style democracy” in MENA. And besides, when we do create representative gov’t there, muslims will vote for shariah when they are empowered to vote.
its always been a war on islam.
an unwinnable war.
— matoko_chan · Aug 16, 10:38 PM · #
Yeah, there’s a level between “they have a legal right to do it” and “I support it”.
That level is “it’s none of our business”.
— Consumatopia · Aug 16, 11:46 PM · #
This is controversy by context. One side compartmentalizes the context of 9/11 within, in favor of, the broader narrative of American pluralism. For the other side, 9/11 is core, periphery, front and center; their baseline is more immediate, animating, and uniform; the logic is more mammalian.
Publicly posturing against the 9/11 contextualists is political stupidity. If you’re in national office and you want to bring it up, you better bring it up sympathetically or not at all.
— KVS · Aug 17, 04:32 PM · #
wallah KVS….as astute as you often are, you don’t get the meaning of Cordoba House at all.
the ‘controversy’ means Bin Laden won.
what the park51 non-troversy clearly demonstrates is that Bin Laden has succeeded. His end goal was always to convolve al-Qaeda’s mandate with all of al-Islam.
Bin Laden wins because we are prosecuting a war on Islam. we have allowed the hirgabi and the christian right to frame it that way.
instead of allying ourselves with the benevolent parts of al-Islam, we have let the christofacists and theocrats here conflate al-Q with all muslims. For nearly a decade the US has been attempting to proselytize judeoxian democracy with force of arms. It cannot be done. when muslims are empowered to vote, they vote for shariah.
The whole war effort, the Bush Doctrine and COIN both, are just attempts to proselytize western-style democracy. And Islam is immune to proselytization in situ….there is no substrate to support western-style judeoxian democracy.
we are building schools….. fine……but the muslim kids that go to those schools will matriculate to an islamic university in say, 10 years.
there are no secular universities. none.
and im sure our intentions were good.
like the ones that ones that pave the road to hell.
BinLaden has outsmarted America. Pretty good for a cave dwelling shariah following stateless muzzie up against the SuperAwesome Last of teh SuperPowers, eh?
He has already won….and we have already failed. The Park51 controversy shows clearly that the american public does not understand the difference between al-Islam and al-Qaeda.
2 trillion dollars and 6 thousand soldier lives later, are we ready to acknowledge that Bin Laden won?
Even WEC Bush understood that a war on al-Islam is unwinnable….the reason is simple scale demographics. There are 1.8 billion muslims in the world and more than half are under 30—-Islam is a young growing faith.
How many Americans are there? 300 million? Better yet, how many christian americans and what is their median age ?
and even if we stay there until ALL our teeth are broken and ALL our purses are empty…. Rick Warren and James Dobson and Sarah Palin still won’t be able to build a megachurch in Mecca.
Can we go home NAOW?
— matoko_chan · Aug 17, 05:34 PM · #
I demand that we cease building Catholic churches in American cities until Vatican City allows the construction of Protestant houses of worship within its boundaries!
— Erik Vanderhoff · Aug 17, 08:19 PM · #
I’m all for the mosque, but Yglesias is being obtuse.
1) The Cordoba Initiative has a first amendment right to build a mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero, even if it would offend people. That they may doesn’t, of course, answer the question of whether they should.
2) Opponents of the Cordoba mosque have a first amendment right to twitter, write, and even protest that they think the mosque is a bad idea, and that they wish the Cordoba initiative would build it a little farther uptown. Again, that they may doesn’t answer the question of whether they should.
The difference between exercising your own right to object to something and shutting down someone else’s first amendment right to do it is not a hair-splitting distinction at all. It’s an essential distinction.
I assume that Yglesias goes farther. He thinks that the mosque doesn’t offend him, that it shouldn’t offend sufficiently well informed others, and that speech against the mosque is therefore ill-informed, harmful, sinister, or all of the above. He’s answered that Cordoba should build notwithstanding public opposition, and that the public should not express opposition to the mosque.
That’s his opinion, but it’s still a lot more than a split hair away from the universal consensus that both the mosque builders and the opponents have a constitutional right to do what they are doing.
— J Mann · Aug 17, 08:20 PM · #
Don’t you people even care that OBL just won?
And…..why do conservative-mosque-protestors hate the troops? What about our poor soldiers in Afghanistan saving muslimah noses and building schools for girls?
Don’t people like…. realize the right just stabbed our military in the back by validating everything the Taliban says?
America is at war with Islam.
Tell your sons and daughters.
— matoko_chan · Aug 17, 09:16 PM · #
@J Mann,
Yglesias was ambiguous on this, but I don’t think so, at least not the first part. He also said “If everyone collectively decided that nobody should ever build a mosque anywhere again, that would be fine by me.”
I believe the hair-splitting he’s talking about is not the difference between having a right to do something and that something being something you should do, but the precise meaning of normative statements about other people’s religious facilities. (The context here is probably whether Obama should have “backed down” in clarifying his remarks that he wasn’t endorsing the mosque.)
For example, if you say “Cordoba House should be built”, what does that mean? That you hope for the spread of Islam? That’s a strange thing for non-Muslims to care about.
Or that you endorse the Cordoba Institute’s mission of “improving Muslim West relations” and believe Cordoba House furthers that goal? Like Noah, I have no idea whether this would work.
Yet it doesn’t really make sense to go from these positions to “Cordoba House should not be built”. Few Americans would say “no religion but mine should build houses of worship”, even though their own religion is the one they have most stake in, the only one they believe people “should” practice.
Yglesias wasn’t clear whether he thinks there’s something wrong with complaining about other people’s religious facilities in general, or only with the kind of opposition Cordoba House faces (I’m not quite sure how universal your universal consensus is). I think that’s kind of the point—one doesn’t need to nail down the precise line between the right and wrong way to talk about religions you don’t believe in to realize that the mosque opponents are way on the wrong side of it.
— Consumatopia · Aug 17, 11:45 PM · #
Technically, most opponents of Cordoba House say that the mosque shouldn’t be built there, not that it shouldn’t be built.
It’s not a hair-splitting distinction if you think the placement is regrettable or that the case is arguable – then the correct answer is to say that Cordoba has the right to build there, but then either remain silent or say you wish they wouldn’t.
After all, there is a reason “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” has become cliche.
Matt doesn’t personally care where mosques are built, but he thinks that in this case, it’s a contest between moderate muslims trying to build a bridge and a bunch of intolerant bigots, so he takes the Cordoba’s side. That’s perfectly reasonable, but it’s obtuse to say that people who think that either (1) the placement of the mosque is unnecessarily offensive or (2) that it’s a close question are splitting hairs. They just disagree with Matt on how certain they are that 68% of Americans are bigots in this case.
— J Mann · Aug 18, 01:47 PM · #
I think Yglesias’s post is mostly directed at people (both on the left and right) who weren’t satisfied with Obama remaining silent on whether he “supports” the project. So the hair-splitters were not satisfied with your “correct answer”.
But even you are offering a false dilemma, and in order to enforce it you would have to split hairs.
Suppose one person said he supported the mosque, he thinks it will lead to cross-cultural reconciliation. Then another person said she supported the legal right to build the mosque, she accepted the good intentions of the builders, and considered the opposition to be mostly grounded in bigotry. However, she wasn’t sure it was a great idea to rile up the bigots. But ultimately she didn’t want to support a social norm in which the well-intentioned were encouraged to yield to bigots.
To strongly distinguish between these two is hair-splitting. They’re both in opposition to collective blame on all Muslims for 9/11.
There are not only different degrees of support between “it’s legal” and “it’s good”, there are different kinds. Picking apart the differences between those kinds and degrees is something you could spend forever on, but it doesn’t have much point.
— Consumatopia · Aug 18, 05:08 PM · #
That may be where we differ. I read Yglesias as saying that there is only a split-hair’s difference between “I support the mosque” and “I recognize and defend the mosque’s right to build, but don’t support their decision.”
It’s true that some people in the latter group are only a hair away from the former, but IMHO, it’s not true that all of them are, or even most.
— J Mann · Aug 18, 05:42 PM · #
The is only a split-hair’s difference between “I support the mosque” and “I recognize and defend the mosque’s right to build. It was al Qaeda that attacked us, not Islam. But I don’t have anything to say about the wisdom of building this local project”. The media spent the weekend before Yglesias wrote that post splitting precisely that hair with regards to Obama.
— Consumatopia · Aug 18, 07:03 PM · #
I’m not expressing myself well, and apologize.
Let’s take the Westboro Baptist Church. They have a constitutional right to protest at military funerals with their “God hates f-gs” cr-p.
Lets assume 3 friends take positions on Westboro’s protest.
Person A: I support Westboro’s right to protest, and the people who oppose it are jerks.
Person B: I support Westboro’s right to protest, but I don’t have an opinion about whether the protest is a good idea.
Person C: I support Westboro’s right to protest, but think that the protesters are a bunch of jerks who should not be doing what they are doing.
That’s more than a hair-splitting difference.
Similarly, taking the same three positions in the Cordoba case is more than hair-splitting. It happens that Yglesias probably believes that position A is correct in the Cordoba case and position C is correct in the Westboro case, but that doesn’t change the degree of difference between the various opinions, only which one is correct.
— J Mann · Aug 19, 02:47 PM · #
That’s more than a hair-splitting difference
Very useful explanation, J Mann. Frame it and put it on the wall.
— The Reticulator · Aug 19, 04:52 PM · #
Okay, maybe now I’m understanding. You seem to be reading Yglesias as either claiming that all positions which agree with First Amendment protections, or all forms of disapproval, are only a hair-splitting difference apart.
But I don’t see how that reading makes sense. Yglesias originally offered up the example of sidewalk obscenities as one in which he takes position C, clearly distinguishing it from both position A and a position opposing First Amendment rights for sidewalk obscenities.
He’s making a claim that some positions are only a split hair apart, and asking whether or not you “support” the construction is to split that hair in a way that misses the point.
Asking whether a Jew “supports” the building of a Mormon temple is an example of this. Suppose someone takes position C with regard to the Mormon temple. Jews and everyone else who opposes bigotry should rise up against that. The question of whether these opponents of bigotry “support” the temple is, indeed, splitting hairs.
The split hair is between “I agree with you” and “I disagree with you, but I don’t think you’re a jerk. The people who do think you are a jerk are the actual jerks.” (In your terminology, either of these positions could be held by “person A”.)
— Consumatopia · Aug 19, 09:10 PM · #
consumatopia, it is not the location.
there is going to be protest against mosques every where.
and its going to get much, much worse.
are you guys really this thick?
we just lost in Iraq. Our defeated soldiers are coming home, and more will come home from Afghanistan next summer.
al-Islam just kicked America’s ass.
we spent 6000 soldier lives and a trillion dollars and the christofascists still cant build a megachurch in Mecca or ship bibles to Lahore.
— matoko_chan · Aug 20, 04:49 PM · #
^ Who is this “we”, Kemosabe? PNAC and Halliburton won! They and their compadres are in the words of Peter Griffin, “Richer and more powerful than ever!”
The movement of government-owned forces around the global chessboard is incidental. Besides, the grunts need a breather before we super-democratize Iran and then maybe Pakistan.
— Mason · Aug 27, 05:46 AM · #