Protesters against Park51, the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan
Our college touts its “Commitment to Diversity” in large font on a colorful corner of the homepage of our website. Tangible proof of this commitment can be found anywhere: the presence of students with an international background to the myriad academic and social initiatives that endorse integration. And yet while we celebrate “difference” through cultural shows or heritage months, we tend to leave out a fundamental discussion on how diversity is not just about joyous exoticism.
The seemingly benign, Kumbaya-style pluralism that the College advertises is not the whole picture. Last Tuesday’s panel discussion on the debate surrounding the building of a “mosque” at Ground Zero touched on the often-unresolved issues that lurk under shallow representations of diversity.
While in essence the panel discussion was a reassuring hour-long talk, it was also a sobering event. It was comforting in the way that panelists and audience members talked a lot of “sense.” Professor Sufia Uddin of the Religious Studies Department made it clear that the mosque at Ground Zero will not be a “mosque at Ground Zero.” In actuality, it would be built two blocks away from the site where the World Trade Center used to stand. It is also meant to be a multi-faith community center that will have a gym and a pool for the recreation of the members.
Clearly, as Dean of the College Armando Bengochea said, the real cause behind the anti-mosque protests stems from outright American-style bigotry. Be it against Muslims, Latinos, communists, Native Americans or fries that are openly French, this kind of prejudice has become as traditional a feature of American society as McDonald’s.
The lesson: even the country that most actively pursues the spread of liberal tolerance around the world – the most tangible effort being felt right at this moment in the geography of Iraq – cannot put this principle into practice. Tolerance has its own restrictions and reservations, and they fit according to what is convenient for those running the country. The limits are handed to people in the form of pathological depictions of the current enemy on television. Or, as Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Syed Nauman Naqvi pointed out, in outlandish theories that forecast how the end of the world will come as soon as Obama raises taxes on the rich.
“The U.S.,” says Dinesh D’Souza in an article for Forbes magazine, “is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s.”
This type of language reveals disconcerting truths – the truth that you can be part of a so-called educated elite and still be dangerously ignorant. Or that you do not need to be coherent at all when you have economic power to back up any of your delusional assertions.
But the most unsettling part of the debate for me related to the makeup of people in the discussion room. Surely, it was consoling to be surrounded by like-minded individuals, but it was equally upsetting to become aware that the debate was limited to a room full of nodding heads in sound agreement. There were neither radical Tea Partiers nor Islamophobes in that room. This realization brought up a closer and more poignant truth: we are only a few.
The few of us at that panel discussion are a product of a liberal arts education that does everything to shake up any signs of absolute certainty in us, thus knocking out any possibilities of blind fanaticism.
Upholding doubt rather than hanging on to unfounded convictions makes respectful coexistence possible. To be doubtful is to be humble and open to the possibility that the real enemy might well be within you rather than outside of you.
It’s a quality that lowers one’s defenses and makes way for bridges of constructive dialogue.
But we are members of a tiny group at the tip of the social pyramid that can afford a $54,000 a year education.
The ones who took to the streets to protest the Ground Zero building do not represent the majority of Americans, but they are the radical and visible elements of a type of social mindset that has bled into the mainstream.
It is the mindset that keeps people racing against one another in fierce competition to achieve an unsustainable lifestyle fueled on carbon. It is the mindset that leads people to glorify individual advancement even if it comes at the cost of collective decay.
They point to the illusion that we live in a meritocratic America to justify their negligent carelessness. Their narrow judgments reflect their vision of reality, which only extends as far as the length of their noses allow.
The streets are packed with people who are being bombarded with myths that are covered under the façade of factuality. Democracy is so generous that it even allows them to vote. And politicians know that. They press the fear button, and voilà! A mass of conscience-stripped individuals will adhere to strategically exclusionary political agendas without a speck of remorse or doubt.
“Is there anything that we can hold onto amidst so much despair?” asked a member of the audience.
Oh, great. Here comes the cheesiness, I thought, expecting the typical you-are-the-bearers-of-change type of answer. But the reflection that came from Naqvi struck a chord in the room.
“There are definitely all the reasons to believe that there is nothing to be hopeful about.” I felt an invigorating rush of fresh blood with this observation.
Finally, somebody that finds hope and happiness to be largely overrated and unnatural when literally all the arrows point in the opposite direction – the house of doom. Our generation must be told a different story this time, and we might see some awakening.
We ought to be told that we suck big time.
We need to hear that as things are. We are actually a lost generation of Blackberry-driven, pathologically self-centered individuals with an acute deficit of empathy.
We ought to be confronted with the fact that the community service we do every week is at best only contributing to our CVs and our self-esteem. We must be told that we are going to be no different from our monkey-ancestors – my apologies to the monkeys – and that we will be the shame of the century that our grandchildren will look down upon.
It takes courage to sit down and look at despair in the face, but it is what we need. A large dose of its unpleasant company might just be our last source for change. We need to feel unsettled.
There has got to be something wrong with you if you do not feel like your head is about to explode when the rhetoric of hate becomes acceptable, even normal. But it is easy to tune out and lose sight of the ugliness of the “real” world in a place like Conn, where pretty much everybody is on the same ideological boat.
“It hurts,” was Sufia Uddin’s last comment, and I wholeheartedly agree.
To be cast as different in this country is still a source of indelible harm, and it is a fact that has to be put on the table for frank discussion.
Let despair take over.
Surely, there is nothing illegal about building a mosque anywhere in the United States, but I think blindly accepting something without considering the context of the situation can often yield inaccurate results. I think we can both agree that the attack on the World Trade Center was a result of radical Islamic beliefs. This alone could be considered a great victory to anyone who shares these ideals. There are no shortages of mosques throughout New York City, so why is it so important that this mosque be built two blocks from ground zero? Isn’t this a rather audacious example of territoriality? Now, it is said that many, if not the majority, of Muslims do not condone the actions of only a few radicals. If that is true, why is it so important that this mosque be built so close to the single greatest act of terrorism against America, in recent history? To answer this question, one must understand the history and culture of Muslims. In 630 AD, Muslims captured Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, and they quickly built a mosque at the Ka’aba. After Muslims conquered Cordoba, Spain, they erected a mosque over what was then the Christian church of St. Vincent. Now, it could be argued that these examples are irrelevant to the issue at hand. But, why is it that the mosque at ground zero will be named after the Cordoba mosque in Spain? Is this not a blatant reference to muslim supremacy and victory? Furthermore, the Imam of this new mosque, Faisal Abdul Rauf, has openly denied the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and he has also said that American foreign policy is responsible for 9/11. I am not suggesting that all Muslims should be considered and treated as one group with only one set of beliefs. I am only trying to understand the meaning of this mosque to Islamic countries. Neil Armstrong didn’t plant the American flag on the moon because he had an extra flag laying around and he thought it would make for a great facebook profile pic. In the context of the cold war, that flag was a way of expressing victory over Soviet Russia. So, what makes a mosque at ground zero any different?