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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - August 24, 2010
Our Clueless Professor
by: Pat Buchanan
Have we ever had a president so disconnected from the
heart of America?
On Friday night, at a White House iftar, the breaking of
the Ramadan fast, Obama strode directly into the blazing
controversy over whether a mosque should be built two
blocks from Ground Zero.
Speaking as though this were simply an open-and-shut case
of constitutional law, Professor Obama declared that
Muslims "have the same right to practice their religion
as anyone else in this country," including "the right to
build a place of worship and a community center on private
property in lower Manhattan."
Hailed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also sees this as
an issue of tolerance and religious freedom, Obama had
poured gasoline on a fire that had him in headlong retreat
Saturday morning.
"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom
of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was comment-
ing very specifically on the right people have that dates
back to our founding. That is what our country is about."
Professor Obama finally seemed to grasp the point.
This is not a question of "Can they build a mosque near
Ground Zero?"
It is an question of "Should they build a mosque in the
shadow of the twin towers, where 3,000 Americans were
suffocated, crushed or burned to death by Islamic fanatics
whose Muslim faith was integral to their mission of mass
murder and to their identify?"
Unless one is without kidney, spleen, heart or common
sense, the answer would be "No!"
A decent respect for the opinions of one's fellow Americans
would seem to shout out: Put the mosque somewhere else.
This is hallowed ground. This is a burial site sacred to
the families of those who died, to New Yorkers, to all
Americans. A Muslim mosque is out of place there.
Indeed, if, as backers claim, the purpose of this Cordoba
mosque and community center were healing, reconciliation
and harmony, it has failed in its purpose. It has already
had the opposite effect, enraging and dividing the city
and country.
Why would backers of the project press ahead when its
purpose is impossible of attainment, unless the real
purpose were to impose on the people of New York a mosque
they do not want there.
With the president's intervention, the issue has metasta-
sized into a major clash in America's religious and culture
war. It has gone global, as Hamas has now weighed in on
the side of building the mosque near Ground Zero.
"We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build
the church, and Israelis are building their holy places,"
said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the
organization's chief in Gaza.
His arguments echo Bloomberg's and Obama's: We have the
right and we Muslims must now move ahead with the mosque.
With America's head of state enlisted on one side of this
quarrel, and most Americans on the other, damage will be
done to the national unity and there will be consequences
for the president's party.
So be it. For if the president believes the Constitution
decides this issue with finality, he is profoundly
mistaken. We were a country before we ever had a
Constitution. We were a nation, born in the furnace of a
revolutionary war. That infant nation wrote its own birth
certificate, a dozen years after Lexington and Concord
Bridge.
While that Constitution guarantees freedom of religious
belief and practice to all Americans, we were a Christian
country then. And we remain a Christian country, Barack
Obama's dissent notwithstanding.
Three-in-four Americans profess a Christian faith. That
reality is not changed because the Warren Court outlawed
Bible reading and prayer in public school, ordered the
Ten Commandants taken down from classroom walls, purged
Christianity from our public institutions or denies to
Americans their freedom to put Christmas creches in their
public squares.
Islam is a rising faith, the largest on earth, with 1.5
billion adherents. It is a militant faith that believes
it will one day encompass all mankind. It holds there is
but one God, Allah, that his last and greatest prophet was
Muhammad, that Islam, the path of submission, is the path
of salvation. It believes that its sacred book, the Koran,
should inform the culture, that Sharia should be the basis
of civil law.
Where it has become the dominant faith, it has been
intolerant of rivals, especially Christianity, the faith
of the Crusaders.
By no means are all or most Muslims fanatics of the Osama
bin Laden variety, but many are uncompromising in their
belief that, once their faith becomes the majority faith
in a community or society, Muslims should write the rules
and Muslims should make the laws.
And if Americans believe that Islam is consistent with
pluralism, ecumenism and a belief in the equality of all
religions and all lifestyles, we are headed for what the
Chinese call "interesting times."
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