The politics of mosques

I’ve been visiting my parents this weekend in Chicago and immersing myself in Ramadan at our masjid – there’s a serenity and a rigour to arriving at the masjid two hours prior to sunset, reading the Qur’an, engaging in communal recitation of sipara (chapters), and then offering the maghrib (sunset) salaat with the imam leading the prayer, prior to breaking the fast with some flavored milk, dates, and cookies. It’s a dream of mine to one day spend the full 30 days of Ramadan in Egypt or India and fully immerse myself in these rhythms for the entire month. 

Republican leaders have largely abandoned former President George W. Bush’s post-Sept. 11 rhetorical embrace of American Muslims and his insistence — always controversial inside the party — that Islam is a religion of peace. This weekend, former Bush aides were among the very few Republicans siding with Obama, as many of the party’s leaders have moved toward more vocal denunciations of Islam’s role in violence abroad and suspicion of its place at home.

Polling indicates that the mosque proposal is unpopular among voters, with a recent CNN survey showing that 68 percent of voters disapproving of the plan. But a top White House official told POLITICO Obama was determined to raise the issue, even though he knew polls were decisively against the mosque.

“We had no illusions about this. He didn’t take this on as a political strategy. He took it on because it was a matter of fundamental principle. One of the reasons we work for him is that he doesn’t sit there with a political calculator on these big, tough issues that come along. There was never any hesitation about the decision, and he has absolutely no regrets about it,” the official said.

“He understands the emotions swirling around it and the horrific events that occurred there. But he doesn’t believe shifting from our moorings as a country on questions like religious freedom — treating one faith differently than another — is the right answer. It would be a betrayal of who we are.”

Conservatives rightly bristle at the federal government’s micromanagement of land in the American West, with the highest profile example being the closure of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. So why should we invite the feds into land use review in Manhattan? What New York allows to be built in its Financial District is not the federal government’s business.

What I find bizarre about some of the conservative response to Cordoba House is not just the objection to the construction of the mosque, but the conviction that it should be stopped by any means necessary–even if that means violating conservative principles about property rights, rule of law, and federalism.