On Islamic Center and Burning of Quran

In Gainesville, Florida a pastor Terry Jones of a small insignificant church with hardly any following called for the “International Burn a Quran Day" on September 11th to mark 9/11. He threatened to burn 50 copies of the Quran, which is also his maximum number of following. His purported action was a manifestation of his hatred towards Islam which culminated in this threat over the proposed building of an Islamic Center near Ground Zero. This extremely communal and demagogue preacher wrote a book “Islam is of the Devil” and last year distributed coffee mugs and t-shirts featuring this vicious message. He however could not carry his threat as a result of national and international outcry from media and people but most importantly due to the message from the Obama administration. As the news leaked through the mainstream media, hundreds of Afghans, Indonesians came out on streets to protest against the proposed burning of Quran. Taking lead from this, General David Petraeus warned that burning of Quran may escalate security hazards for American troops in Afghanistan. The Obama administration toed the line and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Press secretary Robert Gibbs and Defense Secretary Robert Gates condemned the proposed act and urged the pastor to refrain from any such action in the interest of national security. President Obama urged for religious tolerance and reiterated American values of religious freedom. More importantly however, along with this, he put national security as a top concern and warned that threats to burn the Quran are a sure and effective way to swell the ranks of al-Qaeda. The FBI finally intervened and spoke to the pastor after which the pastor vowed to not undertake any such adventure in the future. The details of the conversation were not divulged to the general public. Other religious whackos that had joined the hate parade have been silenced for now. One such person who drew significant attention is the evangelist Bill Keller, who has declared Muslims will "burn in hell" along with Mormons and other undesirables. He planned his first "sermon" for a proposed 9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero but could not execute it.

Before putting this incident more in context, let us first examine how all this came about. It started with the growing ruckus in the US over building of an Islamic center and a mosque near ground zero in New York City. The site already has a building which has been a center of cultural activity for Muslim population in the city for decades. The proposed building of this mosque has now become a rallying point for the political right in the US, trumpeted by the Tea Party. However, only eight months back there was no controversy on building of this mosque. One year back, the New York Times carried a front page article over this and there was hardly a murmur. The City administration seeing the building of the Islamic Center as a private property right never objected to it, Mayor Bloomberg supported it. In fact the Jewish center in the New York City actively helped in laying out the plan for the Islamic Center. The Imam of the mosque Feisal Abdul Rauf hoped for spreading peaceful message through this Islamic Center. His own niece served in Iraq war. He and others involved are mainstream American Muslims. Even the right wing conservatives did not see anything wrong in building of this mosque a few months back.

However things changed diametrically, when a far right conservative blogger Pamela Geller who has devoted herself in demonizing Islam raised this issue through her blog characterizing the proposed mosque as Monster Mosque to be built at Ground Zero and painted it as a victory symbol for Muslims. The site however is two blocks away from Ground Zero where the Twin Towers once stood. Pamela Geller is the founder, editor and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com, a person so unhinged that she once suggested that Obama was a love child of Malcom X (a prominent and fiery civil rights activist from 60s). She is also the executive director of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and of the Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI), and is a regular columnist for Andrew Breitbart's blog, another right wing blogger whose edited video post was the primary reason behind firing of Shirley Sharrod. She also promoted an extremely offensive advertising campaign carried on buses in the New York City urging Muslims to leave Islam and constantly hammered on the mosque issue. Her demagoguery with the undertone that Muslims are going to take over the US (very similar to the right wing Hindu propaganda in India) got the conservative newspaper Washington Examiner following and publicizing the issue and then it spread like wildfire. Her blatantly communal and offensive tirade against Islam was given space in the mainstream media. CNN conducted an initial opinion poll according to which 70 percent independents, 54 percent Democrats and 82 percent Republicans opposed the mosque plan. Suddenly something which was a non-issue a few months back snowballed into a national issue with media playing it over and over and giving ‘fair’ space to opponents of the construction of mosque.

The Islamic Center in question has been a center of peaceful cultural activities and its Imam and his wife have resolutely and routinely condemned terrorist activity of any kind. Still, even with the peaceful history and affiliations, the construction of the proposed mosque became so fiercely debated that President Obama issued a statement quoting the US constitution for religious freedom for one and all in the country. However the following day, bowing to the political backlash, in a typical gesture, President Obama rephrased his statement saying that he was commenting on religious freedom, and not the exact location of the mosque. Apologist Obama continues to pander false right wing hysteria on issue after issue and this turns out to be no exception. His political calculations have prevented him from taking clear stand on any issue. What he did take stand on was national security! With looming elections for Congress this year, he is too cautious to take any stand on issues which the right wing portrays as offensive to ‘mass’ sentiments. He is unwittingly digging his own political grave by giving in to crass conservative propagandists whose bigotry have now led more than sixty percent of Americans to think an Islamic cultural center should not be built on "hallowed ground." It is an astounding victory of the propaganda perpetrated by the right wing bloggers.

This extreme propaganda led to the events in Gainesville, Florida and needs to be seen in this context of trumped up Islamophobia. Having lived and worked closely with "a deeply religious Muslim population," a group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans has written an open letter decrying the rising tide of Islamophobia, which "goes against the values we risked our lives to protect." The timidity of Obama and his administration to deal with this issue head on and massive right wing propaganda and fear mongering has resulted in a spurt of hate crimes against Muslims. A Muslim taxi driver Ahmed Sharif was attacked by a passenger after being asked if he was a Muslim in New York City. The taxi driver survived the wounds but the incident sent shock waves in New York City. In another incident, a mosque was vandalized in Queens in New York City. In Tennessee, Muslims are afraid of venturing out of their homes. Incidents of vandalization of mosques have increased considerably. The right wing Christian groups are constantly demanding shifting the location of the Islamic Center to somewhere else, which by law is infringement of individual property rights, a value deeply entrenched in American system, constitution and psyche.

The Gainesville, Florida incident though rooted in the Islamic Center, however, has other ramifications. The mainstream media came out in full force in lynching pastor Terry Jones in a self-glorifying, moralizing cheap media stunt. The pastor’s miniscule group obviously has very little power or prestige even in Florida, leave alone Washington and thus became an easy target for royal court journalists. Media figures who treat actual blood-spillers with great reverence thus suddenly found within themselves oh-so-profound concern over "blood-spilling" which this pastor’s act could possibly bring about. The whole media and establishment circus is in such a deep denial of recognizing the fact that the act of war itself is a far more radicalizing catalyst in the Muslim world. The sickening fact is that these people are portraying that burning Qurans is worse than drone attacks, rocket attacks, carpet bombings, mass rape, and so on and so forth. One of the most disgusted appearances on MSNBC (a respected news channel) was of establishment-serving, power-worshipping Newsweek (a respected magazine) editor Jon Meacham among others who proudly flaunted his Christian faith and urged the pastor in the name of Christian principles to avoid being the cause of blood spilling. He would never ever use language like that to condemn American officials who have actually spilled enormous amounts of blood. The self-gratifying moralizing continued on all mainstream news channels with different experts and panelists. CNN invited a panel of war-mongers to discuss if America was safer. In the words of Kathy Kelly, an American peace activist who is currently facing trial for 'trespassing' in a drone-manufacturing plant during an anti-war protest, the mainstream media "does little to help ordinary [Americans] ... understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small "ground zeroes" in multiple locales on an everyday basis."

There was also no mention in the mainstream media of the religious groups and people of Gainesville who came out strongly against this bigotry and expressed solidarity and support for Muslim community. National Association of Evangelicals, the nation's largest umbrella evangelical group, issued a statement urging the church to cancel the event, warning it could cause worldwide tension between the two religions. Various Islamic groups started a campaign to sensitize people about Islam and counter the distorted versions through meetings, open sessions in mosques and distribution of copies of Quran etc. This is other than tremendous support of Islamic Center in the progressive section in the American society. The focus was Pastor Terry Jones who is considered insane by many including his own daughter. He was more or less used as a pawn for the fawning media to clean their conscience over ‘blood-spilling.’ The first amendment to the United States constitution gives freedom of speech to anybody and Terry Jones falls well within it no matter how hateful his intents were. He was however not allowed to speak except in the far right news channels. The bigger crime however is sensationalizing such non-incidents and competing against one another as to who can more flamboyantly express contempt for an inconsequential, powerless, joke of a figure like Terry Jones. The Media Figures never comment (leave alone condemn) on blood-thirsty war mongers like Rumsfeld who said “We don’t do body counts” and the official reference to any casualty (running into several hundred thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan) other than US casualties as “collateral damage.”

The burning of the Quran has all the makings of classic psy-ops where people will be brain-washed to believe in the benevolence of the US administration and respect for human life while at the same time carrying the impression that the Muslims are so "irrational" that they would kill people over the burning of a book. This is the impression General Petraeus, President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates have been trying to project that this one action of Quran burning will put their troops in ”harm’s way”, as if years of war, destruction and devastation in these countries is inconsequential in the context. It is as if when US soldiers go on a shooting rampage on innocent civilians in Afghanistan “just for fun” in the night and collect ‘fingers’ of victims as trophies is not horrendous, barbarian or blood-boiling enough for the entire population to radicalize against the US. The American exceptionalism, a delusional faith in benevolence of intentions of the US has given the imperial war machine the false legitimacy to kill over a million in the name of 3000 killed in 9/11 attacks. The administration’s message was mainly to prevent a possible snag in their rolling war machine and not on increasing religious tolerance in the country. Fascism in America is wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.

The Islamic Center issue brought into controversy by a right wing blogger has now captured the imagination of average Americans who now overwhelmingly oppose its construction there; something which would have gone unnoticed or in best scenario praised for enlightening people about Islam. But it led to a series of unfortunate incidents and we see its repercussions in New York, Florida, Tennessee and other states. The Imam has finally given in to the tremendous pressure to move the mosque and has declared that he is open to any option including delaying construction or changing its location. This is quite shameful and makes a mockery of religious freedom in the country. It has been portrayed as victory symbol for Muslims and a ‘clash of religions,’ and as a result, misguided protests in Muslim parts of the world are seen along with attacks on churches. The demagoguery has played to its fullest extent. It is however worth noting that Saudis are best friends of American ruling elites and corporations and this ‘clash’ never seems to occur with them. Only recently the US administration is in the process of signing the biggest arms deal ever with Saudi Arabia amounting to a whopping $60 billion. Never before had the right wing blogosphere exercised such an influence over administration’s actions and national debates. The timidity of Obama who had one rare historical opportunity of pushing the progressive agenda (as in 30s) given the material conditions in the country has proven to be a serendipity for the far right who were quick to fill this political vacuum of inaction and reneged promises.