As
we wrote the other day, the ADL joined those calling for an Islamic cultural center not to be built a few blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center in NYC. While I suspect much of the opposition to the center is based in anti-Muslim bigotry, the ADL claims that its opposition was based solely on concerns that the cultural center might upset some of the families of those who died on September 11.
Here is what the ADL is now saying, and it's an interesting argument at first blush:
However, we also must take into consideration the feelings of the families who lost loved ones at Ground Zero.
The lessons of an earlier and different controversy echo in this one. In 1993, Pope John Paul II asked 14 Carmelite Nuns to move their convent from just outside the Auschwitz death camp. The establishment of the convent near Auschwitz had stirred dismay among Jewish groups and survivors who felt that the location was an affront and a terrible disservice to the memory of millions of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Just as we thought then that well-meaning efforts by Carmelite nuns to build a Catholic structure were insensitive and counterproductive to reconciliation, so too we believe it will be with building a mosque so close to Ground Zero.
Of course, the ultimate irony in the ADL invoking the Holocaust to justify its position on an issue that doesn't involve the Holocaust at all, is that the
ADL would be the first organization to eviscerate any of us who dared invoke the Holocaust to explain anything that didn't directly deal with the Holocaust. And I quote the ADL's own head, Abe Foxman:
No matter how odious, bigoted, biased and unconstitutional Arizona’s new law may be, let’s be clear that there is no comparison between the situation facing immigrants, legal or illegal, in Arizona and what happened in the Holocaust....
Can the same not be said of September 11?
Putting that bit of situational ethics aside for a moment, there is the story of the nuns to deal with. Is it the same thing for Muslims to build an Islamic cultural center a few blocks from Ground Zero, as it is for Catholic nuns to build a convent outside Auschwitz?
First thing, a couple blocks from Ground Zero is the heart of New York City. Right outside the Auschwitz gates is not a comparable urban center where you'd expect much new construction. There'd have probably been almost as much outrage if they tried to build a McDonald's just outside the Auschwitz gates - not true of building a McDonald's a couple of blocks from Ground Zero, I suspect.
Second, there's the role of the Catholic church in WWII, a shady one at best, versus the role of the Muslim faith in September 11. There really isn't a Muslim pope, so the Muslim high command wasn't exactly colluding with the terrorists who took down the WTC in the same way many fear the Catholic church colluded with the Nazis.
Of course, there's more to the story of the nuns at Auschwitz. Funny that the ADL didn't tell us the rest of the story. It seems that the nuns didn't build a convent NEAR Auschwitz, they built a convent IN Auschwitz. This would be akin to the Muslim Cultural Center being built in the remains of the World Trade Center - perhaps a tad more culturally sensitive than a few blocks away.
From the NYT:
The presence of the nuns, who live in a convent converted from a two-story building used by the Nazis as a storehouse for the deadly Zyklon B gas, has been an impediment to improved relations between Roman Catholics and Jews in Poland and elsewhere.
Many Jews view the red brick convent just outside the barbed wire perimeter at Auschwitz, where some 1.5 million Jews perished, as an affront to Jewish sensibilities. The World Jewish Congress threatened earlier this year to boycott the ceremonies planned for Monday to mark the ghetto uprising unless the issue of the Carmelite nuns was resolved.
The nuns also put up
religious symbols IN Auschwitz - pretty cheeky:
And there's another point: Christians don't own September 11. It was an attack on all Americans, not just Christian Americans. Whereas the controversy over Auschwitz was very much a Christians vs Jews issue (even though more people than just Jews were killed in the Holocaust, Jews still suffered the overwhelming brunt of the assault).
From TIME:
[T]he establishment of a Christian institution at a place that will forever symbolize Jewish martyrdom has stirred outrage among Jews.
It struck many at the time that the Christians were involved in a sort of religious imperialism at Auschwitz, not just insensitivity. Do we really think the Muslims are somehow trying to steal September 11 from us? Trying to convert a symbol of "our" religion, or convert us? Whoever "us" is.
I'm just not convinced that the comparison works.
And finally, was September 11, as bad as it was, really as bad as the Holocaust? Really? That's what the ADL seems to now be arguing. And if the ADL comes out and says that September 11 wasn't as bad as the Holocaust - where over 6 million people were killed, 2/3 of the Jews in Europe - then their comparison just doesn't hold water, since per se we should be more appalled by anything seen to undermine something as huge as the Holocaust.
Still feels like the ADL caved to the bigots on this one.
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