Very good common sense piece. Harry Reid is indeed particularly disappointing in his response. Daniel.

We have our hand on the lever and we just keep flushing what was great about this country down the toilet.

I don't envy Americans in the coming century -- how depressing to be part of a rapidly fading, unexeptional country.

From Asharq Alawsat
August 16, 2010

A House of Worship or a Symbol of Destruction?

By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid

US President Barack Obama adopted a difficult position when he supported the building of a mosque near ground zero, where 3,000 US citizens died at the hands of Al-Qaeda terrorists on 11 September 2001.

Despite the fact that the president adopted the correct stance in principle, i.e. the principle of freedom of worship, in my opinion he adopted an unnecessary and unimportant stance, even as far as Muslims are concerned. The mosque is not an issue for Muslims, and they are not bothered by its construction.

This reminds us of another principled stance Obama took when he insisted on putting the Guantanamo prisoners accused of belonging to Al-Qaeda on trial before civilian courts, and on closing down the military prison. It is true that this stance deserves appreciation. However, the fact is that he fought a battle that does not concern Muslims across the world, because there are tens of thousands of Muslims - similar to those accused of extremism - who are imprisoned in worse conditions in Muslim countries.

Muslims do not aspire for a mosque next to the 11 September cemetery, and are not bothered with Bin Ladin's cook being put on trial in a civilian court. Muslims have issues that encroach upon the destinies of nations; these issues are the cause of isolation and calamity, such as the establishment of the State of Palestine. For Obama to focus his energy and efforts, and fight for the establishment of peace in the Middle East is more important and more valuable than a mosque in New York.

The fact is that building a mosque next to the site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers, which were destroyed during the 11 September attacks, is a strange story. This is because the mosque is not an issue for Muslims, and they have not heard of it until the shouting became loud between the supporters and the objectors, which is mostly an argument between non-Muslim US citizens!

Neither did the Muslims ask for a single building, nor do the angry Muslims want the mosque. This is one of the few times when the two opposing sides are in agreement. Nevertheless, the dispute has escalated, and has reached the front pages of the press and the major television programs, demonstrations have been staged in the streets, and large posters have been hung on buses roaming the streets of New York calling for preventing the building of the mosque and reminding the people of the 11 September crime. It really is a strange battle!

I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district. Is there a side that is committed to this mosque? The fact is that in the news reports there are names linked to this project that costs 100 million dollars!

The sides enthusiastic for building the mosque might be building companies, architect houses, or politicized groups that want suitable investments?! I do not know whether the building applicant wants a mosque whose aim is reconciliation, or he is an investor who wants quick profits. This is because the idea of the mosque specifically next to the destruction is not at all a clever deed. The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery.

What the US citizens do not understand is that the battle against the 11 September terrorists is a Muslim battle, and not theirs, and this battle still is ablaze in more than 20 Muslim countries. Some Muslims will consider that building a mosque on this site immortalizes and commemorates what was done by the terrorists who committed their crime in the name of Islam. I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a symbol or a worship place that tomorrow might become a place about which the terrorists and their Muslim followers boast, and which will become a shrine for Islam haters whose aim is to turn the public opinion against Islam. This is what has started to happen now; they claim that there is a mosque being built over the corpses of 3,000 killed US citizens, who were buried alive by people chanting God is great, which is the same call that will be heard from the mosque.

It is the wrong battle, because originally there was no mosque in order to rebuild it, and there are no practicing Muslims who want a place in which to worship.

Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed is the general manager of Al -Arabiya television. Mr. Al Rashed is also the former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al- Awsat, and the leading Arabic weekly magazine, Al Majalla. He is also a senior Columnist in the daily newspapers of Al Madina and Al Bilad. He is a US post-graduate degree in mass communications. He has been a guest on many TV current affairs programs. He is currently based in Dubai.

http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=21980

From The Wall Street Journal
August 18, 2010

OPINION

How to Win the Clash of Civilizations

The key advantage of Huntington's famous model is that it describes the world as it is—not as we wish it to be.

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

What do the controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France have in common? All four are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the "Clash of Civilizations," particularly the clash between Islam and the West.

Huntington's argument is worth summarizing briefly for those who now only remember his striking title. The essential building block of the post-Cold War world, he wrote, are seven or eight historical civilizations of which the Western, the Muslim and the Confucian are the most important.

The balance of power among these civilizations, he argued, is shifting. The West is declining in relative power, Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant. Huntington also said that a civilization-based world order is emerging in which states that share cultural affinities will cooperate with each other and group themselves around the leading states of their civilization.

The West's universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations.

Huntington's model, especially after the fall of Communism, was not popular. The fashionable idea was put forward in Francis Fukuyama's 1989 essay "The End of History," in which he wrote that all states would converge on a single institutional standard of liberal capitalist democracy and never go to war with each other. The equivalent neoconservative rosy scenario was a "unipolar" world of unrivalled American hegemony. Either way, we were headed for One World.

President Obama, in his own way, is a One Worlder. In his 2009 Cairo speech, he called for a new era of understanding between America and the Muslim world. It would be a world based on "mutual respect, and . . . upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles."

The president's hope was that moderate Muslims would eagerly accept this invitation to be friends. The extremist minority—nonstate actors like al Qaeda—could then be picked off with drones.

Of course, this hasn't gone according to plan. And a perfect illustration of the futility of this approach, and the superiority of the Huntingtonian model, is the recent behavior of Turkey.

According to the One World view, Turkey is an island of Muslim moderation in a sea of extremism. Successive American presidents have urged the EU to accept Turkey as a member on this assumption. But the illusion of Turkey as the West's moderate friend in the Muslim world has been shattered.

A year ago Turkey's President Recep Erdogan congratulated Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election after he blatantly stole the presidency. Then Turkey joined forces with Brazil to try to dilute the American-led effort to tighten U.N. sanctions aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear arms program. Most recently, Turkey sponsored the "aid flotilla" designed to break Israel's blockade of Gaza and to hand Hamas a public relations victory.

True, there remain secularists in Istanbul who revere the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey. But they have no hold over the key government ministries, and their grip over the army is slipping. Today the talk in Istanbul is quite openly about an "Ottoman alternative," which harks back to the days when the Sultan ruled over an empire that stretched from North Africa to the Caucasus.

If Turkey can no longer be relied on to move towards the West, who in the Muslim world can be? All the Arab countries except Iraq—a precarious democracy created by the United States—are ruled by despots of various stripes. And all the opposition groups that have any meaningful support among the local populations are run by Islamist outfits like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, Islamist movements are demanding the expansion of Shariah law. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak's time is running out. Should the U.S. support the installation of his son? If so, the rest of the Muslim world will soon be accusing the Obama administration of double standards—if elections for Iraq, why not for Egypt? Analysts have observed that in free and fair elections, a Muslim Brotherhood victory cannot be ruled out.

Algeria? Somalia? Sudan? It is hard to think of a single predominantly Muslim country that is behaving according to the One World script.

The greatest advantage of Huntington's civilizational model of international relations is that it reflects the world as it is—not as we wish it to be. It allows us to distinguish friends from enemies. And it helps us to identify the internal conflicts within civilizations, particularly the historic rivalries between Arabs, Turks and Persians for leadership of the Islamic world.

But divide and rule cannot be our only policy. We need to recognize the extent to which the advance of radical Islam is the result of an active propaganda campaign. According to a CIA report written in 2003, the Saudis invested at least $2 billion a year over a 30-year period to spread their brand of fundamentalist Islam. The Western response in promoting our own civilization was negligible.

Our civilization is not indestructible: It needs to be actively defended. This was perhaps Huntington's most important insight. The first step towards winning this clash of civilizations is to understand how the other side is waging it—and to rid ourselves of the One World illusion.

Ms. Ali, a former member of the Dutch parliament, is the author of "Nomad: From Islam to America—A Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations," which has just been published by Free Press.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575338471355710184.html

RE: "don't these critics realize that religious intolerance is a monster that, once unleashed, may be impossible to control? "
How ironic that you put it that way!! This is exactly the reason why many DON"T APPRECIATE ISLAM as a theo-political-militant-legal system. It never should have been classified as a "religion" itself. It is so much more. Middle Eastern Muslims never even knew such a term until introduced to it by the West.

It is not that anyone is generalizing Muslims - it is that they all are required to follow the same rules and regulations of Islam. It is Islam that does the generalizing!

It is all too apparent that the author of this article knows absolutely nothing of Islam . Because of the nature of a few of it's doctrines, simply knowing a Muslim or two, three or even a hundred does not fully serve to enable what there is to know about Islam.

This article is a bunch of empty rhetoric. He obviously knows nothing about Islam.

The problem is that in the West we view Islam as like any other religion.
But it's very different even the concept of a mosque is very different from that of a church yet in Western thought they are supposedly the exact same thing.
Thats also why when you mention Islam it takes only a few minutes for someone to mention Christianity as if you can exchange one for the other and it doesn't make any difference.
For example the whole "community center" thing , it's presented as if that is different from a mosque but in fact every mosque is also a community center.
Thats it's traditional role , it was the place of worship,the community center,the court of law,the barracks,and city hall , all rolled into one structure.
But to find this out you have to step out of the Western paradigm of what religion is and this is much harder then it seems.For example Westerners and also others are shocked that in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine Muslims would hide weapons in mosques.But ever since the very beginning of Islam the mosque was also the place where weapons were kept and distributed.
It's again our own false understanding of what religion is supposed to be and projecting it on Islam.
The opposition to Islam is also much broader then objections to Muslims flying planes into buildings.
It's also the calls for censorship or oppression of gays or discrimatory gender relations and more.

Until the author drops his pen and picks up a few books -- like The Reliance of the Traveller, The Quran, The Hadith, The Sira and the HIstory of Islam since Muhammad was born, I suggest he either put up or shut up.

Harry Reid should resign as majority leader after abandoning the idea of religous tolerance. Furthermore I think many should notice the cynical hypocrisy of Republicans on this issue. They vehemently defend their rational for fighting two wars for people of muslim faith in the middle east yet would follow a domestic policy no different from the policies of the most religously intolerant regimes on the planet. Policy too similar to nations like Iran or Saudi Arabia. Finally, a cold reception to this islamic center only reveals the selfish self interest at the heart of the U.S. foreign policy agenda. One that pays little attention to human capital and worships resources.

Great piece of article Dr. Walt. Thanks a lot for having a rational viewpoint on a divisive issue such as this one.

I personally have read that article of Mr. Douthat on NYT and I believe he has been apolozising for American exceptionalism.

When it comes to the issues like Dubai Port Authority , Arizona anti-immigration law and this current Manhattan Mosque one thing stands out.
The proponents of American exceptionalism seem to be considering that their identities are under mortal threat from rationalism and Islamic Universalism and these exceptional believers are trying to fight back against what they consider this mortal threat.

I would urge everyone in this community including people like VLKSSWEDEN to support the rationalists like Dr.Walt in this against the exceptionalists for the benefit of the whole of humanity.

The world will be a much better place without American exceptionalism.

Call me naive but when asking the question: "...Reid would put a core political principle ahead of his own career prospects?" one must recall that his career prospects are his core political principle.

I find it difficult to accept the Professor’s view that the US is not at heart an "Anglo-Protestant/Catholic/Judeo-Christian" nation. Look at all that fuss about Obama’ s Pastor. Would that have arisen about his shoemaker? If one is prepared to countenance, however vaguely, the notion of human life somehow or other extending back to Adam and Eve in Eden even if you do not actually “believe” it, then that image and the values flowing forward from it through the Old and New Testaments have moulded many or your moral values and one way or another provided much of your cultural history. It may not be so now, but not that long ago Divinity classes and Nativity plays were common in schools. Millions still get christened, married and buried under church rites, and when Apollo 8 was on the brink of disaster Nixon asked the American people to pray, which, as it happens, seemed to work.

However, that is not the cause of all this brouhaha, which arises from an excess of democracy in the US where people are not content, as in Russia, to hand responsibility to an elected leader and let him get on with it but needs must all snap at his heels, impede his progress, express their disparate views, tell him what he should do, and generally try anything to trip him up.

I'm not normally a defender of Presidents. But Obama did not at all 'dilute' his original statement by saying that he has no comment on the "wisdom" of building a mosque at G.Zero. He re-affirmed his commitment to their "right" to build, which is totally distinct from the rationality of building. America's constitution gives equal rights to all citizens to make unwise decisions.

As an atheist, I will support anything that tends to get the religions squabbling among each other. Hopefully this leads to fewer hardcore religious people in the US as they see the idiocy of believing their hilariously false religions. So sure, this is a gross violation of the Constitution, but so was the internment of the Japanese (unanimously upheld by the SC, mind you). However, I despise Islam. It is by far the most blatant religion of ignorance, male chauvinism, inequality and a lack of freedom. If a majority of atheists, Christians, Jews and Hindus can agree that Islam is a menacing and virus-like religion, then maybe it actually is. Dont forget, Islam (like Christianity) was only spread by the sword and oppression. The penalty for explicit atheism in many "piously" Islamic countries today is often death.

The masses believe religion to be true, but this is so that leaders can control them more easily. Manipulating the religious is a must for leaders in modern society (whether in the US or Iran).

I like a lot of your arguments, but I don't like it when the case you are against is represented like a straw man.

It would be the same if it was a non-religious entity. Would you want a Nazi memorial at Auschwitz?

I read a lot about peaceful Islam, yet I also read a lot about Islam wanting to impose itself on us, which is precisely what you said you do not want.

You also talk about freedom of religion, but Islam is also a political system, Sharia, which seeks to overthrow the Constitution.

And shame on you for your cheap shot about antiquated mythology.

have I ever seen any major political party wallow so firmly in the slime of racism and bigotry! I'm so old I remember the 1968 campaign of George Wallace and the American Independent Party, and this old demagogue from Alabama was far more refined and polite in his racism than the current crop of baboons spewing for the Republican Party. And an equal amount of scorn can be given to weak kneed and pusillanimous Democrats who take less than a 100% stand against people like Newt Gingrich on this issue.

This controversy has to be put into the context of the political climate of the US, not only for the November elections, but for the longer term. The Republicans and their Tea Party buddies are looking at an ever shrinking demographic base. Simply put, white people will make up an ever smaller percentage of the American population for the foreseeable future.

When this is combined with the election of our first black President, this sets up a climate of fear (with racism) in the ranks of the GOP. Afraid of losing their power, they feel the need to appeal to their base with ever greater ferocity. And this is the reason why we see the corresponding furor over SB 1070 in Arizona with its anti-Mexican roots, and the Andrew Brietbart hijinks surrounding Shirley Sherrod and ACORN. And now the conservative leadership of this country is playing spin the bottle on Muslims as an object of hate.

The spin the bottle for convenient ethnic or other minorities has always been a tool of the right, and has been recently stoked in part by advances that women and gays have made in society. Next on dock for demonization are public employees and old people who still enjoy a pension that allows a reasonable life in retirement.

Mr. Mearschiemer is correct in saying that there's no way to see where intolerance like this will end (or blowback) when it's unloosed. At the very least, this ugliness is a clarion call for all rationalists and progressives to get more deeply involved in fighting the slimy racists and their minions in the November election.

While so many of these people that are complaining that a Sufi Muslim center being constructed near the world trade center site is insensitive & hurtful to the families of the dead during 9-11, they are showing that they are insensitive to other religions, Islam in particular. As one of the first aims of the Constitution was to separate church and state, these bigots should first look at the emotional pain they are causing fellow Muslim citizens with bigoted campaigns. Secondly they should remember the constitution was
created with separation principles in mind.

It's ugly that the media corporations are allowing these intensely hate-filled rants from these rubes in the US. Not once has a major news organization stood up to protect the minority class of people. We know the ADL is busy at the moment(!), but are there not some other liberal organizations that will protest and show solidarity with Muslims?

"I personally find the whole idea of a "Supreme Being" unconvincing, and I don't quite get why some many people continue to cling to a set of myths and fables dating from antiquity. But that's just my view, and someone else's religious convictions are their business provided they don't impose them on me.".
Very well stated. I fell exactly the same way.

By the way, the demagogies who are so preocupied with this "sensitive" issue, strangely did not have the moral stance to hold accountable the people who were resposnible for a War (IRAQ) that was caused under false pretenses and resulted in thousands of women and children killed (so called collateral damage).

Since they care so much about the religious aspect, I hope there is a HELL, and that there places are already assigned there togheter with Saddam Hussein.

To add further on high (very high) minaret above to this strong foundation would be a matter of weeks.
It's definitely not good to give the land to muslims in such a place (I mean the whole Manhatten). The spirit of fight will raise and live in the souls of who will do their namaz (as hijackers did) in the vicinity of the scene of such a tragedy.
The illusion that NY as the capital city of the world can afford hosting in her heart any religion, may quickly transform into reality of not being the master in native house.
It's definitely also not good to raise the question of any near-the-scene muslim facility, for the sake of the peace of who perished. Nobody has yet quitted the crescentiade.

I would find it just as wrong if a Christian church were built in memory of the victims of 9/11. No single religion should claim a special relationship to such an event.

Palestinian cemetery bulldozed by Israeli Donkey Force (IDF) for Simon Wiesenthal “Museum of Tolerance” and of course, as usual funded by American terrorists, sorry dishonest broker.

I hereby rename this ugly museum as Wiesenthal Museum of In-tolerance.

lalqila.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/palestinian-cemetery-bulldozed-by-israeli-donkey-force-idf-for-simon-wiesenthal-%e2%80%9cmuseum-of-tolerance%e2%80%9d-and-of-course-as-usual-funded-by-american-terrorists-sorry-dishonest-broker-i/

I sometimes wonder whether Walt checks his work before he posts it.

In this piece, he tells us that he is basically an atheist, but sees nothing wrong with people who hold religious views as long as they don't seek to impose them on others. He then endorses a structure that will be seen as a monument marking a triumph for a group that believes it is obligated by its religion to impose that religion on others.

Does he not understand that it is how Islamists view this structure that counts, not how he regards it? Moderate Muslims, those who don't believe they are obligated to impose shariah on others, appear to be united against this structure.

Maybe this piece is proof that he really doesn't understand a thing about the Middle East.

I am actually glad this flap came up.......because it has bumped square up against the core principles of democracy and awaken some people.

Muslim Americans have the same rights in religion and property as any other Americans.When the fringe neo bigots and other agents with agendas such as the Arab hating zionist say that 'sure they have the same right BUT".....what they are really saying is democratic rights for me, but not for you..
And bottom line we all see it for what it is...an attempt to demonize an entire people thru their religion.

Speaking as a not particulary religious Anglo Saxon WASP to the anti Muslim howlers out there.....Are you SURE you want to go there? You and yours could be the next target if we start blaming all of 'your religion' for the acts of a few of your religion.

Walt, I'm putting you in for the prize they give out in Norway each year.
No, not that one. I mean the Vidkun Quisling Award, given to those who sell out their country to a foreign enemy for personal gain. You should win it, hands down.

Now, fly off to Riyadh and collect your thirty pieces of silver, you Judas! And while you are yukking it up with the Saudi princes, be sure to get their advice on religious tolerance to bring back to us benighted and narrow minded Americans.

These would include among many, many others those who lost family members aboard the four hijacked airliners.

" Dont forget, Islam (like Christianity) was only spread by the sword and oppression. The penalty for explicit atheism in many "piously" Islamic countries today is often death. "

That is flatly false. First off, Islam logistically couldn't have spread as fast as it did by force. It wasn't force that spread it across North Africa, it wasn't force that spread it across India or the islands of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Secondly, the first orthodox example of philosophical atheism--a force that lead to the might of the British--came out of Baghdad. Maimonides was allowed to conceive of the world without a meddlesome God. This is why Islam was able to advance science and literally brought the Enlightenment to Europe.

Since the colonial legacy of the fall of the Ottoman empire, the British and French colonial devastation and division the Muslim world has fallen behind. But, don't look now, they are growing faster than the perverse and corrupt Western economies. The West owes it's advantage to the industrial revolution, not any philosophical revolution. Islam never had a "reformation" it never needed one. The Muslim world need political reform, as the legacy of colonialism--and the corrupt last vestiges of the Ottoman Empire. We are flagging due to the corrupt last vestiges of the English speaking Empires--which won't be recognizable in 20 years.

Check out also Ibn Rush'd, Averroes, and Spinoza all came out of the Islamic world. The Islamic empire welcomed Jews, Christians and Hindus among others. Scholarship was open to all. Again, no Caliphate persecuted thinkers like the Catholic Church did.

In fact, no one believed that the world was flat save a few Catholic dogmatists. Much of our history is a lie, much of it designed to hide the Islamic heritage from Christian minds.

In fact, Muslims welcome earnest discussion of faith issues. They are told to say in all honesty, "if you can explain the Trinity to me, I will convert." Of course, there is no argument for the Trinity in the Bible, it is an invention of the Catholic Church, specifically the Algerian born Constantine aka St Augustine.

When we trumpet the mighty English navy of the 16th thru 18th century and the Spanish Armada of the 15th, we ignore that the Turks controlled the Mediterranean throughout. We aren't told this in history Western. The first war the US fought wasn't the War of 1812 it was against the Corsairs of North Africa. We sent three major thrusts against them and lost each time.

Napoleon was the first to penetrate these forces, only to be repelled shortly thereafter. It was only industrialization that allowed the British and French to defeat the Millennial Ottoman Empire.

The Islamic Empire is arguably the longest lived in all human history, save perhaps the Egyptians. Yet again, this history is, for propagandistic reasons occluded from us.

1. The British were fighting the Spanish for control of the Atlantic, they couldn't enter the Mediterranean. Your geography is very American

2. After the successful raid on the ships of Barbary corsairs by American Steven Decatur, no American vessel paid "tribute" to these protection racketeers again, which was its purpose.

The US gov't paid the $1million/yr tribute so individual ships wouldn't have to.

3. if this is true, how is it that Britain, Spain and the US paid tribute to the for years afterward? How were we at war with the Corsairs?

Ayn Rand's Jon Galt is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of socialism is all of literature. Where did those rail easements come from? Gov't largess. Atlas Shrugged is a ridiculous fiction that ignores all history. Anyone who is so easily distracted would believe that 1x1 equals 3. There is no Biblical support for the Trinity, yet vast numbers of Christians imagine it's there, cause someone whispered that it's in there.