The Wrong Idea

In a 60 second spot rejected by CBS, the Republican Trust attempts to make its case against Cordoba House, a 13-story Islamic centre that will also feature a mosque.

Arguments against Cordoba House insist that it will become a lightning rod for militant Islamists, will promote militant Islam, and that it will be a celebration of 9/11 -- a symbol of Islam's triumph.

This is precisely the argument presented in this ad.

The problem for the GOP Trust is that this argument relies on an overweening ignorance of the individuals behind Cordoba House, and the beliefs of the organization leading the project.

Even the evidence offered for the alleged radicalism of Cordoba Initiative -- such as its Shari'ah index project -- are not in reality what they are said to be. In fact, the Shari'ah law promoted by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf doesn't appear to be any Shari'ah law that would be recognized by those familiar with the extreme variant of it practiced in so many states today.

“What are the principles that make a state Islamic?" Rauf rhetorically asks. "We can say among them is justice, protection of religion and minorities and elimination of poverty, and so on.”

Protection of minorities isn't a concept one would associate with Shari'ah law-practising countries such as Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The opponents of Cordoba House are close to being right about one thing: the construction of the centre would represent a triumph for Islam: a triumph of moderate Islam over the evil and militant political ideology individuals like Osama Bin Laden have transformed it into.

Opposing Cordoba House doesn't aid the fight against this insidious political ideology -- it actually hampers it. By denying organizations such as the Cordoba Initiative public space, they deny them the opportunity to counter the vile message of militant Muslim demagogues who send their poorest and most disenfranchised to wage war for their benefit.

Opponents of Cordoba House may not appreciate the symbolic value of Muslims worshipping peacefully at the feet of the towers their hateful counterparts destroyed. But a great many moderate Muslims will.

To deny them that opportunity out of a xenophobic, intolerant and paranoid mania would be a historical tragedy with little comparison, and that is what would really embolden militant Islam.

On the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 bombings that tore through downtown London, there are few better days than today to realize that obscuring the difference between peaceful, moderate Islam and the aforementioned Islamist political ideology is unacceptably counter-productive.

It's the wrong idea, through and through.

Not Backwards, Just Fundamentally Different

Paradise Found is, in many respects, a remarkable film.

Made mere days after the 7/7 bombings in London, the spectre of Islamic terrorism is clearly on the mind of the film's producer, but he decides to make the film regardless of the episode, choosing to set aside the antagonisms between the western world and the Islamic world.

One of the most intriguing things discussed in the film is that of a Muslim-produced map. At first, the map actually looks like something one would find printed inside the cover of a fantasy novel; it looks more to the Western eye as a fictional construct than the real world.

Yet when the map is turned upside-down, it becomes evident that the map is, in fact, that of the world as we know it.

If there is any greater metaphor for the way that many see the global relationship between the western world and the Islamic world, one would be significantly challenged to find it.

Dichotomous thinking regarding the predominantly-Christian (now actually multicultural) and Islamic (now slowly secularizing) Islamic world permeates theories such as Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. Such theories have treated the Islamic world as a threat to the western world and its values.

Meanwhile, the theories of various Muslim thinkers also treat the world as dichotomous. In this vein of thought, the western world is decadent and immoral, and this threatens to leach into Islamic society through close contact between the two.

In the western world, a distressingly popular meme is to think of the Islamic world as backward and barbarous.

But the beauty of Islamic art should put the lie to this idea. While an unfortunate degree of ugliness has sprung forth from the Islamic world, an equally degree of ugliness has emerged within the psyche of the western world as well.

The Islamic world is not backward, but it is fundamentally different. It's a failure to respect these differences for what they are that has led so many people from each world to view the other as menacing.