Zero degree of common sense

The furore over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero of the 9/11 attacks might have ostensibly been about a building. But at its heart has been a struggle in America over granting Muslims a measure of ordinary humanity.

Barack Obama is Muslim. Or at least that is what many of his fellow Americans believe. According to the results of a Pew Research Center poll released on August 19, the public misperception is on the rise that President Obama is Muslim and not Christian. In March 2009, the number had stood at 11%. Now nearly 20% of the American population shares that mistaken belief. Part of the reason for this is the misinformation campaign in the media.

That still leaves us with a simple question. Who is a Muslim?
If you google “Ground Zero Mosque,” you get 143,000,000 results. All those articles quote the opinions of people who believe they know the answer to the above question. This is the reality of the history we are living in the shadow of the fallen towers. As Leon Wieseltier, the editor of The New Republic, famously put it, “On September 10, 2001, nobody in America seemed to know anything about Islam. On September 12, 2001, everybody seemed to know everything about Islam.”

The National Republican Trust PAC (political action committee) has recently produced a television ad — “Kill the Ground Zero Mosque” — to advocate opposition to the planned mosque. The ad presents Muslims repeatedly as armed, masked men intent on destruction. The ad is so virulent that it was rejected by both NBC and CBS.

On the other side, there is pious commentary by those who invoke the US Constitution as the foundation on which a cultural centre would be built. In this legalistic narrative, Muslims are the nondescript citizens who all look the same in the impartial eye of the law and deserve the freedom of religion.

Are both sides guilty of denying ordinary Muslims their humanity? A few weeks after the attacks of September 11, I was sitting one night in a car on a street in Lahore. I was waiting to be contacted by a member of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba that, only a few days later, murdered Daniel Pearl. Outside, a row of bright lights lit up the stalls of flower-sellers. The driver of the car, Qasim, a slight man with a thin mustache, turned to ask me where I lived. On hearing my answer, he said, “The Americans are the true Muslims.” I didn’t understand this. He said, “They have read and really understood the message of the Qu’ran.” This was even more baffling. But Qasim went on to explain his point. He said, “The Americans treat their workers in the right way. They pay them overtime.”

Ah, overtime! Fair wages, just working conditions, true democracy. Where in this debate about the construction of a mosque in New York City, in the contrary assertions about militancy and peace, is there any evidence of Qasim’s plain sense of his religion and his appreciation for the American people? Where, in other words, is common sense?

We were first told in the press that the mosque was going to be built on Ground Zero. Then we learned that it was actually more than two blocks away. It was clarified that it wasn’t even going to be simply a mosque or its membership limited to Muslims. In fact, the building was going to be a community centre with a basketball court and a culinary school. Accuracy and truth lay buried deep under the routine invocations of hallowed ground. What does this “hallowed ground” really look like?

A blogger in New York City posted illuminating images showing places that were the same distance from Ground Zero as the address where the mosque is being planned: a strip-club called New York Dolls; an Off-Track Betting store; McDonald’s, BBQ Express, and Vitamin Shoppe; Lilly O’Brien’s Bar and Restaurant; Burger King; Dunkin’ Donuts; a profusion of cheap roadside stalls selling souvenirs and clothes.

The blogger, whose name is Daryl Lang, wrote on his site: “Look at the photos. This neighborhood is not hallowed. The people who live and work here are not obsessed with 9/11. The blocks around Ground Zero are like every other hard-working neighborhood in New York, where Muslims are just another thread of the city fabric.”

The issue has been described by one politician as “political football.” Everyone is aware that elections are around the corner. Certainly, President Obama’s principled support for the proposed plan and then his apparent retreat the next morning are seen as part of a complicated electoral game. Of course, Obama’s awkward stumble is no match for the complicated dance performed by Indian leaders when the election bands come marching in. A leader might have led you to believe that building a temple on a disputed site would be divisive; but when the electoral music is heard, his speech changes, and suddenly he is talking of the evil others.

There is a serious failing in branding whole communities. There is no longer a conversation about a particular person; we can only talk about a faith. But is that faith one that is practiced by real people? No, because instead of people, we are always only talking of politics and symbols.

“The propagandist’s purpose,” Aldous Huxley said long ago, “is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Over the last few weeks, the furore might have ostensibly been about a building. But at its heart has been a struggle over granting men like Qasim a measure of ordinary humanity.

In David Hare’s play Stuff Happens, an unnamed British character declares on stage, “On September 11th, America changed. Yes. It got much stupider.” The controversy over the mosque is an occasion to stop that downward slide but it seems quite unlikely that it will happen.

Amitava Kumar is the author of Evidence of Suspicion and professor of English at Vassar College, New York State