PARASHAT RE'EH/STATEMENT ABOUT THE PROPOSED CORDOBA HOUSE IN NYC

Dear Friends:

Of late I have been challenged by friends and congregants about my sharp-tongued response to the Anti-Defamation League’s official statement about the proposed Cordoba House, a project aimed at achieving “a tipping point in Muslim-West relations within the next decade, steering the world back to the course of mutual recognition and respect and away from heightened tensions” (as cited on the website of the project). Before you read my remarks, you will find it helpful (essential?) to go the Cordoba Initiative (CI) website and learn about the organization and the proposed project. You will find that CI promotes, among other objectives, women’s rights within Islam. You will find that the proposed Cordoba House intends to use art and culture as primary vehicles for developing understanding among Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

On my Facebook page last week, I accused the ADL of outright “bigotry” and condemned their position with the words, “Shame on you, ADL.”

I hope to use this forum to clarify my meaning and explain why I am upset about the ADL statement of July 28, which reads in full:

We regard freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the American democracy, and that freedom must include the right of all Americans – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths – to build community centers and houses of worship.

We categorically reject appeals to bigotry on the basis of religion, and condemn those whose opposition to this proposed Islamic Center is a manifestation of such bigotry.

However, there are understandably strong passions and keen sensitivities surrounding the World Trade Center site. We are ever mindful of the tragedy which befell our nation there, the pain we all still feel – and especially the anguish of the families and friends of those who were killed on September 11, 2001.

The controversy which has emerged regarding the building of an Islamic Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process. Therefore, under these unique circumstances, we believe the City of New York would be better served if an alternative location could be found.

In recommending that a different location be found for the Islamic Center, we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values. These questions deserve a response, and we hope those backing the project will be transparent and forthcoming. But regardless of how they respond, the issue at stake is a broader one.

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.

I trust that you can draw your own conclusions, and I am confident that not all readers of my remarks here will share my appraisal. Here are my three specific objections to the ADL statement:

1. The “bait-and-switch” form of the text. Framing its true message (opposition to Cordoba House) with two opening paragraphs in response to “bigotry” strikes me as nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Clearly the ADL anticipated that Jewish supporters of the project would feel betrayed by the statement’s opposition to Cordoba House, and wanted to defuse tension from the get-go. The ADL makes it sound like they’re coming out against bigotry, when in fact the aim of this statement is to object to Cordoba House.

2. The lack of specificity about the allegedly “legitimate questions” that “have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.” If the ADL knows something that we do not about the funding of Cordoba House, this statement would have been the moment to speak up. But alleging that the funding “might” come from sources whose “ideologies stand in contradiction to our [whose?] shared values [what values are meant here?]” strikes me as a wobbly accusation. Are we now meant to suspect that Cordoba House has ties to Islamic extremists? To Islamic regimes opposed to Israel? How are we supposed to interpret this hesitation? To plant a suspicion in the mind of the reader without any further clarification strikes me as duplicitous.

3. I challenge the conclusion that “building an Islamic center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain--unnecessarily--and that is not right.” Obviously for some family and friends of victims of 9/11, the mere mention of Islam “causes pain.” The mention of Islam “causes pain” for a lot of anti-Muslim bigots, too. That does not provide reason to conclude that the proposed building of Cordoba House is “not right.”

Indeed, I have reached the opposite conclusion: that building a center dedicated to improving Muslim-West relations is right and good and long overdue. How long have we been waiting for Muslim leaders to stand up and offer the world a vision of Islam as a religion of tolerance, peace, and pluralism? How long have we been waiting for Muslim leaders to stand up and decry fundamentalism within its ranks? For even if 1% of the world’s Muslims were “extremists” of one sort or another (and many scholars believe the percentage may be closer to 10%), that would still be about 15 or 16 million Muslim extremists worldwide -- exceeding the world’s total Jewish population, by the way. Now consider the possibility that perhaps up to 150 million vehemently anti-Western Muslims may be responsible for the overwhelmingly negative image that Americans have of Islam, and you can understand why I rejoice to hear, after too much silence, a true Muslim voice crying out for religious and political tolerance and bridge-building.

At the very least, give the Cordoba Initiative a fair chance before shouting it down. The very fact that our media have presented the project, almost without exception, as a “mosque at Ground Zero” is deeply upsetting to me. By the way, the ADL’s use of the phrase “in the shadow of the World Trade Center” is also loaded and unfair. The proposed center is two blocks away from the site of the former WTC! Do you know how much real estate is contained in two New York City blocks?! By the time you walk there from Ground Zero, you will have passed literally hundreds of apartments, stores, civic and religious buildings, and more.

Such biased portrayals define sensationalist journalism at its worst--aimed at turning the hearts of even the most open-minded Americans against the project before it has a chance to get off the ground. The fact that the ADL statement took to task this open bigotry does not excuse its ultimate resistance to the project--for which the ADL’s stated objections seem mighty flimsy.

This week’s Torah portion is called Re’eh. It’s a word that means “see” -- a word about vision. Within its chapters we find a Deuteronomic vision of Israelite society whose strength comes in part from its iron-clad prohibitions against meddling with anything associated with pagan religions. In warning the Israelites against idolatry in all of its seductive forms, the writers of this part of the Torah hoped to shore up Israelite hegemony in the face of rising tides of assimilation within the Canaanite cults that populated the ancient near East. Idolatrous shrines and icons are to be destroyed, pagan religious officials put to death. Even asking about pagan gods and pagan practices is forbidden. To ensure yet further that Biblical Israelites would not associate with Canaanites, the Torah restricts their diet to prevent them from dining with others.

How foolish, how shortsighted, and how deeply wrong we would be to conclude that such policies, that such an isolationist outlook, ought to dictate Jewish relations with Islam today, particularly with the (all too infrequently heard) voices of moderation and tolerance within Islam. After all, we have never regarded Islam as we did the Canaanite pagans, nor have Muslims historically treated Jews as infidels throughout most of our shared history. In fact, in the city of Cordoba, Spain, for which the project is named, Jewish and Muslim civilizations flourished side-by-side and cross-pollinated for centuries during one of the “Golden Ages” of Jewish history. Did you know that some of the most important works of Medieval Jewish poetry and philosophy were composed in Arabic? Could you imagine a return to the kind of harmonious relations between our people? No, friends, Muslims are not pagans. Their extremists are hideous and ugly, as are extremists of every faith, including our own Jewish extremists. But we are, at our core, common monotheists who call upon the same God. All we need is a little vision to give us the courage to do what is right.

So I humbly retract the words “shame on you” that I blurted out into cyberspace without proper preamble or explanation. But I share with you my disappointment in the ADL’s decision to oppose a unique and heretofore unexplored opportunity that aims to improve relations among Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

More importantly, I do not hesitate to challenge those people--many of them ill-informed, if informed at all--who have jumped to conclusions about the Cordoba Initiative.

Please view the following televised interview with WRT's Rabbi Rick Jacobs, featured on CNN on August 5th after a rally of rabbis in support of the mosque/cultural center. Rabbi Jacobs' impassioned plea for sensitivity and understanding of the true nature of the project is a welcome tonic.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/08/05/nr.rally.support.ny.mosque.cnn.

Let’s not lack vision when it comes to this opportunity. We need it so much. I hope and pray that we’ll open our eyes.

As always, I welcome your comments, so long as they are offered in the spirit with which I write these words: the spirit of shalom.