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14 August 2010: Confronting the Truth
I greatly admire President Obama for his support of the project to build a mosque and Muslim community center within blocks of Ground Zero. I also greatly appreciate Mayor Bloomberg's support and the deep emotion he expressed in his recent speech.
Obama may have lost many votes as a result or at least alienated the far right even further, but at the same time I'm sure the hypercritical progressives are happy, a step in the right direction. There would be no justification for opposition from the president of a country founded by refugees from religious persecution.
The Muslims did not commit the heinous abomination we call 9/11. Extremists did. I have the deepest sympathy for the families and friends of 9/11 victims who oppose the project, but far more people have been killed because of religious intolerance than died so tragically on 9/11. And many of these horrific murders were accomplished by religious extremists.
Given the radical violence condoned by extremism, most evidenced now by al Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, and the government of Iran, I admire more than most other categories those Muslims brave enough to protest the destructive activities of these radicals. I admire them because they risk extreme forms of retaliation I can't stand to think about.
I admire them so deeply because this is a level of outspokenness I don't think I'd dare risk if I were a Muslim, even if I lived here in DC, the mecca of interfaith outreach. What if I were a German non-Jew during World War II? I might have left the country rather than sit back passively and allow those atrocities to occur. Of those who stood up and opposed the religious extremism and xenophobia (misoxenism?), few survived.
That outspoken Muslim minority dares to speak truth to power, something that the handful of (pacifist) German Quakers in Germany during World War II did not, though they exercised other forms of charity and outreach to all oppressed minorities that the Nazis considered harmless. I have to say, as a convinced Quaker whose ethnic roots are in Judaism, that their spiritual forebears, including George Fox, founder of their religion, and his first comrades--Robert Barkley, James Naylor, and Francis Howgill among others--would not have approved, those people who died to further their religious principles, enduring incredibly polluted surroundings when imprisoned, not unlike the concentration camps that came later.
When I read that those not yet imprisoned offered to trade places with their shackled comrades, in the spirit of their nascent religion, I was as deeply moved as I am now by those few outspoken Muslims. Soon after 9/11, I attended an interfaith rally in front of the United Nations. A Jew, A Christian, and a Muslim stood up to offer prayers for peace and harmonious brotherhood. The chanting in Hebrew and Arabic was so cognate. I remarked to a nun standing next to methat the Muslim's bravery to exemplify such relatedness at such a time was just short of incredible. I don't believe I had such an experience again, though in my affiliation with interfaith activists I have heard other thrilling stories of Muslims reaching out with love and seeking understanding in return as they explore xenophobic outposts throughout our country.
Speaking truth to power is dangerous. Who does not revere it? Who would not avoid the challenge in the face of certain death or torture? But what would happen if no one had ever stood up to dare activate this bottom line of Quaker teaching? Those who did, at all times in history, may be the reason our civilization, such as it is, has endured as long as it has.
