Now, that's how you protest.

[elfs]

On the drive into work this morning, I flipped through the channels and heard Glen Beck giggling over the idea that someone was proposing building a gay bar next to the Cordoba Islamic Center in New York City.

As some of you may know, a Sufi Muslim investor is proposing building an Islamic community center in NYC, arguably little different from the average Jewish community centers I've been seeing my whole life except, you know, about the second popular Abrahamic fanfic rather than the canon material. The center bought ground two or three blocks from the site of the World Trade Center construction site, and a huge number of right wing whackjobs have taken it upon themselves to denounce this as "Muslims creating a monument to their successful conquest of America." The most common refrain is that it's "too close," but no one will say how far is far enough. There's so much bullshit about this issue you need wings to stay above it. One Republican candidate for governor, a self-proclaimed small-government, tea-bagging libertarian type, said he'd use eminent domain to take the site away. IOKIYAR, I guess.

In contrast, the Republican mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, held a press conference in which he said that the Muslims were American citizens, they had the right to buy land, they had the right to build within the restrictions of New York's zoning codes, and they had the right to practice your religion, and this is New York if you don't like it tough, live with it. Good for him.

I agree with Mayor Bloomberg entirely. I actually don't care much about the issue, because I live in Washington State, thousands of miles from New York, and don't feel I have any right whatsoever to an opinion on what ought to happen there regarding zoning laws.

(David Frum thinks that the brouhahah brought on by the paranoid right will backfire entirely by bringing the Cordoba Center enough publicity that the developer will actually be able to afford building it. Apparently, he doesn't have quite the funding yet.)

The best response I've heard so far, though, is the gay bar. No, really. That's an ideal protest. It gives the Cordoba Center a chance to prove it's a tolerant institution-- hey, we have a gay bar next door!-- and the bar, with it's Islamic-friendly "no alcohol" floor will prove to be a popular place with gay Muslims and probably with any gay men in 12-step programs, alcoholism being a significant problem in gay urban centers.

And if it proves to be economically unviable, well there are lessons to be learned there about the limitations of protest.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

You may live in Washington State, but I live in New York, in
the mid-Hudson valley. I worked, before I was laid off last year, in
NYC. So, I have first-hand knowledge.

First: "Ground Zero" is actually about 3x3 city blocks. The streets around it bound a 20 acre plot of land. (Oh, and that plot of land is nothing but a 5-story-deep pit, not created by the attack, but occupied by the original buildings. Most buildings in NYC go down at least 3 stories.) That's one large quadrangle of real-estate.

Second: When construction finally finishes, there will not be a 20-acre memorial. Most of it will be office buildings. Hello? 20-acres of real-estate in NYC? DUH! The memorial will actually be roughly in the middle of the place, in the center of the 3x3 square-blocks. So, even buildings on the border of the WTC site will be a block away from the memorial.

Third: There. Is. No. Open. Real. Estate. Next. To. The. WTC. Site.

None.

Nada.

Nil.

Zip.

Zilch.

The proposed Cordoba Center is on Park Place, a street containing … well, nothing, really. It doesn't even have a view of the WTC Site. Nor will it ever. Nor will anything built at the WTC site ever have a view of the Cordoba Center.

Heck, tourists visiting Ground Zero won't even be able to find the Cordoba Center. They'll most likely get lost and start protesting, say, the Woolworth Building.

Lastly:

The Republican/Dominionists, who are idolizing Ground Zero, are saying that a Mosque and community center shouldn't be built "near" the WTC site, because a handful of bad Muslims attacked that site. How is that different from this: ban all Catholic churches from being built within 1000 ft. of any school, because a handful of bad priests molested children.

Offended by the second one? Then why aren't you offended by the first? Both are just as obnoxious, just as bigoted.

[blaisepascal]

Hmmm, I was sure you'd be able to see the roof of Cordoba Center from somewhere on the Freedom Tower, if you looked down at the right place. Of course, you wouldn't be able to see anything unusual, just the roof of yet another 12-story building in downtown Manhattan.

(and yes, I know the Freedom Tower isn't built yet)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

You may be able to see the roof of the building that the Cordoba Center is in from any tall building in the vicinity, but it won't necessarily look like anything. St. Peter's RC Church, which is 1 block south of where the Cordoba Center's going, doesn't look like a church from overhead.

(The official name of WTC-1 isn't "The Freedom Tower." It's World Trade Center 1. "Freedom" Tower is a label used by people with a particular political agenda. Folks in Manhattan will doubtlessly give WTC-1 a better, less-smarmy nickname. The Twin Towers, after all, were officially WTC-1 and WTC-2, while "The World Trade Center" was the entire group of buildings in that 20-acre area. But if you said, "The World Trade Center," people generally took that to mean the Twin Towers.)

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. Let'em build both the CC and the bar. That's the American way.

Only... you *always* have the right to an *opinion*. What you don't have is any business trying to impose it outside your own bailiwick. But you do have the right to have a say, and you've exercised that right well.

about the second popular Abrahamic fanfic rather than the canon material.

ooooh, that hurts my brain....

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Oh, and about the gay bar…

Well, it's an amusing idea. But I doubt it'll get much business. First, it's waaaaaaaaay too far south of Greenwich Village and Chelsea, putting it too far out of the way. Second, it would have an unfortunate association with anti-Muslim right-wing Xtian Fundamentalists. (I know that I and my friends wouldn't ever set foot in a FoxNews-gay-bar.)

Guys might go to it once, just for a lark, but then they'll all go back to Splash. ;)

[resonant.livejournal.com]

"Abrahamic fanfic rather than the canon material"

That is such a good phrase that I must remember to use it in conversation sometime.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

The part that gets me about all this, is that the folks behind the community center are supposed to be the type of Muslims the right loves. They're folks who always condemn Islamic terrorism, and are trying to promote that sort of kinder, gentler Islam that the right is always calling for.