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A mosque in the American heartland.
A key argument made by opponents of Park51 is that "They don't allow churches to be build in Saudi Arabia, or synagogues."
This propaganda is so stupid on so many levels.
1) So what? The rights of Americans who are Muslim are not dependent on the actions or a foreign nation that is majority Muslim.
2) Saudi Arabia is an ally of the United States, a recipient of major American arms sales and would not survive long without AMERICAN patronage. George Bush spoke about an "eternal friendship". The United States government plays a part in increasing the longevity of oppression in the kingdom more than any Muslim outside of Saudi Arabia has ever. It is not the American Muslim community - most of whom despise the Wahhabi fanaticism - who need answer for Saudi intolerance, but the American government and why is so intimately supports such a government.
3 Again so what? Either we have inalienable rights or not. Either we have rights as individuals or mere privileges contingent on this or that irrelevant extraterritoriality matter. If we have rights and are to be judged as individuals, then it does not matter what the rest of the world does. In the past, Catholic-majority nations often discriminated against Protestants. Does that mean that America, a majority Protestant nation, was right to discriminate against Catholics? No.
4) Which brings me to this: America stands for liberty above all and in this regard it stands for liberty not because the rest of the world may be doing it as well, but because it is right. When the nation was founded, only American upheld liberty in its most expansive, albeit still limited, manner. The nation did not measure its constitution against the laws in aristocratic Europe. We believe in higher principles and in that regard we seek to be a model. Even if the rest of the world descends into tyranny and intolerance, America should still remain - as John Winthrop wrote on the flagship Arabelle in 1639 - a "city upon a hill" for all the free people and those yearning to be.
