Christopher Hitchens weighs in on the "Ground Zero Mosque" debate

[LAGC]

From the beginning, though, I pointed out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was no great bargain and that his Cordoba Initiative was full of euphemisms about Islamic jihad and Islamic theocracy. I mentioned his sinister belief that the United States was partially responsible for the assault on the World Trade Center and his refusal to take a position on the racist Hamas dictatorship in Gaza. The more one reads through his statements, the more alarming it gets. For example, here is Rauf's editorial on the upheaval that followed the brutal hijacking of the Iranian elections in 2009. Regarding President Obama, he advised that:

He should say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution—to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faquih, that establishes the rule of law.
Coyly untranslated here (perhaps for "outreach" purposes), Vilayet-i-faquih is the special term promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to describe the idea that all of Iranian society is under the permanent stewardship (sometimes rendered as guardianship) of the mullahs. Under this dispensation, "the will of the people" is a meaningless expression, because "the people" are the wards and children of the clergy. It is the justification for a clerical supreme leader, whose rule is impervious to elections and who can pick and choose the candidates and, if it comes to that, the results. It is extremely controversial within Shiite Islam. (Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, for example, does not endorse it.) As for those numerous Iranians who are not Shiites, it reminds them yet again that they are not considered to be real citizens of the Islamic Republic.
..
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Another feature of my local mosque that I don't entirely like is the display of flags outside, purportedly showing all those nations that are already Muslim. Some of these flags are of countries like Malaysia, where Islam barely has a majority, or of Turkey, which still has a secular constitution. At the United Nations, the voting bloc of the Organization of the Islamic Conference nations is already proposing a resolution that would circumscribe any criticism of religion in general and of Islam in particular. So, before he is used by our State Department on any more goodwill missions overseas, I would like to see Imam Rauf asked a few searching questions about his support for clerical dictatorship in, just for now, Iran. Let us by all means make the "Ground Zero" debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well.

http://www.slate.com/id/2264770/

Can't say I agree with him about the "sinister belief that the United States was partially responsible for 9/11" -- even the State Department acknowledges that U.S. policy against the Soviets in the 1980s made Osama bin Laden who he was and that 9/11 was largely "blow-back" from CIA meddling in the region...

But Imam's Rauf's views on Iran are more telling. I'm definitely more suspect of his motives now...

[baldguy]

1. In regards to Islam, Hitchens is not an unbiased observer.

[Deep13]

6. No, but he's an informed one. nt

[cleanhippie]

24. But is he wrong?

It is possible to be both biased and correct at the same time.

[baldguy]

39. Yes

[cleanhippie]

46. Thats it? Just "yes"? No explanation or anything?

[baldguy]

47. Yes, he is wrong.

And he seems to be very selective about his biases. I don't hear him calling for closing the Trinity Church at Ground Zero, even though the Episcopals have about as much to do with perpetrating the 9/11 attacks as Imam Rauf and Cordoba House do.

[cleanhippie]

48. Interesting point.

What is the case made against the Episcopals that is akin to the case Hitchens makes on Rauf.

[baldguy]

49. The "case" against Rauf consists of nothing but hearsay & innuendo.

The FBI & the Bush regime thought high enough of him to have him help with their counter-terrorism efforts. Where was Hitchens' criticism of him 5 years ago? Rauf was a RW hero then.

[cleanhippie]

50. Not sure, I cannot speak for Hitchens

But it is just his opinion and he certainly is entitled to it, right?

Just as you are entitlement to your regarding the Episcopals. I really am interested to hear your argument on that subject, since you brought it up. Please elaborate.

[baldguy]

51. I think my point was clear.

The Episcopalians have exactly the same amount of responsibility for 9/11 as Cordoba House does. Which is none. People have just as much reason to be concerned about Trinity Church being at Ground Zero as they do for Park51 being there.

There, I've explained again simply enough for a Republican to understand. Now you can stop playing dumb.

[cleanhippie]

53. We agree then.

The Episcopalians have exactly the same amount of responsibility for 9/11 as Cordoba House does. Which is none. People have just as much reason to be concerned about Trinity Church being at Ground Zero as they do for Park51 being there.

I agree, 100%

What I am confused about is what call selective bias on Hitchens' part. I'm sure that if asked, he would be consistent in his answers, but in this case, he is addressing the topic at hand.

Also, I really see no need to get snippy or accusing me of playing dumb. I wanted to hear YOUR thoughts, not take my best guess at what you actually mean. I prevent misunderstanding that way.

[Mimosa]

2. Interesting article

Hitchens perspective is quite sensible. He does hate all religions equally, btw. ;)

[dkf]

3. It is sad that this is the only article I've seen with any discussion of Islam or Imam Rauf.

Could a regular DUer make this argument and not be called a bigot or a hater? Funny how that goes.

[Jim__]

4. Hitchens' column completely misses the point.

The Islamic Center is on private property and will not violate any zoning restrictions, i.e. the owners of the property are free to put their rec center there. The rest is noise.

[Deep13]

8. Just as he has a right not to like it.

I find it a bit annoying that those who insist that the 1st Amend. freedom of religion protects this project forget that the same 1st Amend. gives people the right not to like it and to say so.

[humblebum]

11. The man is bolshevik by admission - not exactly noted for

extolling 1st Amendment rights.

[Deep13]

12. False for two reasons.

One, he has never been or claimed to be a Bolshevik. He once claimed to be a socialist like Trotsky (who was exhiled by Lenin) and perhaps still is. Second, his career and life are a case study in the defense of freedom of expression.

This is also an example of a double standard on your part. Islam is extremely hostile to free expression or free thought in that it claims to be the final, all-inclusive, impossible-to-improve word of god.

[humblebum]

14. He has claimed to be a Trotskyite, Leninist, and a Marxist.

Last I knew that defines a bolshevik. And I made no comment about Islam at all. BTW Trotsky was exiled by Stalin, not Lenin.

[Deep13]

18. Ah. Well, okay, so what? ...

Can you cite where and when he claimed to be a Leninist?

[cleanhippie]

25. And we get the "communism is atheism" in 3..2..1...

You are incessant with this line of attack

[humblebum]

27. Sometimes the truth hurts. nt

[cleanhippie]

29. I nailed it! Maybe I am precognitive now......

[laconicsax]

42. Leading with an ad hominem...how droll. n/t

[Jim__]

22. Your annoyance is quite beside the point. Just like Hitchens column - n/t

[Deep13]

23. I think it's exactly the point.

By the way, I'll take your ad homin attack as an admission that you didn't have anything substantive to add.

Freedom of religion and freedom of speech include the right to disagree with the religions of others and to say so. So many on what passes for "the left" in this country pay lip service to freedom of expression, but only insofar as it conforms to their own preconceptions. By the way, if you had taken the time to read the article, you would see that Hitch's main point is to denounce the irrational hysteria of this project's critics.

[Jim__]

35. First of all, I did read the article. Don't presume to know things that you don't.

Second, I didn't say anything about Hitchens right to speak. I said his column misses the point.

Third, the main point of the article was clearly not the denunciation of the critics. He devotes 1 paragraph to that and the rest of the article to the denunciation of Rauf and Islam.

And fourth, if you're going to accuse someone of something, e.g. an ad hominem attack, be sure you understand the terms you're using. In this case, you got it totally wrong.

[Deep13]

38. My apologies on the article....

...I read it once before and must have confused what he said with something else I read. I think it was a heading that was written for it when I saw it on Facebook. I guess I've become a bit defensive of Hitch since I learned he has a cancer that will probably kill him.

Nevertheless, the relevant question remains, is he wrong in anything he said? I doubt it.

Your initial remark suggested that the only relevant issue here is the right of the site promoters to build their religious center. That is a legal fact, but it is still true that the same right that gives the promoters the right to build a religious building also gives others the right to disagree with it. So pointing to the 1st Amendment while telling others to shut up is a pretty problematic position to take.

Finally, your flippant response to my remark was ad hominem because it was directed at my supposed pointlessness and not the merits of the argument. If someone that WAS a comment on the subject matter, you certainly could not have been any less clear.

[saltpoint]

44. The Mayor of New York addressed that topic quite

persuasively.

The issue is not whether someone likes the idea of an Islamic Center but whether the Constitution you cite sanctions its construction and operation.

There are people like Fred Phelps running around making horse's asses of themselves at solders' funerals. And a hail of court challenges to that action. You and I may say that Phelps has a right to his opinion, even if we very strongly disagree. There is a watermark, though, in any culture, in which showing up at soldiers' funerals shouting anti-gay rhetoric is considered extraordinarily bad form, and Phelps has crossed it.

Bloomberg spoke in historical terms about the Constitution. On what grounds does a First Amendment protection to disagree with Constitutional sanction equal that sanction?

It doesn't.

The point is not who likes what, but what is permitted.

[saltpoint]

5. HItchens has talent with language but it is much less in

evidence in this piece, plus key points are set aside.

There have been high-profile fundamentalist Christian figures who have called for violence to be visited upon heads of state of other countries, but we didn't hear HItchens single them out with the same kind of diction.

The Founders' intent to sanction religious freedom would seem to me to be the imperative and not a given imam's motives.

[Deep13]

9. You're missing the point.

The same 1st Am. that gives its promotors the right to build a center promoting Islam gives critics the right to be critical of it. It also gives those who are hostile to Islam because their own religion demands it the right to oppose it on that ground. After all, being pro-Christianity and anti-Islam is no less prejudiced that being pro-Islam.

Hitchens does make the kind of criticisms about Christianity that you suggest in his book God Is Not Great. This article is about one specific building project and the main part of that article is critical of those openly opposing the center for reasons that are just as irrational as Islam is.

[saltpoint]

43. My comment involved Hitchens' prowess as a

writer and analyst.

A response to his response, so to say.

I've commented in a similar vein about him on this site at other times.

[humblebum]

7. Hitchens is, of course, the paragon of religious toleration:

"Religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt." At least he isn't singling out one particular religion.

[Deep13]

10. I admire him for that.

Implausible and impossible ideas should not be treated with respect just because they make the additional arrogant claim that they are divinely ordered. Note I'm talking about ideas, not individuals. I can have no respect for Islamic ideas, but still respect a Muslim person for his or her own good qualities.

[humblebum]

15. Then of course you agree with Dr. Laura's right to use the N -word? nt

[Deep13]

17. Yet again, I'm talking about ideas and not personal attacks on individuals.

In point of fact, "Dr. Laura" does have the legal right to use the N-word. She does not have a right to do it on the radio.

[humblebum]

19. So Hitchens can freely express his degrading views on religion, but

just not in public or over the airwaves?

[Deep13]

20. False equivalency.

Calling someone a n****r is a personal attack on a person for imagined reasons. There is no right to have a job in radio.

Hitchens relies on fact and well founded reason to criticize Islam (among other ideas). It is not a personal attack unless he is talking about a particularly vile practitioner, and even then his reasons are well-founded. You cannot possibly compare a professional hack like Dr. Laura with the experience, education and both breadth and depth of knowledge Hitchens brings to a discussion. Besides a radio programmer has no legal duty to put Hitchens on his or her show. Nevertheless, he never seems to have trouble finding TV or radio programmers willing to put him on the air.

You may as well say no one has a right to criticize creationism, slavery, the living death of Sharia law for women, the Mormon church for their support of prop. 8, the RC church's opposition to condoms in sub-Saharan Africa or any of the irrational and morally reprehensible rules of any religion.

[humblebum]

21. No it is not a "False equivalency." I do not believe she called

anyone that.

[Deep13]

31. She said it to her listening audience and to a Black caller...

...who phoned the show to ask about racial insentitivity. Dr. Laura then used the N-word eleven times knowing full well how the caller and most other Black people felt about it. She concluded by saying that the caller should not have married a white man. It was a personal attack on the caller and Blacks generally for their "hypersentitivity" to being insulted to their faces.

It's a false equivalency for another reason too. Unlike race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, ones religion is not an organic, unalterable condition. Religion is voluntary and based on a person's affirmative acceptence of the tenents of that religion. Even in countries like Saudi Arabia, the pretense of religion is mandatory (and brutal), a person can still decide for himself if he accepts what he is hearing. (I will grant you that to decide "no" under what must be unbearable social and governmental pressure would be the decision of an exceptional person.) This takes religion out of the realm of organic personal characteristic and puts it in the realm of ideas with philosophy and science. (Yes, I know that theology and science are conceptually branches of philosophy.) So, I agree that assuming that a Muslim is a bad person is bigoted. I don't think the same can be said about Islam or any other religion after a careful analysis of the facts.

Yet again, Hitch's article is a denouncement of the irrational hatred on the part of project opponents. He just wants to make sure he is not lumped into the moral relativism and intellectual cowardice of calling Islam just a cultural difference of opinion.

[humblebum]

34. Still, she called no one the N-word but she is defending her right use it

as a first amendment right. Hitchens is also defending his right to do so. Also concerning "Unlike race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, ones religion is not an organic, unalterable condition. Religion is voluntary..." - freedom of religion is as protected as any of those other characteristics.

[Deep13]

36. Yup. So is the right to disagree with one.

I'm sure I conceded several times that the building promoters have a right to build.

It doesn't take much sophistication to insult people while maintaining plausible denyability. Here, it's not even plausible. If you want to believe a slime ball like Dr. Laura, you go right ahead. In my judgment, she was deliberately provoking the caller and every Black person in her audience.

[humblebum]

37. I am not defending Dr. Laura at all. I think she has an ego and

a sense of intellectual elitism that clouds her sense of judgment, just like Hitchens.

[cleanhippie]

26. Red Herring alert!

[humblebum]

28. You would probably more correct in calling this a strawman argument

but in this case it is used to make a valid point and therefore not a fallacy.

[cleanhippie]

30. Red Strawman alert! nothing about your Red strawman is valid.

[humblebum]

32. So now you need to explain why it is not valid.

Are you saying that it is not OK to use a word (N word) that is generally termed hate speech, over the air,but it is OK to call for the expression of hatred for a religion. Funny how these things work.

[cleanhippie]

33. No, I don't because it doesnt even deserve the time I have spent already.

Done.

[Deep13]

13. Read the whole article.

After the above-quoted disclaimers, the main point of his article is critical of the hatefulness and hypocrisy of the project's opponents.

[Silent3]

16. But even if Rauf was really all so radical...

...that wouldn't have a thing to do with his right, and all of the other Muslims involved in the project, to build their community center a couple of blocks away from "Ground Zero", or anywhere else for that matter.

We need to set an example of tolerance, even for the intolerant, and certainly we shouldn't single out Islam for special treatment. I'm sure that much closer than two blocks away you'd find a few scattered Christian Dominionists who would happily replace the US Constitution with the Bible -- some of those nuts aren't merely sitting in buildings near symbolic points on the map, they're in our military and actively violating separation of church and state.

When someone is acting as a private citizen, not a member of government, fear of what you think they might possibly do because you suspect that their opinions or associations lead someplace you don't like should never be sufficient reason to curtail that citizen's full exercise of their rights.

Their right to build their Islamic community center, and my right to say that I think their God is a silly superstition or to draw a cartoon of Mohammad, is the same right, and should in both cases be defended.

@:-}>-< (Mohammad)

[struggle4progress]

40. It's a thought ramble from Hitchens, without much of a thesis

Rauf's supposed "sinister belief that the United States was partially responsible for 9/11" probably refers to a rather more complicated and defensible statement

One should certainly take the view that it is shocking and indefensible to pilot civilian planes into buildings with the aim of killing innocent people; and one should certainly take the further view that anyone supporting such acts suffers from grave and dangerous psychological disorders

Nevertheless, for complete understanding, one might want to inquire into the context carefully, in order to determine what factor contribute to the motivating psychological disorders. Personal issues, of course, deserve attention, since everyone bears responsibility for his/her own behaviors. But there is a long history of less-than-pure US foreign policy and covert action that might credibly contribute to circumstances and reactions encouraging such ugly behavior

If, over a number of years, I were to spit on my neighbor's daughter, poison his cat, deface his shrubbery, and make harassing phone calls to his house at 2 AM, no one sane would hold him innocent if he snapped one day and firebombed my house, nor could anyone say I deserved that -- but almost everyone would think it quite possible that my behavior contributed somewhat to the outcome. Any number of concrete steps might be needed to prevent future firebombings in the neighborhood, but it certainly can't hurt at all to ask people to consider treating their neighbors with ordinary decency

This is not a terribly difficult point to understand, though many rightwingers have managed never to understand it and instead since forever cry "blaming the victim" whenever the point is made. And it is typical of Hitchens that he cannot understand the point, either

[LAGC]

41. I agree with you on this.

And I disagree with Hitchens over his pro-warmongering stance regarding the Middle East in general.

But I think he makes some good points in the rest of his article, his faux pas over the reasons for 9/11 aside.

I don't think Imam Rauf is operating in a vaccuum here. He's already said he hasn't ruled out taking money from Saudi Arabia or Iran to fund his Islamic center project. I just don't think that's a very winning strategy if he's trying to win over skeptics of his project.

[PassingFair]

45. War-mongering, gin-soaked popinjay!

He was a cheerleader for the Iraq War.

I like some of his essays, but he
and Sam Harris are not able to see
their own bias in the religious wars
of the Middle East.

I do admire him for admitting when he
is wrong...(i.e. water boarding is NOT torture....)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7u-Wk1aU-E

He has been wrong about a LOT more
than water boarding and he doesn't
have a lot of time to admit it.

I can't hate the guy though. He thinks he
is being honest with himself....

[Nihil]

52. That about sums it up.

I really can't see why people are so quick to support that talentless sot.

So much of the time he seems to be put on the same pedestal as Dawkins
but that is so unfair to the latter as at least Dawkins is knowledgeable
and writes well. Hitchens isn't and doesn't.

The only reason I can see why Hitchens gets any mileage is the old
"enemy of my enemy is my friend" adage ...

:shrug:

[wookie72]

54. He admitted water boarding was torture...

And yet said we should still do it anyway.

Not a fan.