Liberal Jewish Perspective on GZ Mosque

A Muslim Community Center? Why Not?
Why Should Jews Care?

by Robin Podolsky with Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, JewsOnFirst.org, September 7, 2010

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From Pat Robertson, television pastor to millions, and anonymous internet trolls alike, we hear the same accusations: Islam is not a "real" religion. It is an international conspiracy of conquest. The center was only going to be called Cordoba House in order to signal a victory over those Westerners too ignorant to realize it. Muslims will smile at your face and lie behind your back. (Where have we heard this before?) For a grass roots movement, this grouping is astonishingly on-message.

If the details of this conspiracy theory aimed at all Muslims seem familiar to Jewish readers, they should. We have heard this before and we know where it leads.

We too have been painted as alien, a fifth column, a conspiracy. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fantasy concocted by Czar Nicholas II's secret police, portrays Jews as a worldwide, secretive cabal, owing loyalty only to one another, no matter what nation, class, social movement or other outside group they may situate themselves in. According to the Protocols, Jews are simultaneously behind all capitalist and all communist conspiracies; and the more patriotic they seem, the more blatant is their perfidy. In this perfectly closed system, there is no way for Jews to escape categorical suspicion. Now this trap is being woven for Muslim Americans.

Looking deeper

We have been told that Islam is not a religion but a political ideology because it has a holistic system of laws for daily living. Shall we then call Judaism a political ideology because of the system of Halachah? Daniel Pipes, a conservative academic specialist in Islam, asserts that the comparison is unfair, because "Islamists aspire to apply Islamic law to everyone, while observant Jews seek only to live by Jewish law themselves." Indeed. Perhaps Dr. Pipes has not been to Jerusalem lately. There he could find Jews who are willing to throw stones at anyone who drives within their neighborhoods on the Sabbath, physically assault other Jews whom they deem to be immodestly dressed and stab, bomb and shoot (without inquiring about their religion) people they encounter at gay pride events. On the other hand, the vast majority of religious Jews are indeed observant without compelling other people to join with them. The same is true of Muslim communities.

There are countries where Islamic law is threaded through the system, some of which are very exacting and some of which are relatively laissez-faire. Like the State of Israel, such countries are laboratories where new forms of government, accountable to worship and enjoy common [Planned Park51 Community Center] to religious and to parliamentary law, are being grown.

In the United States, observant Muslims, like observant Jews, often live close to one another in neighborhoods where they can enjoy the food at restaurants in which their rules regarding food will be observed (uh-oh--creeping Halachah!), find places recreation. Are such people "clannish?" On the left, right and center, American Jews who participate in elections and social movements are often motivated by values and imperatives they derive from Judaism. Are such people attempting to "impose" Jewish law?

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http://www.jewsonfirst.org/10a/CulCenter1.aspx