It's hard for me to understand the reasons some people and groups are objecting to the presence of a mosque (or "Muslim center") in proximity to ground zero of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Let's start with the obvious: In the United States of America, the owner of a plot of land has the right to build pretty much anything he wants on it. Our Constitution is founded on property rights. Further, the "free exercise of religion" is guaranteed by the First Amendment. In short: Can Muslims build an Islamic Center on this property? Yes they can. If President Obama and the conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer can agree on this point (and they do!) then surely it's beyond political dispute.
End of story. Yet the debate goes on.
Emotion enters in. The distraught and overwrought group who lost family members to the violence that day assert that any institution of the Muslim religion anywhere near ground zero is inappropriate because ... well, just because it IS. Their argument runs that it's an insult/outrage/obscenity/mistake (choose your term) for the religion that they view as "responsible" for the attack and for taking all those innocent lives, to establish a presence so close by. (Never mind that Muslims were already praying there before without being noticed.)
I don't concede the victims' survivors' right to make Ground Zero their personal project. It belongs to a much wider group: The people of New York (listen to your Mayor!) and more generally, the people of the U.S. in general, for we all lost something that day. So they're entitled to their opinion, but it's not the only opinion and perhaps should be considered less seriously than others.
Maybe if they were less distraught they could think better, because their emotional appeal depends on the assumption that "Islam" is somehow "responsible." That's factually incorrect. The attacks were organized and carried out by a fanatic group of terrorists who were motivated by religion ... a distorted and anachronistic view of it -- and by being cleverly brainwashed by a handful of extremists.
Individuals and small groups of religious "leaders" of all garb have from time to time been seized by an excess of fervor, carrying their faith over into violence. Christianity has not been immune. Check out the Crusades; look at the nearly 400 years of the Spanish inquisition. It's an interesting coincidence that Islam is currently just about the same age (give or take a hundred years) that Christianity was when the Spanish Inquisition cranked up. (If developing humans reach a peak of irresponsibility in their teen years, maybe religions do so too, in their teen-centuries.)
I'm sure many of the opponents of the mosque consider themselves good and faithful practitioners of the Judeo-Christian ethic. Yet if they were, I'd expect them to welcome this Islamic Center, and the avowed intentions of its planners/leaders to demonstrate that Islam can be a force for good. Any other attitude is more than a little hypocritical.
How will this non-issue be resolved? The key, once again, is in a point that both Obama and Krauthammer agree on: While there is an inalienable right to build an Islamic Center near Ground Zero, that doesn't speak to the moral and social issue of whether it should be built. As CK notes:
"Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign."
Unfortunately Muslims don't have an omniscient czar who can necessarily bend the faithful to his will. In the years before the new Islamic facility gets built, however, there will be plenty of time for discussion of the pros and cons (if the victim families will settle down and permit it). Who knows what decisions may be reached? Still, discouraging the mosque by making clear the intensity of feeling about it is a harder sell. While Auschwitz might arguably be considered to "belong" to Jews, it belongs also to Poles and Germans as a part of their history and a moral lesson. In the same way, doesn't the World Trade Center site belong also to Muslims, just as these particular Muslims are suggesting? Besides, it's very difficult to make a "sole custody" case for prime real estate in the heart of a major, multiethnic metropolis.
So, an Islamic Center at Ground Zero? Why not, if it comes to that?