This post rates a blogroll addition

Hoo-boy, am I happy that Digby linked to Chris Martinez over at Inside-Out the Beltway. I've been wanting to write more about the disgusting display of right-wing bigotry and hatred over the community center near Ground Zero (as if building it ANYWHERE would shut these fuckers up, given that similar protests are taking place all over the country). But this is an issue that deserves more attention than a few stolen minutes at 5 AM when I have to get into the office early today. So thanks for Chris for doing it for me:

First, the Cordoba House is deliberately, expressly, and unequivocally intended to stand for the diametric opposite of what the 9/11 attackers believed.  It would stand for inclusion, reconciliation, and understanding across faiths and cultures.  In fact, in many ways, the Muslim founders of the Cordoba House (and its imam) are the sorts of people that bin Laden and his adherents hate most, because they are seen as traitors to the radicals' beliefs and cause. Founders and supporters of the Cordoba House are cosmopolitan and modern. The community center itself will contain many earthly luxuries and pleasures, and the initiative behind it seeks to promote harmony between Islam and the West, including human rights for women. Its founders (and location) actively embrace multicultural, multi-sectarian, quintessentially modern New York City, and many of its proponents have happily lived in Southern Manhattan for decades.

The Cordoba House, in other words, is not only blatantly separate and distinct from the identity and ideology of al Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorists, it is a direct repudiation ("refudiation," as demanded by Sarah Palin) of them. So the only way that someone could ever confuse the Cordoba Initiative with radical, militant Islam is if that person thought that Islam itself is inseparable from terrorism or terrorist sympathies (or had been misled by demagogues to believe the Cordoba House aligned itself with radical Islam). And, incidentally, if a very small handful of radicals who call themselves believers in a religion can cause that religion to stand for the terrible things the radicals do and believe, then, well, Christianity apparently stands for the murder of doctors, the preachings of David Koresh, the beliefs and deeds of Tim McVeigh, the goals of the Huntaree militia....

Second, the site of the proposed Cordoba House is not "at" or "on" Ground Zero. When considering whether the location of a supposed provocative act is essentially inseparable from the initial tragedy, we have to take all contexts into account - not just physical location, but the nature and characteristics of the area.  As many others have pointed out, the Cordoba House imam has been a member of the community since long before 9/11, as have many other Muslims. I used to work in Tribeca before 9/11, just a few blocks from where the Cordoba House would be built, which is itself two blocks from Ground Zero. One of my favorite places to eat for lunch was a place called the Pakistani Tea House.  It had amazing, inexpensive curries and a robust clientele of Pakistani cab drivers. Right in the shadow of the building Other Muslims would one day destroy!

Bingo. By the logic of those who would bar anything that even remotely resembles Islam from (what distance?) from Ground Zero, I guess that all those cab drivers named Muhammad and all those halal food carts from which I used to buy a tasty and fresh three-dollar lunch should be banned as well. Sarah Palin wanted moderate Muslims to "refudiate" terrorism? Well, here's a facility that "refudiates". And it's STILL not enough. NOTHING will be, not when there are cheap political points to be made by appealing to the reptilian brains of the fearful and the willfully ignorant.

Go read the whole thing. And welcome, Chris. Not that my blogroll means a heck of a lot to anyone, with my 350 page views a day, but welcome anyway.