Timothy Garton Ash: In Its Rows About Islam, the U.S. Must Avoid Catching a European Disease
[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.]
Last Friday, in New York, I discovered a strip club near the site of the planned Islamic centre, described by its opponents as "the mosque at Ground Zero". As pole dancers gyrated with all the sizzling eroticism of a weary Wal-Mart checkout assistant at the end of a long shift, I asked the burly front-of-house man – Scott, from Brooklyn – whether they had faced any protests about this profanation of hallowed ground. Had any Fox News commentators, for example, been beating an angry path to their door? Well, he replied, one or two passers-by had raised objections since the controversy erupted about the Islamic centre. "People are entitled to their opinions," said Scott, but the "New York Dolls" Gentlemen's Club had been here for 30 years and the folks working in it had to make a living.
Now a strip club at the memorial site of the worst terrorist atrocity on American soil would truly be a profanation. Though obviously not comparable to a strip club, planting a large new mosque directly on that site would nonetheless show an acute lack of sensitivity. Nine years on, the place where the twin towers stood is still a building site, but in a nearby exhibition you can see the plans for a commemorative ensemble of pools, trees and a museum, as well as a soaring new "freedom tower". As at the sites of Auschwitz, Katyn, Hiroshima or Ypres, so in the footprint of the World Trade Center, historical tact and commemorative mission should override all other considerations.
But here's the point: the strip club on Murray Street is not "at Ground Zero" any more than the site of the planned Islamic centre, a former Burlington coat factory in Park Place, is "at Ground Zero". They are, respectively, three and two blocks away. Neither would be visible from the World Trade Center memorial site, which may in some important if secular sense be considered hallowed ground. In New York, two blocks is a country mile. By the time you get to Park Place, there is no doubt that you are already somewhere else, amid the city's habitual huggermugger craziness, with the Amish Market on the corner selling Amish BBQ chicken, Amish fettucine and Amish sushi – all of them as authentically Amish as I am Chinese...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Last Friday, in New York, I discovered a strip club near the site of the planned Islamic centre, described by its opponents as "the mosque at Ground Zero". As pole dancers gyrated with all the sizzling eroticism of a weary Wal-Mart checkout assistant at the end of a long shift, I asked the burly front-of-house man – Scott, from Brooklyn – whether they had faced any protests about this profanation of hallowed ground. Had any Fox News commentators, for example, been beating an angry path to their door? Well, he replied, one or two passers-by had raised objections since the controversy erupted about the Islamic centre. "People are entitled to their opinions," said Scott, but the "New York Dolls" Gentlemen's Club had been here for 30 years and the folks working in it had to make a living.
Now a strip club at the memorial site of the worst terrorist atrocity on American soil would truly be a profanation. Though obviously not comparable to a strip club, planting a large new mosque directly on that site would nonetheless show an acute lack of sensitivity. Nine years on, the place where the twin towers stood is still a building site, but in a nearby exhibition you can see the plans for a commemorative ensemble of pools, trees and a museum, as well as a soaring new "freedom tower". As at the sites of Auschwitz, Katyn, Hiroshima or Ypres, so in the footprint of the World Trade Center, historical tact and commemorative mission should override all other considerations.
But here's the point: the strip club on Murray Street is not "at Ground Zero" any more than the site of the planned Islamic centre, a former Burlington coat factory in Park Place, is "at Ground Zero". They are, respectively, three and two blocks away. Neither would be visible from the World Trade Center memorial site, which may in some important if secular sense be considered hallowed ground. In New York, two blocks is a country mile. By the time you get to Park Place, there is no doubt that you are already somewhere else, amid the city's habitual huggermugger craziness, with the Amish Market on the corner selling Amish BBQ chicken, Amish fettucine and Amish sushi – all of them as authentically Amish as I am Chinese...