Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Commentary: A Mosque near Ground Zero?

NO: Islam leaders must first disavow terror

By Michael Leo Samuel

Thursday, August 19, 2010 at midnight

Towers have long captured the collected imagination of human kind. Whether it was the Tower of Babel in the Bible, or the Eiffel Tower in Paris , or the Chicago Water Tower, or especially the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, towers characterize technology, political power and even sexual potency.

The 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers was not a happenstance assault. The terrorists chose those buildings in particular because these structures were in the heart of the world’s greatest economic center.

In Freudian terms, destroying the towers represented a symbolic castration of the United States in the eyes of the Muslim world. From the terrorist perspective, attacking these centers sent a most auspicious message to the world of Islamic jihadists: The United States’ days of being the No. 1 superpower are finished; the nation has been castrated by the forces of radical Islam; it is only a matter of time before Islam eventually conquers all of the United States and the Western world.

Nine years later, most of our country has barely come to terms with the greater implications of Sept. 11, 2001, and its symbolic significance. As a seminal event, the terrorists revealed just how vulnerable we were (and still are) to those forces poised to strike at her again. As the beacon and vanguard of democracy and liberty in the Western world, radical Islam views the attacks of Sept. 11 as the opening salvo of a new kind of jihad against the United States precisely because it champions freedom, liberty, and the right for self-determination – anathemas that threaten the feudalistic mentality of radical Islam.

With this thought in mind, the Jewish community has found itself divided as to how it ought to respond to the proposed mosque that the Muslim community of New York is attempting to build near Ground Zero.

On Aug. 3, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg argued that denying the Muslim community the right to build its center would “betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands – if we treat Muslims differently than anyone else. … In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.”

Jewish leaders on both sides of the issue are equally passionate in championing their cause. The Anti-Defamation League claims to represent the best interests of the victims’ families, who do not wish to see their loved ones’ memories desecrated, while many Jewish liberals see this is an issue pertaining to religious freedom and respect for human rights.

Unlike much of the Western society, the radical Islamic world operates on symbols; everything has to be symbolic. They chose this place in particular because of the symbol it represents to the radical Islamic world.

As a rabbinic leader, I believe the Islamic leaders advocating this new center have a profound responsibility to publicly discredit all terroristic organizations such as Hezbollah, al-Qaeda , Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood before one single brick is laid near this sacred ground. Should any of the leaders have any kind of connection with these atavistic agencies, then the proposed center should be built elsewhere in Manhattan, but not near Ground Zero.

Samuel is the new rabbi for Congregation Beth Shalom in Chula Vista. He is the author of “Birth and Rebirth Through Genesis: The Timeless Theological Conversation” (Aeon Publishing, 2010) and “The Lord is My Shepherd: The Theology of the Caring God” (Jason Aronson, 1995).