Obama’s Iftar-Speech Fuels Mosque Controversy

With the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico almost stopped, America all of a sudden finds itself enmeshed in a new ferocious debate about religion; one that is likely to further damage the president’s outreach agenda to the Muslim world.

At a recent Iftar-dinner at the White House, Obama made the following remarks: ‘… let me be clear.  As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.’ It is hard to understand why these words of US President Barack Obama should have provoked any comment at all. That his speech indeed provoked so many angry responses indicates that America is in serious trouble.

The plan to build a Muslim community centre and a mosque in the vicinity of Ground Zero has led to a fierce debate in the US. Far right-wingers like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin have been using the project to raise fears of radical Islam. But while it might have been predictable that the Republicans could not withstand the temptation to exploit this issue in an election year, similar comments from the chairman of the Anti-Defamation-League (ADL), Abraham Foxman, came unexpected; Foxman stated that ‘building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right’. And Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer even compared the undertaking with the idea of putting up a Japanese cultural centre at Pearl Harbor or building a Christian convent on the soils of Auschwitz.

In response, Paul Krugman angrily shot back against the ‘shameful and stupid’ stand of the ADL in his New York Times column and CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria even returned the ‘Hubert Humphery First Amendment Freedom Prize’ that the ADL had awarded him. Maybe the most thoughtful and outspoken reaction to statements such as Krauthammer’s, Gingrich’s and Foxman’s came from New York City‘s mayor Michael Bloomberg, who reminded his audience at a speech at Governors Island ‘…(that) we would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to 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’.

Notwithstanding the mayor’s statement, it cannot be ignored that his rebuttal is not resonating with American voters. According to a CNN poll only 29% of Americans are supporting the mosque at Ground Zero while 68% speak out against it. Almost a decade after 9/11, these numbers are disappointing and worrisome, especially given that the hysteria about terrorism has significantly softened during the last years and that there has not been another 9/11 on American soil. Thus the debate about the mosque caught many observers by surprise. Given the above-mentioned numbers, the president’s remarks delivered on the occasion of an Iftar dinner at the White House are courageous because they are politically risky.

But while the domestic fallout may or may not be significant, the real trouble is to be found abroad. A Pew poll indicates that despite Obama’s groundbreaking speech in Cairo his approval ratings in the Arab world have dropped considerably. In Pakistan and Turkey, only 17% hold favourable opinions of the US, and if the Palin-Gingrich-Krauthammer-Foxman-view will shape the future debate about religion, America’s soft power is likely to decline further. Trust building is a mutual undertaking and historic narratives are not going to be changed by a single speech. In other countries, comparable attempts have also created resistance among the population; in Germany for example, well-organized movements against the building of new mosques exist. But there are also encouraging examples like the construction of the new mosque in the city of Duisburg, which, to everybody’s surprise, has been build without much disturbance. As it turned out, early information, the participation of the local population and a strong bipartisan consensus to defend religious freedom were paramount for the success.

Despite the countless efforts to improve dialogue with the Muslim world, it seems that there is still a long way to go. The debate about the mosque in lower Manhattan is making it easy for the preachers of hatred and intolerance to depict a distorted view of the West. Unfortunately far too many people in the West view Islam as a monolithic religion and centralised political force. A good example for this mindset is the statement of Dr. Rand Paul, the republican Senate-candidate from Kentucky, who stated that ‘the Muslim community would better serve the healing process by making a donation to the memorial fund for the victims of Sept. 11’ instead of building a mosque. That he is asking people to apologise who have no responsibility what-so-ever for what happened on 9/11 did not seem to have crossed Mr Paul’s mind.

All the more important is what the president said in his Iftar-speech: ‘Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam – it’s a gross distortion of Islam. These are not religious leaders – they’re terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children’, thus sending out a clear message to the extremists’ abroad. But his message should also be carefully listened to at home.

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