In two weeks Bard College is staging a lecture in New York by New Republic editor Martin Peretz. You have to wonder how appropriate this is given Peretz’s latest rant against Muslims and the First Amendment.
Peretz’s anti Arab-racism is by now well known and an embarrassment even to the staff of his own magazine. But even those used to his rants were surprised yesterday when they opened his latest contribution to his blog, "The Mosque is in trouble," at first thinking it was a parody by a hostile critic. Indeed, his attack on Muslims recalls similar attacks on Jews, in which anti-Semites talked all about the things the Jews do and don’t do when they’re praying.
The State of New York has no need for more mosques, since there are plenty of them. Furthermore, Muslims living in New York do not frequent their mosques on a daily basis; usually they go to them either on Saturdays or on Sundays, due to the nature of their work. Therefore, there is no real need for the building of the Cordoba Mosque; especially as the project has already provoked the sentiments of Americans, by reminding them of the attacks on 9 September, 2001, the Islamic conquest of Spain, as well as the tragic consequences of Islamic imperialism in general.
September 9?
[Since corrected, but] That’s not the only sloppy bit. What about his claim that that the community center was originally named Cordoba to be "confrontational and provocative," as a sign of Muslim triumphalism and the conquest of Spain? In fact, it was almost certainly named Cordoba because medieval Spain under Cordoba was a great center of learning and relatively tolerant toward Jews. Maimonides lived there then.
(Mondoweiss readers, please check out Peretz’s post and help us enumerate the errors.)
And the crack at the First Amendment?
In my view, the really modest struggle against the mosque is probably the closest thing we’ve had to a genuinely grass roots effort against the casual and elitist First Amendment fundamentalists.
Wait. We care about the First Amendment. That’s what this struggle is all about, separation of church and state. The authors of this post don’t want to pray in a mosque but we will fight for the right of others to do so. Casual and elitist?
