Ground Zero Mosque: Imagine if Imperial Japan Had Built a Temple at Pearl Harbor

Consider this dispatch from a slightly alternate universe:

Honolulu, Dec. 7, 1951:  10 years after Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, 9 years after the dark days of World War II when President Roosevelt decided on a policy of engagement, not confrontation, and set a timetable for withdrawal of US troops from the Western Pacific, the Japanese Empire has extended that olive branch back to the US.  Today,  Hawaiian officials cut the ribbon to start construction, funded by Imperial Japan, of a 13-story Imperial “State Shinto” Temple. The Temple will be less than 1,000 feet from where the Imperial Japanese Navy had killed 2,402 US citizens and devastated the US fleet ten years before.   Polls show that most in Hawaii oppose this temple to the doctrines of State Shinto and the Warrior code of Bushido that justify Japanese Imperial supremacism.  A Japanese American said it was “like triumphantly planting an Imperialist Japanese flag in Pearl Harbor.”   But – promised a $100 million investment from Imperial Japan’s coffers – local Hawaiian officials who support the Temple have dismissed these citizens as bigots and accused them of “spewing hate.”

In that alternate history, FDR had thought he was playing for a tie – but his opponents turned it into a Japanese Imperial victory.

Now, return Back to the Future in 2010. Consider what is really happening – less than 2 blocks from the Ground Zero site:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, executive director of the Cordoba Initiative, has received support of the local Community Board for a 13-story mosque and Islamic command center – “Cordoba House” – at 45 Park Place in New York City, less than 1,000 feet from Ground Zero where 2,749 people died on September 11, 2001.  Cordoba House construction is scheduled to start September 11, 2011, exactly ten years after the 9/11 attacks.  Cordoba House will be built on top of the remains of victims burned and buried in the rubble.  After Rauf promised a $100 million investment in the project, from unidentified donors,  he obtained initial support from officials.  In a starkly critical article Muslim writer Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury asserted, “To Muslims worldwide, it would be a symbol of the progress they are making, like triumphantly planting an Islamic flag in Ground Zero.”

In addition to Cordoba House, Imam Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative has several other projects, including the “Shariah Index” (see also here) to provide “an Islamic legal benchmark for measuring ‘Islamicity’ of a state,” and an ongoing program to integrate Shariah law into Western law.

According to press reports, the Cordoba House plans include a Muslim prayer room with capacity for 2,000 (in other words, a Mosque), and “may” include a memorial to the victims of 9/11.  Officials should confirm precisely what statements Rauf intends to engrave on that 9/11 memorial, since he is on record blaming the US for the 9/11 attacks: on September 30, 2001 Rauf told CBS’ 60 Minutes, “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened…Because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”

In spite of support for the Cordoba Institute’s projects from Mayor Bloomberg and a small group of New York elected officials, a poll from July 1 shows opinion is rapidly turning against the Ground Zero Mosque, according to NBC:

A majority of New Yorkers oppose plans to build a mosque and Muslim cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released Thursday.

Fifty-two percent of the respondents said they did not want the mosque to be built at all, 31 percent are in favor of it, and 17 percent are undecided.

Americans would not have supported a monument to Japanese Imperialism at Pearl Harbor.   It looks like they won’t support a monument to Shariah Supremacism at Ground Zero either.  Track fast-moving developments at http://stopthe911mosque.com/.