US Politics & Religion: A Way Forward on and beyond the Islamic Cultural Centre (Ezell)

Darrell Ezell, who recently completed his Ph.D. on US foreign policy and inter-faith dialogue, writes for EA:

Over the summer, protestors listing a series of emotional grievances have attempted to halt the building of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s 13-story complex, The Cordoba House at Park 51, 2 1/2 blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. These grievances include the timing of theCordoba Initiative, coming almost nine years after the attacks of 11 September 2001, the site of the cultural centre, and claims of forced assimilation with Islam and Muslims in Lower Manhattan.

If you are watching this debate from abroad, you may ask: is America really ready to move forward in peacemaking and reconciliation with the religion of Islam? In this case, doing so will require firm public support from Washington and moderate Islamic voices within America.

New York’s Proposed Islamic Cultural Center: Information & Comment (Olbermann)
New York’s Proposed Islamic Cultural Center: The Daily Show’s Investigation

Speaking last Friday at the White House’s annual Iftar dinner to commemorate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, President Barack Obama cited religious freedom and the need to support moderate conceptions of Islam within America. He affirmed:

As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.  This is America.  And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.  The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.  The writ of the Founders must endure.

Anchoring this argument in the US Establishment Clause in his short address, the President set a new tone in the chaotic debate. The 1st Amendment to the Constitution, crafted by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” To prohibit Muslims from gathering within the public sphere or on private property would be akin to setting the nation back a half-century or more to an era marked by Jim Crow and legal segregation.

However, moving in this unjust direction is being lauded by anti-Islamic organisations such as Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Pam Geller and Robert Spencer’s Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI).  With emotions boiling over throughout America, a sensible conversation as to why exactly the Cordoba House is pertinent to peacemaking is being shrouded by misinformation and xenophobic rhetoric.

Take, for instance, the recent interview with New York gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino, and the director for the Center of Islamic Pluralism, Stephen Schwartz, with MSNBC’s Chris Jansing. Neither Paladino nor Schwartz were able to articulate a logical position for their opposition to Park 51. Schwartz admitted the current furour is insensitive to some Muslims, as well as the victims of 9/11. But what he failed to realise is that reconciliation is --- or should be --- a part of America’s post-9/11 healing-process and that the time is always right to explore it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89sodnhctSk&feature=related[/youtube]

Currently, a xenophobic strand in American society is making headway by capitalising on an opportunity to promote subtle forms of religious and racial difference, scoring political points with some voters before the autumn elections. FDI and SIOA have begun planning  a joint  protest on 11 September outside Park 51.  Headlining the rally will be conservative blogger, Andrew Brietbart,  former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and Dutch  parliamentarian Geert Wilders.

With an anti-Islamic movement gaining ground, led by ambivalence,  cheap shots, and even slander of Muslim audiences,  it is vital that Washington steps out front to present continued, firm public support for moderate Islamic organisations in America which are sincere about preventing the spread of radicalism.

Fareed Zakaria writes, “Ever since 9/11, liberals and conservatives have agreed that the lasting solution to the problem of Islamic terror is to prevail in the battle of ideas and to discredit radical Islam, the ideology that motivates young men to kill and be killed. Victory in the war on terror will be won when a moderate, mainstream version of Islam—one that is compatible with modernity—fully triumphs over the world view of Osama bin Laden.”  To assure that this radical Islam is discredited within a context that does not offend the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, US officials must take seriously inter-religious cooperation and socio-political discourse to engage moderates. Washington should consider the following:

• Establishing a national bi-partisan interfaith commission (comprised of religious and political leadership) to address domestic issues related to religious freedom;


• Allowing this commission to pursue a peacemaking and reconciliation agenda aimed at supporting moderate organizations and voices in America;


• Ensuring that feed-back loops are created to garner community-wide support and trusted relations with moderates; and


• Engaging moderate Muslims from the centre, rather than relying on indirect methods as public diplomacy to reach them.

As Washington considers its next move, its imperative that concerned liberals and progressive conservatives consider the value of applying post-secular approaches to combat both radical Islamic and xenophobic extremism in America. "Post-secular" acknowledges that America has entered an era where widespread religious issues are presenting new challenges to US domestic and foreign relations. The approaches includes interfaith dialogue, sensitivity training, religious-political analysis, and sacred-secular engagement to handle America’s new set of concerns.

New York's Proposed Islamic Cultural Center: Information & Comment (Olbermann)

"Because this is America...and in America when somebody comes for your neighbor and his Bible or his Torah or his atheist manifesto or his Qu'ran, you and I do what our fathers did and our grandmothers and our founders did and speak up." Keith Olbermann on MSNBC:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dXFo0UUACM[/youtube]

New York’s Proposed Islamic Cultural Center: The Daily Show’s Investigation

Video and Transcript: President Obama's Speech on the Mosque at Ground Zero

Transcript:

Indeed, over the course of our history, religion has flourished within our borders precisely because Americans have had the right to worship as they choose - including the right to believe in no religion at all. And it is a testament to the wisdom of our Founders that America remains deeply religious - a nation where the ability of peoples of different faiths to coexist peacefully and with mutual respect for one another stands in contrast to the religious conflict that persists around the globe.

That is not to say that religion is without controversy. Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities - particularly in New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

We must never forget those who we lost so tragically on 9/11, and we must always honor those who have led our response to that attack - from the firefighters who charged up smoke-filled staircases, to our troops who are serving in Afghanistan today. And let us always remember who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for. Our enemies respect no freedom of religion. Al Qaeda's cause is not Islam - it is a gross distortion of Islam. These are not religious leaders - these are terrorists who murder innocent men, women and children. In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion - and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

That is who we are fighting against. And the reason that we will win this fight is not simply the strength of our arms - it is the strength of our values. The democracy that we uphold. The freedoms that we cherish. The laws that we apply without regard to race or religion; wealth or status. Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect to those who are different from us - a way of life that stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.

US Politics and Media: Why Glenn Beck Is Good for America (Haddigan)

The history of the United States is one of extremes, a tale of how contending visions of the past should shape the nation’s future. The concept of "America" is a continuous conflict between a respect for traditional explanations of the individual’s responsibilities in a virtuous society and a yearning to unleash modern philosophies of the "Rights of Man".

This battle, since the first settlements in America, has been, largely fought out in the media. Glenn Beck on the Right, and Chris Matthews on the Left, are but the latest manifestations of the eternal struggle for the American Soul.

Recognition of the long history of partisan division in the US over fundamental ideas about politics is needed to calm the disquiet Beck and Matthews provoke in contemporary society. Both might promote an ideology of fear of the "other side", but America has prospered in the past --- and will in the future --- despite dire warnings about their predecessors and successors in the American media. Indeed, you can argue convincingly that the United States benefits from the existence of a partisan media.

The political media have continually forced the populace to evaluate what it means to be "American". Through struggles from the Pilgrims and Puritans through the revolutionaries of the War for Independence to the Civil War, in the conflicts to come in Populism and Progessivism, Fundmentalism (creationism) and Social Gospelism (evolutionism), New Dealism and Reaganism, Cold War conservatism and liberal counter-culture, the American media of the time played a central role in defining the terms on which the often acrimonious debate took place.

Because of our somewhat quaint notion that the past was more civil and polite than the present, aided by the self-perpetuating but false myth of the generation who came to (im)maturity in the 1960s that they revolutionised society, we fail to appreciate that a partisan media is not a modern phenomenon. Our ancestors, as long as visual images have existed, have displayed a sense of impropriety in criticising opponents that would make some today blush. See, for instance, scatological woodcut images (most people of the time couldn’t read) that were used as propaganda to defame the Pope during the early Protestant Reformation of the 1500s in Europe. You may hate Glenn Beck, or Chris Matthews, but these (extremely) sacrilegious cartoons and accompanying doggerel verses will put into perspective the limits that our modern society places on acceptable political discourse. (http://www.uoregon.edu/~dluebke/Reformations441/ReformationSatires.html)

America’s history of partisan conflict, and the role of the media, is more a rollicking and rambunctuous series of colourful disputes and incidents than a threat to American democracy (although Alexander Hamilton may have disagreed, since he was fatally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804 after Burr took umbrage at Hamilton’s criticisms of him in the press). The government have attempted to tame the freedom of expression of both the press and the people, most notably in the Sedition Acts of 1798 and 1918 and the Smith Act of 1940, but have failed to sustain a constitutional case for the argument that "crying fire", in the political theatre at least, is a "clear and present danger" to the nation’s security.

For a short period in its early years, the US did display a remarkable commitment to the idea that "disinterested" politicians could represent the country as a whole. George Washington succeeded in portraying this image, and following presidents laboured to sustain the illusion that the Chief Executive was a neutral approach who umpired the inevitable conflicts in American society (a myth that still held enough emotional sway for Eisenhower to use it in the 1950s).

But American politics changed in 1832 with the election of Andrew Jackson after a populist appeal to the masses, and it became the public-image, spin-dominated spectacle we know today with the election of William Henry Harrison in 1840.

(Of particular interest in the Harrison campaign was the Whigs' profligate distribution of whisky to persuade, or confound, voters to support the original log-cabin candidate. The whisky was handed out in bottles from the E. C. Booz distillery, leading to "booze" becoming a common term for alcohol in America.)

One reason for the overall civility of contemporary political debate, despite what some might regard as the extremist rabble-rousing of Beck and Matthews, is the changing definition of the word tolerance in Britain and in America. When the two countries (at different times) announced the establishment of religious tolerance as a guiding principle of popular democracy, they saw the word as meaning an individual had "to put up with" different religious opinions, even though they may regard them as evil or degenerate. It meant no individual could harm another, or aggress against them, because of their religion.

It did not mean, however, that the individual had to understand, empathize, or respect the tenets of a different faith. Behind the original conception of the tolerance of religion, and freedom of political expression, lay the understanding that both were a battleground where conflicting ideas should be, befitting their essential importance to mankind, fought out with vigour and conviction. Politics and religion, it was assumed, were so crucial to an individual’s definition of their identity that they would be debated with passion, not discussed lifelessly in a soulless debating chamber.

Beck and Matthews display some of that vitality, and as a result they and their like energise the American political debate. They force Americans to question the views they believe in by presenting a no-holds-barred alternative. And with their reliance on examining current events in the light of the nation’s history they allows each person to decide what it means to be an "American".

Beck and Matthews are not a threat to American democracy. They are, in fact, part of the reason why the United States retains a more than passing and rhetorical interest in the role of the individual in a just society.

UPDATED Iran-US Special: The 4-Step Collapse of Obama's "Engagement" Into Confusion

UPDATE 7 August: Stephen Walt jumps in with this analysis....

Right now, Washington simply assumes that Iran won't negotiate unless it is coerced into doing so by outside pressure. At the same time, Tehran has made it clear that it wants to negotiate but refuses to do so under pressure. The predictable result is the current stalemate. You'd think the U.S. government could come up with something creative to try to overcome this impasse, instead of just hoping for a miracle.

UPDATE 0940 GMT: An interesting clue that, amidst the confusion, the discussion of US-Iran talks is very much alive. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, has said that dialogue with Washington requires the permission of the Supreme Leader.

Iran-US Special: Obama Extends His Hand “Engagement, Not Conflict”

This time yesterday I was confidently declaring that President Obama had renewed his approach for engagement with Iran. David Ignatius of The Washington Post was putting out the message, from a specially-arranged briefing of selected journalists: "President Obama put the issue of negotiating with Iran firmly back on the table Wednesday in an unusual White House session with journalists. His message was that even as U.N. sanctions squeeze Tehran, he is leaving open a 'pathway' for a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue."

Ignatius' narrative fit a pattern which, while interrupted by the breakdown in nuclear discussions last October between Washington, Tehran, and other countries, was far from obsolete. Noting the recent US escalation in Afghanistan and Iran's role in any attempt at a resolution, I assessed, "While the nuclear issue was the first one to be addressed --- given its symbolic position, it had to be resolved before other matters could be tackled --- engagement with Tehran would also pay dividends for US policy in the Middle East, including Iraq, and Afghanistan as well as removing a troublesome issue in relations with Russia and China."

All very logical. Yet, within 24 hours, Obama's initiative has become a tangle of conflicting reports and political counter-attacks, taking us not towards engagement but towards the challenges I identified at the end of yesterday's analysis: "The conflict inside the Administration has taken its toll...The pressure from the US Congress [and opponents outside the Congress] — as well as the war chatter — will not evaporate."

Four Steps to Collapse:

1. THE CONFUSED MESSAGE

If, as Ignatius claims, the President was re-presenting the strategy of negotiating with Iran, others in the room failed to hear this. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic opens his account: "The session, as envisioned by his aides, was designed to convince his audience that Obama's policy of engagement joined with sanctions is having the desired effect of isolating Iran from the international community even as the country's pursuit of a bomb has not abated."

So pressure, pressure, and only pressure, as Ambinder features Administration optimism that Russia is now on Washington's side. There is not a single word in his report about negotiations.

Robert Kagan recounts, "[Obama] did make clear that the door was, of course, open to the Iranians to change their minds, that sanctions did not preclude diplomacy and engagement, and that if the Iranians ever decide they wanted to 'behave responsibly' by complying with the demands of the international community, then the United States was prepared to welcome them." This, however, is only an annex to the Pressure message: "The 'news' out of this briefing was that the administration wanted everyone to know how tough it was being on Iran."

Peter David of The Economist has perhaps the fullest account of the discussion. Like Ambinder and Kagan, he notes the Administration line that sanctions are pinching Tehran. His presentation on negotiations is not that Obama advocated them but that he pointed to the possibility:

it was important to set out for the Iranians a clear set of steps that America would accept as proof that the regime was not pursuing a bomb: they needed "a pathway". With hard work, America and Iran could thaw a 30-year period of antagonism—provided Iran began to act responsibly.

Mr Obama said that the United States had received no direct contacts from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, though high-level officials in Iran had investigated the possibility of re-engaging with the P5-plus-one (the permanent members of
the Security Council plus Germany). America would be willing to talk bilaterally to Iran "in the context" of a P5 process that was moving forward. There should meanwhile be a "separate track" on which America could co-operate with Iran on other issues, such as Afghanistan and drugs, for example.

2. THE ANTI-ENGAGEMENT COUNTER-ATTACK

Ambinder and David have not been amongst those beating the drum for confrontation with Tehran and, while Kagan has been a staunch advocate of an aggressive US foreign policy, including the 2003 Iraq war, he has been supportive of Obama's approach on sanctions.

For another journalist at the meeting, however, the agenda was how to stoke the fire of a showdown with Iran. Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic omitted any reference to negotiations, whether Obama advocated them or merely saw the possibility of discussions. Instead, he fit the confusion of journalists' accounts into this pre-determined conclusion:

I am skeptical, though, about the possibilities of a diplomatic breakthrough, for two reasons, one structural, and one related to the state of Iran's opposition: The structural reason is simple; one of the pillars of Islamic Republic theology is anti-Americanism, and it would take an ideological earthquake to upend that pillar. And then there's the problem of the Green Movement. If the Iranian opposition were vibrant and strong, the regime might have good reason to be sensitive to the economic impact of the new sanctions package. But the opposition is weak and divided. The regime has shown itself to be fully capable of suppressing dissent through terror. So I'm not sure how much pressure the regime feels to negotiate with the West.

This is more than enough ammunition for those wanting to shoot down engagement. Max Boot soon wrote for Commentary: "What’s scary is that the illusions about 'outreach' in the upper reaches of this administration have still not been dispelled, despite a year and a half of experience (to say nothing of the previous 30 years of experience), which would suggest that the mullahs aren’t misunderstood moderates who are committed to “peaceful co-existence.”

3. THE FACTIONS INSIDE THE ADMINISTRATION

So what exactly did happen in the Obama briefing to scramble his message? Different journalists, from their own positions or just human nature, will hear --- and even try to produce --- different messages. Kagan, without naming Ignatius, writes:

Some of the journalists present, upon hearing the president's last point about the door still being open to Iran, decided that he was signaling a brand-new diplomatic initiative. They started peppering Obama with questions to ferret out exactly what 'new' diplomatic actions he was talking about.

There's an even more important factor here, however, one that Kagan points to --- but does not fully appreciate, at least in his column --- in his next sentences:

After the president left, they continued probing the senior officials. This put the officials in an awkward position: They didn't want to say flat out that the administration was not pursuing a new diplomatic initiative because this might suggest that the administration was not interested in diplomacy at all. But they made perfectly clear -- in a half-dozen artful formulations -- that, no, there was no new diplomatic initiative in the offing.

As one bemused senior official later remarked to me, if the point of the briefing had been diplomacy, then the administration would have brought its top negotiators to the meeting, instead of all the people in charge of putting the squeeze on Iran.

Kagan's point is incomplete. The Obama Administration has been split, perhaps since it came into office, between a faction who want genuine discussions with Iran and one that only thinks of discussions as the set-up, once there is an Iranian "rejection", for tougher economic and diplomatic measures.

So those who are on the "positive" side for discussions give their perspective to Ignatius --- thus the important reference to the US involvement as Afghanistan (which is not any other account of Obama's remarks) as a factor, if not a necessity, for conversations with Iran --- and those on the "negative" side become the "bemused senior official" in Kagan's article.

Joe Klein of Time, who was also present, captures the confusion: "This was a pretty strange meeting. The President's comments were on the record; his team's comments were on background, meaning that the individuals speaking could only be identified as 'senior Administration officials'."

And that's not all. For the spinning of the story was also going on beyond Obama's briefing. As I noted yesterday in the anlaysis, one or more unnamed officials sought out George Jahn of the Associated Press, leaking two letters (or selected extracts from the letters) from Iran to the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The intent --- supported by Jahn's presentation and failure to put quotes into context, let alone present the letters --- was to rule out any possibility of productive dialogue: "Letters by Tehran’s envoys to top international officials and shared with The Associated Press suggest major progress is unlikely, with Tehran combative and unlikely to offer any concessions."

Such manoeuvres  in turn prop up critics of engagement like Ed Morrissey as they put out the gospel: "Time is running out on stopping the mullahs from their doomsday pursuit, and open hands to the regime have hardly been effective over the last several years, including the last eighteen months.  Either we need to get serious about other options or concede that we’re not serious at all."

4. CAN OBAMA RESCUE HIS ENGAGEMENT?

There's even a black-comedy irony in this story. Flynt Leverett, one of the foremost advocates of a US engagement with Iran for a "grand bargain" on bilateral and regional matters, joins others in dismissing the possibility of productive discussions, not because the Administration is too "soft" (as Goldberg and Boot argue) but because of "the Administration’s maladroit handling of its diplomatic exchanges with Tehran, poor grasp of on-the-ground realities in Iran, and mixed messaging....The President feels he must call in Western journalists to signal Tehran is a sad commentary on the Obama Administration’s failure to develop a discreet and reliable channel through which to communicate with Iranian leaders."

I suspect Leverett, because of his entrenched dislike of US foreign policy, goes a bit far with his unsupported assertion of the "failure to develop a discreet and reliable channel". I'm more than a few miles away from Washington, so I can't prove that the channel is operating, but last year's history is instructive. Between July 2009, when the Administration seized on the possibility of a deal in which Iran's uranium would be enriched in a country such as Russia, and October, a channel was established between Washington and Tehran. It was not direct but rather through third parties, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, European parties, and Turkey. And it led to face-to-face talks between US and Iranian representatives at Geneva in the autumn.

Even though that effort at an agreement ran adrift, the channels were not set aside. Ankara and the European Union have been used in recent weeks to pass Washington's thoughts to Tehran (and vice versa). Obama left more than a clue in his briefing: "High-level officials in Iran had investigated the possibility of re-engaging with the P5-plus-one [US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China]." Time's Klein offers further support that the process of 2009 --- contact at working levels --- is being repeated, although he fails to recognise it is two-way:

The President confirmed that "high level" Iranians have reached out to the Obama Administration over the past months, hoping to get a dialogue restarted. The President emphasized that neither the Supreme Leader nor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have attempted to contact us, and his aides later insisted that nothing concrete was in the works.

And in Tehran, once you get past President Ahmadinejad's more outlandish postures in recent weeks, he too has been putting out references to both indirect communication with the US and to direct talks in the near-future.

The problem is not that the channel for engagement does not exist; it is the interference that distorts and even scrambles it. The President and his advisors are putting out signals , not just to Tehran but to the US Congress, to their anti-engagement critics, to Israel, and to other countries. No surprise that those signals often clash, especially when the Obama Administration has the faction within that does not even believe in engagement.

Last November, I fretted, "The US President [may] be back in the cul-de-sac: pressed by some advisors and a lot of Congressmen to pursue sanctions which offer no remedy for — and no exit from — the political dilemma of his failed engagement."

This week, with those sanctions now reality, Obama tried to get out of the cul-de-sac with his high-profile briefing. Initially I thought he had a chance; 24 hours later, I am thinking that his effort --- at least in the context of domestic politics --- never made it around the corner.