A Positive Interfaith Message On a Subject That Has So Far Inspired Little but Acrimony

I'm sick of the topic of the mosque too.  Still, there's been so much negativity surrounding the issue that I was glad to see a positive message on the topic that makes no mention of the negativity.  I thought I'd share with those that haven't come across it independently.

Message from the New York State Council of Churches:

The New York State Council of Churches, which represents Protestant denominations with more than 6,000 congregations in New York State, released a statement today supporting the planned Community Center at 51 Park Place in Manhattan. The Council also voiced support of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, whom they characterize as “a religious leader allied with the best of both our traditions,” who has “repeatedly denounced Islamist terrorism and has admonished members of his congregation to be, both good Americans and good Muslims.”


The Council pointed to the planned Park51 Community Center as an opportunity for America to demonstrate to the world that it stands up for its principles of religious freedom.

Pointing out that those “seeking to build The Community Center at Park51 in lower Manhattan lost family members in the September 11th tragedy also,” the Council praised the project as “a tribute to the American way of life,” in that “those whose faith is often blamed for the sins of extremists that happen to claim the same religious label, wish to turn this place into one that is life-giving for the community. Bringing life to an area still physically and economically depressed by the events of nine years ago will show extremists that the spirit they sought to eradicate still thrives and that new vitality will grow here.”

[Hat Tip: Capitol Confidential]

Are We Really Prepared to Prove the Extremists Right? Prove Them Wrong, Double That Aid to Pakistan.

There's another article on Pakistan and US security worries today.

While the administration has kept its public emphasis on the relief effort, senior officials are busy assessing the longer-term strategic impact. One official said the disaster would affect virtually every aspect of the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, and could have ripple effects on the war in Afghanistan and the broader American battle against Al Qaeda.
With Pakistan’s economy suffering a grievous blow, the administration could be forced to redirect parts of its $7.5 billion economic aid package for Pakistan to urgent needs like rebuilding bridges, rather than more ambitious goals like upgrading the rickety electricity grid.

Some security officials sound rather tone deaf:

“It certainly has security implications,” said another official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss internal policy deliberations. “An army that is consumed by flood relief is not conducting counterinsurgency operations.” 

 Despite realizing the difficulties of the situation we remain sufficiently out of touch that we're bragging about low numbers:

On Thursday, the United Nations will convene a special meeting devoted to the floods, hoping to galvanize what has been a lackluster global response. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce that American public aid has surpassed $100 million, an official said.

 How many drone strikes does that buy?



There are some bright spots:

In recent days, the United States has sent 15 helicopters, rescuing nearly 6,000 people. On Wednesday, military cargo planes delivered 60,000 pounds of food and other relief supplies, bringing total deliveries to 717,000 pounds. The speed and scale of the effort, officials in both countries said, have helped bolster the checkered American image in Pakistan. 

But Pakistani officials can still be relied on to state the obvious:

“Americans have not yet registered the enormity of the crisis,” Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said in a telephone interview from Islamabad, the capital. 

This problem has about the most obvious solution imaginable, double the aid spending, at least.  Doing this will save a multiple of that in security expenses down the road.  These people need help, without it they'll be desperate and turn where they can, in some cases undoubtedly to militant groups.  Much of the Islamic world has long been condemning us for being so willing to spend money on killing and comparatively so little on saving.  Are we really prepared to prove them right?

If We Ever Wanted to Do Something to Stop the Spread of Extremism Now is the Time to Act

I was just reading another article about the continued shortfalls in aid to Pakistan.  If basic human decency isn't enough to motivate us the opportunity to give aid in order to reduce the influence and counter the message of extremists should be enough.

What baffles me is that we can spend trillions on killing people and attempting to force them to conform to our expectations but when a situation arrives that gives us an opportunity to prove our good faith we can't muster the will to intervene on a grand scale.

[Edit: The Lede has a list of organizations accepting donations]
[Update: A more complete article is now available.  I really think we are making a major mistake in the US by not intervening much more heavily.  We could make up the entire aid shortfall on our own.  It would be well worth it.  Far more valuable than an equivalent amount of military spending at the very least.]

Important Details Not Being Reported: Is Feisal Abdul Rauf a Sufi?

While I haven't been following the Manhattan Mosque story very closely I was rather surprised to stumble across an extremely important detail that I hadn't heard yet.  According to an op-ed in the NY Times today, "Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Codoba Initiative is one of America's leading thinkers of Sufism."  Now, I couldn't confirm this in 10 minutes on Google, Sufism is a more generic term applied to mystical Islam so it isn't easy to identify without going into some detail with an individual's writings, but if this is true this is a very important detail that the news media has largely left out.  I had been led to believe from previous news reports that Imam Rauf was a moderate but fully mainstream, not a Sufi.  His being a Sufi makes the entire controversy even more absurd, Sufism is pretty much as far away from Islamic fundamentalism as you can get. 

This just goes to show how thoroughly ignorant most Americans, even educated ones, are about Islam.  This is a rather critical detail in understanding the issue and the form of Islam being practiced.  That it has hardly been mentioned at all, and that virtually all the reporting seems to be written as if the Cordoba Initiative was a mainstream Sunni organization, tells us a lot about the negligence on the part of the media.