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Hearing Evil
When Robert Gibbs uttered words to the effect that anyone who thinks that Obama is continuing Bush should be drug tested, I snapped right into action.
“Yes, that’s it,” I thought. Perhaps it was drugs that were needed. Someone was on drugs, somewhere, and I was going to test for it.
So, immediately, I tested all over. I tested my cabinet drawers first, looking all over. Nothing.“Yes, that’s it,” I thought. Perhaps it was drugs that were needed. Someone was on drugs, somewhere, and I was going to test for it.
Being a loyal American, I continued. Under the mattress: nothing. No weed, ludes, opiates, nothing. Besides, this was something that called for uppers.
Why? Robert Gibbs is obviously projecting, a bit paranoid. Crack, Powdered, Amphetemines, even Meth. Ah ha! I searched the bookcases, the slots behind the books. Nothing. The only thing available was at the bottom of the speed spectrum -- caffene. Not sufficient to get into the right frame of mind, but I still drank some coffee.
It did not help. I still thought that Obama was going down the same path as Bush. The major problem was that Obama was intelligent and knowledgable and Bush was not. It turns out that this was not enough to mean an improvement. Quite the contrary.
Obama, as is developed in the transcript below, is actually normalizing or legalizing what Bush had done, only Bush was violating socially and internationally accepted norms. With Obama, we have an example of what can most precisely be described as die bindinde Kraft kritiserbarer Geltungansprüche or as, mentioned above, an institutionalization and legalization of deviant and internationally illegal activity.
Many of Bush's violation of established 4th Amendment protections, for example, have been absorbed into the legal code. Guantanamo remains open and tribunals are being executed and prisoners sentenced. The most obvious example is the prosecution of the acts of a 15 year old who is now about 23, having spent eight years, or a third of his life, in a prison, subject to torture. In violation of the 5th Ammendment, evidence obtained as a result of torture is admitted against him. The fact that such 'confession' was made without the presence of a lawyer brings the 6th Amendment into play. But then, a war's a war!
Healthcare is another issue. Obama never promised a Canadian style system, but he did promise the re-import of medicines from Canada and a public option. If he had started with a single-payer proposal, perhaps something non-Bush would have been instituted.
Well, as I freely confessed, I was unable to find the drugs needed to agree with Gibbs, so I am sure my reasoning is flawed somehow.
Furthermore, I can not agree that Gibbs should be fired. That would be analogous to firing the mailman for bringing you a bill. The key is finding out who was behind the bill being sent, and I would suspect Rahm Israel Emmanuel and perhaps David Axelrod, perhaps also Timothy Geithner, but primarilly Barack himself as guilty.
In many ways, then, he is worse than Bush simply because he has a better facility with instrumental reasoning.
Here is the transcript:
Rush Transcript
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JUAN GONZALEZ: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is coming under increasing pressure for his attack on progressive critics of President Obama. In a recent interview with the newspaper The Hill, Gibbs blasted what he called, quote, "the professional left" that has likened some of Obama’s policies to those of former President George W. Bush. Gibbs said, quote, "These people ought to be drug tested. They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and when we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality. They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president."On Wednesday, Robert Gibbs was repeatedly questioned about the statement during the White House press briefing.
- REPORTER: Your esteemed substitute yesterday, that you answered—said that you answered honestly. Was this an honest, correct answer that you gave to those questions, when you—
PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: I would not contradict my able substitute.
REPORTER: So this was an honest answer? You’re not backing away from it?
PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: I don’t think that—I think many of you all have heard frustration voiced in here and around, sure. I don’t—I doubt I said anything that you haven’t already heard.
REPORTER: This wasn’t a mistake? It was not something you said in error?
PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: It was borne out of frustration, but I don’t think it was—again, I think it was borne out of frustration.
REPORTER: But you stand by it? It’s private frustration that you expressed publicly and accurately?
PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: Well, public frustration that was written down publicly.
REPORTER: Do you want to name any names?
PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: I left my membership list back in the office.
REPORTER: Of the professional left?
REPORTER: Well, who wants to eliminate the Pentagon?
PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: I think that was—wasn’t that a proposal during the presidential campaign? Didn’t Dennis Kucinich—or maybe it was adding the Department of Peace.
REPORTER: Department of Peace.
REPORTER: But do you feel like there’s still substance to what you said, not necessarily—maybe not in the way you said it, but that there is too much of a demand or too much pressure perhaps from the left of the party and that—
PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: I didn’t say there’s too much of a demand. I think—or too much pressure. I think that a lot of what—a lot of the issues that Democrats throughout the party have worked—have worked to see happen have come to fruition as part of what this President has accomplished in the first seventeen months. Healthcare was an issue that was worked on for a hundred years. President after president after president discussed the importance of passing something comprehensive and historic that cut how much we were paying for healthcare, that extended the life, as we saw last week, of the Medicare trust fund. I think those are accomplishments that we all should be proud of, regardless of whether it encompasses a hundred percent of what we had wanted in the beginning.
REPORTER: And what about the rest that is outstanding? Gay rights, Guantánamo?
PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: I will say this: all things that the President made commitments on and is focused on doing.
AMY GOODMAN: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defending the Obama administration’s record and his comments on the so-called professional left.
One organization that’s been particularly critical of some of President Obama’s policies has been the American Civil Liberties Union. In a new report called "Establishing a New Normal," the ACLU writes, quote, "On a range of issues including accountability for torture, detention of terrorism suspects, and use of lethal force against civilians, there is a very real danger that the Obama administration will enshrine permanently within the law policies and practices that were widely considered extreme and unlawful during the Bush administration."
Well, Jameel Jaffer joins us here in New York. He is the deputy legal director at the ACLU and one of the authors of the report.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
JAMEEL JAFFER: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to Robert Gibbs?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Well, you know, I think it’s disappointing when the Press Secretary responds to the thoughtful criticism in that way. I also think it—I think it debases political debate to respond in that way. And I think that the Press Secretary, as part of his job, is supposed to set a tone, and I don’t think that’s the right tone.
But our report is really—you know, it’s about the policies. We stand by the content of the report. And the same report that criticizes the President for—President Obama for adopting some of the Bush administration’s policies gives President Obama all kinds of credit for the things he’s done right. We tried to be fair in the report. We think the report is fair. And we think it’s important to give the administration credit when they get things right, and we did. And we think it’s important to hold the administration accountable when they get things wrong, and that’s what we’re trying to do.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What were some of those things that they did right that you’ve praised him for?
JAMEEL JAFFER: You know, in the very first days of the administration, the President announced that they would shut down the CIA’s black sites, that they would disavow torture. They committed to close Guantánamo. That hasn’t gone as everybody had hoped, but they committed to close Guantánamo, and I think everybody recognizes that they intended to do it. A few months into the administration, they released some of the torture memos that the Bush adminstration had kept secret on the basis of a national security pretext. And all of those decisions were the right decisions by the administration, and the administration deserves credit for having put the power and the prestige of the presidency behind those kinds of decisions.
Unfortunately, if you take a step back and you look more broadly at what the administration is doing on national security, in particular, what you see far too often is the administration endorsing policies that most of us recognize were extreme under the last administration. And, in fact, in some cases, you see this administration going even further than the last administration did. I don’t think it’s helpful to engage in this conversation of, is President Obama better or worse than President Bush? I think that you have to look at these things on a policy-by-policy basis, and that’s what we tried to do.
AMY GOODMAN: So, why don’t you list those areas where you are deeply concerned?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Sure, sure. So, some of the places we point to in the report include the endorsement of indefinite detention for some of the people who are now held at Guantánamo, the failure to hold accountable the people who endorsed torture. The last administration built a framework for torture, but this administration, we say in the report, is building a framework for impunity. Allowing those senior officials who endorsed torture to get away with it leaves torture on the table as a permissible policy option, if not for this president, then for the next president.
AMY GOODMAN: And who do you think should be held accountable?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Well, you know, these are decisions—the decision to endorse torture was a decision that was made at the highest levels of the Bush administration. We know that, for example, Secretary Rumsfeld signed interrogation orders for use at Guantánamo that included interrogation methods that violated the War Crimes Act. We know that lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel wrote legal memos that were meant to authorize torture. So the problem we have now is that there is—you know, as you know, the Obama administration has initiated a criminal investigation, but the criminal investigation is very narrow. It examines only a handful of incidents in which contractors or CIA interrogators went beyond the authority that was invested in them. And nobody, as far as we know, is looking into the responsibility and the criminal liability of the people who endorsed torture and authorized it. And that seems indefensible to us.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the administration’s repeated invoking of national security to maintain secrecy in terms of what happened with some of these torture cases?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Right, that’s—I mean, that’s happening in two different contexts. One is the Freedom of Information Act context. There are still a half a dozen lawsuits out there, including some that the ACLU has brought, that are an effort to create a complete public record of what took place under the last administration. Rather than cooperate with that effort, the administration, the Obama administration, is invoking national security to withhold, for example, allegations from prisoners who were held in CIA black sites about the treatment that they suffered in those black sites. And at this point, there is no legitimate national security justification for withholding that kind of material. So that’s one context.
And the other context is in the context of civil suits brought by survivors of the torture program. What you see is the administration invoking the same state secrets privilege that the last administration invoked to get those cases kicked out of court. So, on every front, you see the Obama administration, rather than providing the kind of accountability that it committed to provide, instead obstructing accountability.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the whole issue of the continued rise of the surveillance state and the government’s involvement in surveillance of civilians?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s another front where we had hoped to see this administration depart from the policies of the last administration. And it hasn’t happened, or at least hasn’t happened to the extent we had hoped. Some of what was going on under the last administration was going on in spite of federal law that prohibited it. That was true, for example, with the warrantless wiretapping program. And then Congress authorized the warrantless wiretapping that President Bush had authorized in violation of statute. So now you have a statute that authorizes precisely what President Bush was doing illegally between 2001 and 2006. But what we had hoped was that that statute would be tested, the constitutionality of that statute would be tested in the courts.
Rather than defend the statute on the merits or, even better, concede the unconstitutionality of the statute, the Obama administration has invoked the state secrets privilege and the standing doctrine to try to protect that statue from judicial review. And the standing argument they’re making is that the only people who can challenge this kind of surveillance are people who can prove that their own communications were acquired. And nobody can prove that their own communications were acquired, because the administration doesn’t—often for good reason, doesn’t disclose the names of its surveillance targets. So, to say that the only people who can challenge the statute are people who can show their communications were acquired under it is to say that the statute is immune from judicial review. And that’s the problem with the argument that the administration is making right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Jameel Jaffer, the issue of US policy of assassination? ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit last week against the government around the government’s authorization of assassinating US citizens, al-Awlaki in Yemen.
JAMEEL JAFFER: That’s right. That’s right. So this is—you know, this targeted killing program, as it’s been called, is something that was introduced by the last administration, but expanded by this administration. And our concern is principally with the use of—with the carrying out of targeted killings outside the battlefield context. So it’s one thing to use drones, for example, in Afghanistan or Iraq, where the United States is actually at war. That’s subject to the laws of war, and there are limits, but that’s a different context than the use of drones to kill people who are located far from any battlefield. And a lot of us agree that the last administration’s argument for worldwide detention authority, the authority to detain people without charge or trial, was extreme and unlawful. This administration is claiming worldwide execution authority. Suspected terrorists are targeted for execution wherever they are in the world. And that’s—you know, there are many problems with that policy, but one of them is that inevitably we will get it wrong sometimes. And you only need to look to Guantánamo, for example, to see dozens and dozens of situations where we initially labeled somebody a terrorist and then, many years later, looked at the evidence and found that the evidence was nonexistent or just wrong. And it’s one thing to get it wrong in the context of detention. With detention, there’s always the possibility of appeal and the possibility eventually of release. But there is no appeal from a drone. And if you get it wrong with a drone, there is no recourse. So we have to be sure to get it right, and that’s part of the reason we’re so concerned about the use of these drones outside the battlefield context.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And you’re also critical of the Obama administration’s willingness to rely on military commissions, in terms of dealing with some of the suspected or alleged terrorists.
JAMEEL JAFFER: That’s right. I mean, with the military commissions, I mean, I’ll be honest with you, it’s not just a civil liberties objection. It’s also a very practical effectiveness objection. And it’s bewildering to us that the administration is going down this road. You have military commissions that have been totally unsuccessful in carrying out the tasks that they were told to carry out. Over the last few years, we’ve had four convictions. And in the same time period, you have had hundreds of convictions in the criminal courts here inside the United States. The courts here, the federal courts, are completely capable of handling complex terrorism cases. They’ve done it many, many times in the past. The prosecutors know the law. There is law. The judges know the law. Everybody knows the rules. And those rules have been tested over many, many years. In the military commissions, you have a system that’s been built essentially from scratch. And it’s no surprise that that system has, you know, to understate it, many, many kinks in it. And the result is that this system that the Obama administration is using has all kinds of human rights and civil liberties problems, but it also has a very basic effectiveness problem. And so, our objection to it is not just a civil liberties objection, but a kind of security objection, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have twenty seconds, but opening arguments begin in Omar Khadr’s case today in Guantánamo. Picked up at fifteen?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, this is, in some ways, the most troubling of all of the cases that have been brought before the military commission. He was, as you say, picked up as a juvenile. He’s been held for a third of his life at Guantánamo. He’s being held on the basis of, among other things, evidence that was tortured out of him when he was fifteen years old. It’s a surprise that the Obama administration is starting with this case.
AMY GOODMAN: Gibbs is concerned about you comparing Obama with Bush. What about Bush Senior? Do you think the comment about the professional left is equivalent to President George H.W. Bush talking about card-carrying members of the ACLU?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I’m not even sure that we consider ourselves part of the left at the ACLU. You know, we consider ourselves having the Bill of Rights as our—
AMY GOODMAN: I think it’s what they consider you.
JAMEEL JAFFER: Right, right. You know, again, I just think it’s disappointing that the administration uses this kind of language to respond to thoughtful and considered criticism. I think it debases political discourse in this country. And part of the Press Secretary’s job is to make sure that political discourse is civil and informed.
AMY GOODMAN: Jameel Jaffer, I want to thank you very much for being with us.
JAMEEL JAFFER: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: His report on the new normal, "Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration," we’ll link to it at democracynow.org.
democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
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Here is more on the Mosque controversy:
Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate - $25, $50, $100, More...
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JUAN GONZALEZ: Last week the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission cleared the way for the construction of a proposed Muslim cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the vote, calling it a victory for religious freedom.But the acrimony over the location of the proposed thirteen-story, $100 million project known as "Park 51," and often referred to as the Cordoba House, is far from over. One day after the commission gave the go-ahead to the project, the American Center for Law and Justice, a right-wing group founded by the evangelist Pat Robertson, filed suit to block its construction.
On Tuesday, New York Governor David Paterson entered the debate and offered developers of the project state-owned land to relocate the center far away from the site of the former World Trade Center. The developers rejected the offer late Wednesday.
AMY GOODMAN: The Cordoba House has become a national controversy, with everyone from Sarah Palin to the Anti-Defamation League weighing in. Last month Sarah Palin devoted two Twitter updates to oppose the mosque, calling it an "unnecessary provocation." Now, a leading social conservative, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, says no more mosques should be built anywhere in the country.
Here in New York, it’s also an electoral issue, with Republican candidate for governor, Rick Lazio, lambasting his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, for supporting the project. Here’s a sampling of Rick Lazio, Newt Gingrich and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League publicly defending their opposition to the construction of the Park 51 project over the past week. It begins on Rick Lazio.
- RICK LAZIO: This site here is so close to Ground Zero that the building that they’re going to demolish, the historic building they’re going to demolish to build this mosque, was damaged by the landing gear of one of the planes that hit the Trade Center. We had over 3,000 Americans that were murdered in this location. It is sacred ground. And the fact that we have an insensitivity about moving forward and what that means for the families of those who lost loved ones in 9/11, the first responders, the people closest to the community, to me, it compounds the question, what are they hiding? Why doesn’t Andrew Cuomo step up as the Attorney General who has jurisdiction over this issue and do what people like me, Rudy Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League have been calling on? Let’s have a clear accounting. Open the books. Let’s see who’s giving the money to construct this mosque. Is it foreign governments? Are they radical organizations? We deserve to know.
NEWT GINGRICH: We’d be quite happy to have a mosque built near the World Trade Center, the morning that one church and one synagogue are opened in Mecca. But I don’t want—I don’t want anyone from the world of Islam to lecture me on sensitivity, as long as the Saudis lock up anybody who practices any religion other than Islam.
ABRAHAM FOXMAN: I believe, on this issue, the voices, the feelings, the emotions of the families of the victims, of the responders, I think, take precedent, maybe over even the Mayor’s. If I had my way, I agreed with Tom Friedman’s column today in the New York Times. He said, if he had $100 million, he would build this mosque in Saudi Arabia or in Pakistan, where you cannot build a church or you cannot synagogue. That’s where you need to show tolerance and love and understanding.
AMY GOODMAN: Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League there.
Well, the Obama administration is refusing to weigh in on the controversy. Asked for the White House stance, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs declined to offer an opinion, calling it a "local" issue.
- PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: I think we have—I think you’ve heard this administration and the last administration talk about the fact that we are not at war with a religion, but with an idea that has corrupted a religion. But that having been said, I’m not, from here, going to get involved in local decision making like that.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, recent polls suggest while a majority of Americans oppose the construction of the mosque near Ground Zero, a majority of those who live in Manhattan actually support its construction. A CNN poll reports 68 percent of the country opposes the project, and according to a Marist poll, 53 percent of New York City residents oppose it, as well. But the same Marist poll also reports 69 percent of Manhattan residents support the construction of the mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero.
For more on this, we’re joined by Daisy Khan. She’s the executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, one of the main organizations behind the mosque project, and she is the wife of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Also with us, in Philadelphia, Stephan Salisbury, cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer His most recent book is called Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland. His latest article posted on TomDispatch.com is called "Mosque Mania: Anti-Muslim Fears and the Far Right."
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Daisy Khan, let’s begin with you. Explain what it is that you are attempting to do and where the cultural center and mosque is located.
DAISY KHAN: Well, thank you, Amy, for having me on the show. This idea goes back to 1999, when Imam Feisal, who is, you know, an Islamic scholar, an imam who’s been an imam in Tribeca for twenty-seven years, looked at how religions evolve in America over—you know, over its course, and has spoken to rabbis and Catholics and determined that the evolution or trajectory of Americanizing a religion happens primarily with institution building and that once you go from a place of worship to an institute that serves the general public is when that faith becomes Americanized. And so, establishing something like a YMCA or the equivalent of a JCC or a 92nd Street Y, which would be the Muslim equivalent, would be necessary for the Muslim community to do in order to integrate itself and call itself an American religion. So this idea has been on the books for a while.
And in 2000—prior to 2000, we actually tried to purchase another building called McBurney Y on 23rd Street, and we did not succeed. Somebody else came along with more money. And it’s only recently, because of the need for additional prayer space in lower Manhattan, because of the influx of so many immigrants, and our congregational prayers happen on Friday, there has been an increase in people that have been coming for prayers, that there was a desire to look for another site. And it was primarily to be in the same neighborhood, because our current mosque was only twelve blocks from Ground Zero. And so, one of our congregants, Soho Properties, Sharif Gamal, took it upon himself to look for a site that might be suitable. And it is that search that resulted in finding this property, which was—you know, which had been vacant for nine years.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And were you surprised by the sudden reaction in the final moments of your getting approval, in the final weeks of your getting approval of the project, the enormous reaction, not just in New York City, but across the country, by some of these political leaders?
DAISY KHAN: Well, we went in front of the community board primarily to gauge the receptivity of the community board, whether they would welcome a center that would be larger than just a prayer space. And, of course, the first community board meeting was—there was a unanimous vote, you know, 15-to-zero, and everybody was in favor, because they saw the benefit that it would bring to the community. In fact, they suggested that perhaps maybe we should consider a 9/11 memorial. And we did. We said we’ll be happy to include that. And then, many of our politicians, our borough president, welcomed it. And, you know, we are already in the neighborhood. And we, you know, are New Yorkers. We are Americans. We may be Muslim, but this tragedy was our tragedy as much as anybody else’s. So we didn’t see ourselves as the other. We saw ourselves as being part and parcel of this. So we knew that there might be some people that we might have to bring along, but we did not expect a coordinated national opposition against this project.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what are your plans right now? I mean, let’s be clear. Again, this is a mosque and cultural center two blocks away from Ground Zero. It’s the site of the old Burlington Coat Factory. It had been vacant for nine years. The Landmarks committee said this is fine for you to do. Do you plan simply to move forward?
DAISY KHAN: Currently, we are assessing everything. The first thing that we’ve done, just this past Tuesday, we met with a group of 9/11 families. Our organization, American Society for Muslim Advancement; my husband’s organization, Imam Feisal’s organization, Cordoba Initiative—in fact, that’s the organization that has taken this idea forward—you know, we have been in the bridge-building business for a long time, about a decade. And we have—our mandate has been to build bridges between Muslims and people of other religions and cultures. And we’ve just met with a 9/11 family group.
We want to have a dialogue. We have discovered that there really has not been a national dialogue since 9/11 and that what this project has done is sparked a lot of—a lot of, you know, discussion that should have been had after 9/11. We went to war. We never had a proper discussion. So when we met with the 9/11 families, you know, we were administering to their pain, but many of them came around. So I think that we need to have a bigger conversation about religion in America, about Islam in America, about 9/11 and its impact on America, and also its impact on history in general, because I think this is a historical moment. And we have to seize on it, and we have to be open about it. So our focus right now is going to be to talk to as many people as we can.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to bring in Stephan Salisbury, a cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer who has been covering this lack of conversation in America, and also that this is not an isolated incident, what has occurred here in New York in relationship to this cultural center. Could you talk about what some of you’ve been writing about?
STEPHAN SALISBURY: Thanks for having me.
Yeah, the New York controversy—of course, there are two other mosque projects in New York City that are also attracting serious opposition. One was—has been stalled in Staten Island, and another in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn is very controversial, very far away from Ground Zero. But around the country, outside of New York City, similar controversies are popping up all over the place. They’re from Georgia to Tennessee, Wisconsin, Illinois, California. And you see the same kinds of complaints that are—and fears, really, that are exemplified at the Cordoba House initiative in other areas, I think most prominently in Tennessee, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where there’s a very nasty fight over a mosque, which became the subject of attacks from Republican congressional primary candidates and a gubernatorial candidate, who were essentially saying that this mosque that was proposed in Murfreesboro was being proposed by radicals. It was the candidate for governor, said that—went so far as to say that Islam is not a religion, it’s a cult, it shouldn’t be afforded First Amendment rights, it’s an ideology. So these are the kinds of ideas that are framing debates around the country.
In California, which—there’s a small controversy in a town, rural town near San Diego, Temecula, where there’s opposition to a mosque that’s needed by an expanding or growing population of Muslim residents in that area, and one Baptist preacher, who’s a leader of the opposition, has cited it as a—mosques as hotbeds for radical activity, that there are cells embedded in them, there are cells embedded in mosques all over the country. So these are the kinds of ideas that are resonating at the grassroots level, not just a New York, but really coast to coast.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me go back to Daisy Khan for a minute. A very interesting response from the state, from Governor Paterson. They apparently are saying they would give you free state land if you’d simply move away from where you want to build this. And this is Governor Paterson’s quote. He said, "Frankly, if the sponsors were looking for property anywhere at a distance that would be such that it would accommodate a better feeling among the people who are frustrated, I would look into trying to provide them with the state property they would need." What is your response to that?
DAISY KHAN: Well, we were—you know, we had just begun our dialogue with the 9/11 families. And what we—and I’d like to go back to what the earlier discussion was before I answer this question—is that there is a very strong link that people have, those people who oppose this project, and they cannot delink the religion of Islam from the actions of the extremists. And so, an entire Muslim community is being labeled as if they belong to the extremist ideologies. And this is deeply troubling to us, because this is why I think that, you know, in small pockets of the country we see these kinds of resistances, because people just can’t delink the religion of Islam. So I think that even if we relocated, we still need to have a conversation, because I don’t think that, just by us relocating, that that mindset, that stereotyping, is going to go away.
AMY GOODMAN: I agree with that, but are you taking him up on his offer? Are you considering leaving?
DAISY KHAN: Well, we will meet with anybody to discuss any option. But right now, that is not our first option. First we want to talk to people, who matter, people who are in the neighborhood, people who have a stake in what we’re doing. And we keep all our options open. However, right now, we’re not prepared to immediately, you know, change our plans.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’m wondering also, I mean, whether the opponents of this—of your center do not realize the impact that this must be having in the Muslim world, in terms of feeding into the perspective and the viewpoints of the extremists that the United States is hostile to Islam, in general, and whether this is not actually making matters worse, in terms of developing conflicts between the Muslim world and the United States.
DAISY KHAN: This project is also meant to be a counter to extremist ideologies, because it will be led by people who are from the mainstream Muslim community, and the center will be a platform to amplify their voices. And our voices get drowned out by the voices of the extremists. And I would say, if this project was defeated, then it would be really a win for the extremists, and it would be a loss for all of us who are trying to counter the extremists and, you know, who stand for peace, and peace where it matters the most. There’s too much at stake. And that is what happened when we spoke to the 9/11 families, and we explained to them there’s too much at stake. Many of them came around after we explained how this, you know, would have a significant impact on not only how, you know, America is perceived abroad, but really all it would be doing is strengthening the hand of the extremists, who are the very people that we’re all trying to stand against.
AMY GOODMAN: Daisy Khan, are you afraid for yourself, for your family, for Muslims here in New York?
DAISY KHAN: I’m afraid for my country.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Stephan Salisbury, I’d like to ask you about the willingness of so many Republican politicians to jump on this bandwagon—Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and others—and their use of this issue and what you’re seeing around the country?
STEPHAN SALISBURY: Well, I think that it’s an election year, and many Republicans see themselves threatened, in some ways, by the kind of maturing grassroots activism that the tea party movement has evolved into. And within that movement, a lot of these controversies around the country involve tea party activists, including the mosque. The Cordoba House initiative in Manhattan was initially inflamed by some folks who were leaders within the tea party movement. And you see that—you see that in California. You see it in Tennessee, where opposition to a mosque in Murfreesboro is being actively promoted by the Wilson County tea party.
So, here in Philadelphia, there have been a number of tea party rallies, and I’ve talked to people who have turned out. They’ve been actually small. This is not a hotbed of tea party activism here in the city. But I’ve talked to many people at these rallies, and one theme that runs through them is a belief that Muslims cannot be American. You see that—and they cite these weird notions of Islamic law, that Muslims hold allegiance to Islamic law and that somehow this Islamic law is different from, you know, Jewish law or the canonical law. And in Oklahoma, for instance, the Oklahoma legislature has passed a measure that will place on the ballot for voters of Oklahoma to decide the question of whether or not Oklahoma should ban the application of Sharia law, Islamic law, in Oklahoma. This is kind of weird, in my view.
So, yeah, it’s a pressure from this very, very far-right grassroots movement, which is, I think, particularly threatening to certain elements of the Republican Party, that has led to people like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich to try to siphon off some of the political energy and to perhaps stoke their own political ambitions.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both very much for joining us. It’s interesting. In New York, in the heated race for governor between Andrew Cuomo and Rick Lazio, a former congressman, it is the home page of the former Congressman Rick Lazio’s website. It is his major issue, is opposing this mosque. Stephan Salisbury with the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Daisy Khan, I want to thank you very much for being with us, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement.
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