READING AMERICA WRONG

Writing in National Review in July of 2009, Angelo Codevilla said traditional distinctions between Republicans and Democrats were being overshadowed by the split between the “Court party,” which he defined as “the well-connected…who see themselves as potters of the great American clay,” and the “Country party, the many more who are tired of being treated as clay.”

According to the Court party, those Americans — more than two thirds of us, according to the polls — who oppose construction of a mosque near Ground Zero are motivated chiefly by religious bigotry.

“The last legal hurdle to the Islamic center near the site of the World Trade Center has been removed, but ignorance, bigotry and politics are more formidable obstacles,” wrote Time magazine deputy international editor Bobby Ghosh.

Norah O’Donnell of MSNBC likened opponents of the mosque to the 9/11 terrorists.

Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq  drove 13,000 miles across America during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with the intention of attending services at 30 mosques within those 30 days. They didn’t encounter any of the religious bigotry the Court party says is endemic.

“Ali and Tariq were embraced nearly everywhere they went, from a Confederate souvenir shop in Georgia, to the streets of Las Vegas, Nevada, to the hills of North Dakota where the nation’s first mosque was constructed in 1929,” CNN reported Sept. 10.

Mr. Tariq, 23, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, told CNN the reception they received “really made America feel like home to me in a way that I’ve never felt before.”

And if it’s religious bigotry that fuels opposition to the Ground Zero mosque, why do most Muslims worldwide object to its construction?

That was the startling finding of a poll by Elaph, which John Hopkins Prof. Fouad Ajami described as “the most respected electronic daily in the Arab world.”  According to that poll, 58 percent of Muslims worldwide oppose construction of the Ground Zero mosque.

Mr. Ajami noted in an article in the Wall Street Journal Monday (9/20) that the first Arab immigrants to America in the 1880s described Ellis Island as “bayt-al hurriya,” the house of freedom.  Evidently to most, it still is.

“Many Muslims suspect that the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation, to thumb our noses at the infidel,” said the leaders of the Muslim Canadian Congress.  “We believe the proposal has been made in bad faith.”

Imam Feisal Rauf, the leading figure behind the Ground Zero mosque, indicated in a 2006 interview (he didn’t know was being recorded) that he sees the project as a step toward establishment of an Islamic state in North America.  He has refused to describe the terror group Hamas as a terrorist organization, but he has said the U.S. was an “accessory” to the 9/11 attacks. 

Imam Rauf apparently also is a slumlord.  Union City, New Jersey is suing him for failing to address tenant complaints in two buildings he owns there.

“He’s a terrible landlord who is unresponsive to the tenants in his building,” a spokesman for the mayor told the Newark Star Ledger.

The Court party evidently didn’t do much checking before declaring Imam Rauf to be a moderate who wants to “build bridges.”

The ordinary Americans they call religious bigots have a more sophisticated understanding of Islam than do the liberal elites in journalism and politics.  Ordinary Americans — as Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq can attest — understand most Muslims are not our enemies, and don’t treat them as such.  It’s the self-styled cognoscenti whose understanding of Islam is cartoonish, who have difficulty distinguishing between genuinely moderate Muslims, and those who are our enemies.

The Court party drips with disdain for less privileged countrymen.  According to New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker and other such worthies, disapproval of President Obama is motivated chiefly by racism.  It’s their opinion Americans didn’t notice Barack Obama was black until he proposed Obamacare.

In a democracy, it is rarely good politics to describe those upon whose votes your power depends as religious bigots and racists. 

The Court party has a lot to say now, because it holds most political offices, and controls most media organizations.  The Country party will speak Nov. 2.