Ground Zero

I do not follow Sarah Palin on Twitter. I follow enough people who do follow her that every tweet of hers is retweeted to me at least twice. This afternoon, the former Vice Presidential candidate tweeted the following in succession:

Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate

Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real

Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing

I’m not going to talk about Palin’s continuing use of the non-word “refudiate”—that’s a topic for a different discussion—but instead the meaning behind the three tweets. The problem I have lies in the idea that a mosque near the World Trade Center site is an act of provocation. Provocation of what, exactly?

There is no logical way to look at this as anything other than a gross generalization of all American Muslims as peers of the terrorists. What Palin is doing here is associating every Muslim in this country with Al-Queda. This is no different, no different, no different at all from Christians who blame Jews for killing Jesus.

The argument being made against the construction of the mosque is about the feelings of non-Muslim Americans. These feelings are borne of perception, the perception that all Muslims are alike. Inherent in the opposition is the idea that Muslims in this country are somewhat less than American. Palin says that the idea of a mosque near Ground Zero stabs her in the heart. This idea requires the belief that Muslims were not hurt and horrified by the attacks of September 11, 2001. Ignorant is the only word I can use to describe the thought that Muslims in America and around the world felt anything different from everyone else at what happened on that day.

In Palin’s first tweet on the subject, she asks, “…doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland?” The heartland? What about the rest of America? What about New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Pacific Coast? Shoot, Alaska, unless American geography has changed in the last three seconds, is nowhere near America’s heartland. Then again, we all know what is meant when people mention the “heartland,” don’t we?

What is happening here is that Palin and the rest of the opposition are fighting back against something they view as threatening the sanctity of the pure White Christian man’s America. They see America as a Christian nation when, in fact, it is not. What Palin and the rest of the opposition to the mosque are saying is that it is fine for Muslims to have a place to worship as long as it’s not in this specific spot. You cannot do this and legitimately hold on the claim of religious freedom—and the United States of America is a nation of religious freedom. That means this country belongs to no one religion, and that no religion should take a back seat any other.

I cannot separate the words of the opposition from the idea that what these people really want is for Muslims in America to be low key in their religion. What people seem to want is a modified Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy when it comes to Islam. No, it’s not quite as bad as imprisoning Japanese-Americans, Italian-Americans, and German-Americans in internment camps during World War II. But, it is the same principle. And that’s bad enough.