OPINION: Mosque challenges us to accept diversity in an insecure age

Kavitha Rajagopalan is the author of "Muslims of Metropolis: The Stories of Three Immigrant Families in the West."

It's time for a little nuance in our public conversation about Muslims in New York and the West. After a poll showing that more than half of New Yorkers oppose a plan to locate a mosque and Muslim cultural center a few blocks from Ground Zero, and Gov. David Paterson's offer to engineer a land swap to move the center, and president Barack Obama's statement of support for the Ground Zero location on Friday, taking a step back is probably in order.

Muslims today come from all corners of the world and follow dozens of different philosophies. To suggest that Feisal Abdul Rauf - imam of lower Manhattan's Masjid Al-Farah mosque and chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, the organization behind the proposed new mosque - in any way shares a faith, culture or vision with Osama Bin Laden is simply, patently untrue.

No religious community defers to its militant extremists. The violent militant philosophy of al-Qaida reflects the true diversity and complexity of the Islamic faith as much as, say, the Ku Klux Klan reflects Christianity. Moderate Muslims all over the world have decried al-Qaida's destructive acts in the United States and abroad, where thousands of Muslims have suffered and died in attacks by militants. Between 2004 and 2008, only 15 percent of al-Qaida victims were Western - the overwhelming majority have been Muslim. Al-Qaida does not speak for these people.

Park51, the name of the Cordoba Initiative's controversial project, professes to speak for moderate Muslims interested in developing and being a part of the lower Manhattan community. The 13-story building would have a prayer space but also an auditorium, exhibit halls, a pool, a gym, bookstores and a restaurant. It's won the unanimous support of Community Board 1 and the vehement support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. One might say that Park51 would be as much a mosque as the YMCA is a church.

The controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque" - an inaccurate if ever-so-much catchier moniker than the "Lower Manhattan Interfaith Community and Cultural Center Sponsored by Moderate Muslim Public Dialogue Organization" - shows how imperative it is that we learn to get comfortable with diversity in an insecure age.

We know that some Muslim-Americans sympathize with, support and participate in militant Islamist groups. But many, many more Muslim Americans do not. In fact, only 6 percent of violent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 1950 were committed by Islamist militants, according to a CNN study conducted in January. That same study pointed out that radicalization is so much less in the United States than other Western countries precisely because Muslim-Americans police and combat radical militancy in their own communities so effectively.

Organizations like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations promote dialogue between American Muslims and non-Muslims, providing important avenues for civic engagement among young Muslim-Americans, as well as combating what they call "Islamophobia." Some popular Muslim leaders and clerics seek to "turn the other cheek," elevating Muslim identity by staying out of the fray and doing good works, but to others, speaking out is not only their right, but their responsibility as Americans.

Dalia Mahmoud, chair of the New York City MPAC, says that reclaiming the microphone from al-Qaida and other militant groups sometimes seems a Sisyphean feat.

Her organization and other groups seeking to represent the true political views of Muslim-Americans have issued dozens of statements condemning terror. Just last month, they released a YouTube video of nine of Islam's most popular and widely respected imams to decry terror and extremism of any sort. Yet the false notion persists that Muslims have never denounced terror. In fact, crowds have gathered to protest mosques all over the country on these grounds, not just near Ground Zero.

Rather than debating whether to tolerate Muslims in our midst, we must shift this conversation toward finding more effective ways of identifying and fighting terrorism. Rather than asking Muslim-Americans to act as ambassadors to the rest of America from their communities, we must accept that Muslim-Americans are a part of our broader American community. We must find ways to partner with them to combat militancy and radicalization. This seems to be just what Rauf would like to do.

The mosque controversy also raises questions about religious freedom in a diverse society. There is no consensus about what religious freedom looks like. At one extreme, countries like Turkey and France claim to protect it by banning expressions of religiosity from public spaces - in essence violating religious freedoms across the board.

In the United States, communities of different faiths are free to build schools, community centers and houses of worship, and some have even been able to modify the public school curriculum or develop public policy that reflects their particular values. If you look at popular opinion, it almost seems that freedom to be extremely, even fanatically, religious is reserved for everyone but Muslims in the United States. But as many constitutional experts have pointed out, freedom of religion is not a democratically determined policy, but a guaranteed right.

Perhaps what the Park51 project is really asking us to grapple with is how to best commemorate 9/11. Where exactly is Ground Zero? Is it a physical location - the gaping pit where the Twin Towers used to stand? The footprint and any of the surrounding blocks that were damaged by the collapsing towers? Lower Manhattan, Manhattan in general, the skyline of Manhattan?

Or is it a place in time, a pivotal moment - like Pearl Harbor, the moon landing or the fall of the Berlin Wall - that shifted the way we see the world and conduct politics in it? Or is it a mentality - an us-versus-them, a question of what American identity is and how to protect it in a hostile world?

Rauf and his current congregation have been a part of the lower Manhattan community for more than a decade. If they are anything, they are New Yorkers. If they are seeking to "plant a flag" on the Ground Zero site, it is the flag of a diverse New York.

In simple demographic terms, "Ground Zero" is actually a Ground Infinity of faiths, languages spoken, cuisines eaten and skin tones. As they do throughout the city, New Yorkers of every religious persuasion and in every degree of religiosity - often religiously anti-religious - live and work together in the blocks immediately adjacent to the former Twin Towers.

We are not by any means a tolerant society. Many of us are openly intolerant of others of us, and yet still we live and work together. If Rauf is seeking to move lower Manhattan beyond simple tolerance and into actual understanding, his efforts should not only be tolerated, they should be applauded.