Griper Blade: The Hate Americans Crowd

It's what they do. Faced with accusations of bigotry, the right always defend themselves by finding token members of the group they're attacking. They aren't racist; look, black teabaggers! They aren't homophobic; see? Here's an anti-equality gay. It's supposed to be proof that the problem isn't their prejudices, because even hated _insert group here_ buy into their unconvincing rationalizations for those prejudices.

And so it is with the right's jihad against mosques. It's not about anti-Islamic sentiment and paranoid wingnut fantasies, it's about the weak justifications for those sentiments and fantasies. As accusations of bigotry rise, the right finds Neda Bolourchi, a Muslim woman whose mother died on 9/11. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Bolourchi defends the position of the prejudiced -- that a Muslim community center in Manhattan should not be built. Not now, not ever.

[A] mosque near Ground Zero will not move this conversation forward. There were many mosques in the United States before Sept. 11; their mere existence did not bring cross-cultural understanding. The proposed center in New York may be heralded as a peace offering -- may genuinely seek to focus on "promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture," as its Web site declares -- but I fear that over time, it will cultivate a fundamentalist version of the Muslim faith, embracing those who share such beliefs and hating those who do not...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]