Brotherhood in America

On page A14 of today's New York Times, there's a large photograph of five attractive teenaged boys and girls, sitting on a front porch (stoop, I suppose they call it) in Queens. They're laughing and joking together. They look like they might be your own kids, or maybe those of your neighbors next door.

The NYT hasn't pictured them because they've been accused of mugging someone; nor are they there because they're promising young rocket scientists. They are newsworthy only because they're all Muslims, and they're just killing time while somewhat hungry, waiting for sunset. They are observing Ramadan.

As one of the girls comments, discussing what fasting for Ramadan means to her:

It's all about being mad mellow. It's cool, too -- it lets you find out who you are, too. You have more time to look at yourself.

Pretty scary, huh?

I remark on this small story only because, in today's Seattle Times and in newspapers across the land, one finds the latest diatribe from columnist Charles Krauthammer. He continues to be aghast at the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

Krauthammer, to give credit where due, seems not to claim that Muslims have no legal right to build the mosque, only that to do so would be both "insensitive" and "provocative." The Japanese wouldn't "plant their flag" at Pearl Harbor, he conjectures, even though few Japanese alive today have any personal responsibility for the 1941 bombing. Why can't the Muslims be equally sensitive?

But the Japanese -- those who live under the Japanese flag -- are not Americans. The Japanese flag represents a foreign nation. A mosque does not represent a foreign people. Those five kids laughing in the photo are just as American as Mr. Krauthammer.

To say that Muslim symbols or places of worship are not welcome near Ground Zero, because the attack on the World Trade Center was the work of Muslim extremist fanatics, is like saying that Catholic churches should not be built in California because of the cruelties committed by Spanish conquistadores in the name of Catholicism.

I suspect that Krauthammer sees those five Muslin teenagers as young people entitled to the legal protections of citizenship, but I suspect also that he does not see them as "American" in the same sense as Dick, Jane and Baby Sally, who live next door to him in Happytown, USA. He can't believe that those kids are equally appalled by what happened on 9-11, that they may see little connection between the god to whom they pray and for whom they fast and the "god" that animated Osama bin Laden's hatred of America.

Whether a mosque is built in Lower Manhatten is symbolic. Krauthammer and I agree on that. Do we recognize the estimated 7 million Muslims who live in the United States as our fellow citizens? Do we accept them as every bit as "American" as Dick and Jane? Do we acknowledge that their religion is just one more thread in the complexly woven fabric of American religious life? Or do we hold them -- including those happy, devout youngsters in the photo -- at arms' length, acting polite, perhaps, but viewing them in our hearts as nothing more than local representatives of a small group of diabolical Middle East fanatics?