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United Methodists address mosque conflicts

 
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2:00 P.M. EST Aug. 19, 2010

Students peer out through windows covered with anti-Muslim graffiti while neighbors of various faiths gather to help clean up the vandalism at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Nashville, Tenn. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
Students peer out through windows covered with anti-Muslim graffiti while neighbors of various faiths gather to help clean up the vandalism at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Nashville, Tenn. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. View in Photo Gallery

Each year, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Rev. Myrna Bethke has visited the World Trade Center site to remember her brother who perished in the towers that day.

The United Methodist pastor does not blame Islam for those attacks or her family’s loss. She associates the faith with the Muslims she has joined for interfaith Thanksgiving services and the mosque that welcomes visits from her confirmation students.

“This, to me, is Islam,” she said, “not the people who got together and decided to hijack the religion as they hijacked the planes.”

Bethke, pastor of Red Bank United Methodist Church in New Jersey, also supports the Islamic cultural center planned near ground zero. She is a member of “September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows,” a group of the bereaved that announced its support for the project in May.

However, others who lost loved ones that day vehemently oppose the proposal, and the issue has become a source of political debate on cable news and the campaign trail.

The controversy has not been limited to the proposed center in lower Manhattan. In recent months, confrontations have broken out over the construction or expansion of mosques across the United States — far from New York’s hallowed ground. These include protests in Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Sheboygan, Wis.; and Temecula, Calif.

Called to be neighbors

The United Methodist Book of Resolutions calls for “better relationships between Christians and Muslims on the basis of informed understanding, critical appreciation and balanced perspective of one another’s basic beliefs.”

Rifaat Bedawi (left) and Imam Abdulrahman Yusuf prepare to help volunteers paint over anti-Muslim graffiti at the Al-Farooq Mosque. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
Rifaat Bedawi (left) and Imam Abdulrahman Yusuf prepare to help volunteers paint over anti-Muslim graffiti at the Al-Farooq Mosque. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
View in Photo Gallery

Another resolution calls for United Methodists to denounce discrimination against Muslims and “counter stereotypical and bigoted statements made against Muslims and Islam, Arabs and Arabic culture.”

When it comes to the issue of allowing Muslims to build mosques, supporting their right to worship is not just in line with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, said the Rev. Stephen J. Sidorak Jr., the top executive at the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns. It’s also part of Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, which as the parable of the Good Samaritan shows, can include those of different religions.

“If we want to repair the breach that opened up between some Christians and some Muslims on Sept. 11, 2001, if we want to redeem the tragic events of that day, we must — as Isaiah said — come now and reason together,” Sidorak said. “That’s clearly the foundation of any interreligious work.”

Welcoming local mosques also may help national security. A two-year Duke University study on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that mosques might actually be a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam.

“Our findings are that healthy, robust Muslim communities can be a bulwark against radicalization,” said David Schanzer, an associate professor at Duke and one of the study’s authors. “We don’t know exactly why individuals radicalize. But most terrorism studies show that individuals who go down that path feel alienated. They don’t feel that they fit into (the) wider society in which they live.”

A strong Muslim community that is part of the mainstream can offer young Muslims the support they need without them turning to radical clerics online, he said.

Competing moral claims

The proposed Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan won the unanimous approval of New York City zoning authorities. Plans call for the building to contain a fitness center, swimming pool, space for art exhibitions and an auditorium for public programs as well as a place for Muslim prayer. Organizers say their goal is to promote tolerance and community cohesion.

However, the ethical case for locating an Islamic center near ground zero is more complex.

Some critics have likened the debate surrounding the Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan to the acrimony that followed when Carmelite nuns moved into a convent near the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. After a public outcry, Pope John Paul II ordered the nuns to move in 1993.

A cross made from remnants of the World Trade Center stands inside the site. Photo courtesy of chathamshooter.
A cross made from remnants of the World Trade Center stands inside the site. Photo courtesy of chathamshooter.

Taking a similar stand, some argue that it is insensitive to those who lost loved ones for Islamic center organizers to build near the World Trade Center site.

“When I look over there and see a mosque, it’s going to hurt,” C. Lee Hanson, whose son, Peter, was killed in the attacks, said at a New York City public hearing, The New York Times reported. “Build it someplace else.”

Bethke sympathized with those who oppose the Lower Manhattan center.

“You want to be sensitive to people’s feelings,” she said, “but at the same time remember that we do have religious freedom in this country.”

The Rev. Stephen Bauman, senior minister of Christ United Methodist Church in Manhattan, has worked with Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, the religious leader who is spearheading the project. The pastor has no doubt the center is exactly what Rauf and others purport it to be.

“I think the church ought to be about supporting it,” Bauman said. “It ought to be expressing a voice of compassion and hospitality.”

Long road ahead

Addressing the mosque disputes and other issues in United Methodist-Muslim relations is going to take more than a press release of solidarity or conference resolution, interfaith advocates said.

Bethke and other United Methodist leaders urge fellow Christians to learn more about Islam and get to know their Muslim neighbors. When you know someone well, she said, you won’t judge that person by the worst acts committed in his religion’s name.

The Rev. Omar Al-Rikabi has been watching the angry responses to mosques around the country with increasing concern. Al-Rikabi, the United Methodist campus minister at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, is the son of a Muslim father from Iraq and a United Methodist mother from Texas.

“As pastors and laity we need to do the long, difficult work of countering the false fear, incorrect history and bad theology that is out there,” he said. “It is seeping into too many of our churches, sermons and small group studies. We need to begin by looking at the start of the story: Genesis One: God created humanity in his image. …Every human is of sacred worth and loved through the work of Christ on the cross.”

*Hahn is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter.

News contact: Heather Hahn, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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