Bird’s-Eye: While it’s almost irresistibly tempting to share the derision aroused by Palin’s tweet “Ground Zero mosque supporters, doesn’t it stab you in the heart as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls. refudiate.”… no, it is irresistible. Juan Cole demolishes her here in logic, and Tom the Dancing Bug here, in ‘toon. But once you look at the actual facts about the mosque there are two clear conclusions: this is a totally emotion-driven issue, and is being used by the right to whip up further Islamophobia.

* The Proposed Mosque Near Ground Zero The New Yorker

Ah, the “Ground Zero mosque.” Well, for a start, it won’t be at Ground Zero. It’ll be on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site (from which it will not be visible), in a neighborhood ajumble with restaurants, shops (electronics, porn, you name it), churches, office cubes, and the rest of the New York mishmash. Park51, as it is to be called, will have a large Islamic “prayer room,” which presumably qualifies as a mosque. But the rest of the building will be devoted to classrooms, an auditorium, galleries, a restaurant, a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001, and a swimming pool and gym. Its sponsors envision something like the 92nd Street Y—a Y.M.I.A., you might say, open to all, including persons of the C. and H. persuasions….

Pretty scary. Leading the pack of scaredy-cats, along with Palin, was her fellow Presidential mentionee Newt Gingrich, a leading intellectual light of the Republican Party. According to Gingrich, Park51 is “an assertion of Islamist triumphalism,” part of “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” Those who think it’s O.K. are “apologists for radical Islamist hypocrisy” who “argue that we have to allow the construction of this mosque in order to prove America’s commitment to religious liberty.” Gingrich argues for proving our devotion to religious liberty by taking it hostage: “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.”

* Mosque Building and Gay Marriage vs. Mob Rule by the Right Juan Cole Informed Comment

The decision of a US district court to strike down Proposition 8, the California referendum item that made gay marriage illegal after it had earlier been legalized by the state assembly, was a blow for individual rights over a tyranny of the majority. In its form, it resembles the decision of the New York authorities to allow a Muslim community center to be built near Ground Zero, which Sarah Palin and other prominent Republican Party bigots have decried as “insensitive.”

Both in the instance of gay marriage and of mosque-building, the American Right mounts opposition on grounds of majority ideas and feelings triumphing over individual rights. No one denies that Muslims have a first amendment right to build a mosque, and it is hard to see why straight people should have a right to get married (which brings substantial social and economic perquisites) but gay people should not.

The right wing argues that Muslims and gays should give up their rights in deference to the moral sensibilities and emotional sensitivities of the majority. This is called a ‘tyranny of the majority’ and it is an evil of which Thomas Jefferson ,James Madison and the other Founding Generation of Americans were well aware.

Note: Another great Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon, this one on Tyranny of the Majority can be seen here.

* ‘People Want Islam To Be The Boogieman‘ The Guardian

The battle over plans to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York is fuelling a surge in anti-Muslim protests across the US, including opposition to new Islamic centres from California to Georgia. Religious leaders and civil rights activists warn that a tide of Islamophobia that has swept the country since the destruction of the twin towers is being heightened by political exploitation of the New York dispute before nationwide elections and is increasingly bound up with hostility to immigrants and other forms of racism