The Park51 project was known as Cordoba House
Within political arguments, it is vital to understand the far-reaching roots that exist in the background of complex issues. In this case, it includes distinguishing that the term "war on terror" is not synonymous with "war on Islam." In fact, if we make it a war on Islam, we not only abandon the principles of freedom and tolerance that America stands for, but we faultily deduce that Islam inherently supports terrorism, which is like concluding all Catholics are innately pedophiles.

Despite nefarious post-9/11 connotations, the word "Islam" comes from the Arabic root "salaam" meaning peace. Peace, among certain other universal virtues such as compassion and tolerance, is a central religious imperative that Cordoba House intends to showcase. Yet sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose Cordoba House's initiative, according to a CNN poll. The sensitive nature of the site has evoked a deluge of emotionally-charged responses that equate the terror of 9/11 with Islam, something Muslim novelist Kamran Pasha deems natural "because the murderers themselves that day did." Even so, the vast majority of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims condemn the death cult of violent extremism that uses the word "jihad" (meaning "righteous struggle") to justify the killing of innocent people.

Cordoba House—renamed Park51 in hopes of throwing off some heat—has repeatedly denounced terrorism in the most unequivocal terms and is employing a metaphysical version of jihad by working to counteract the terrorists who have hijacked the term. The media frenzy surrounding plans to build the mosque/center near the World Trade Center (WTC) site has permeated our society, causing heated arguments from local hip-hop radio stations to suburban supermarket lines. Debate especially proliferated after Obama joined the fray in a speech celebrating the beginning of Ramadan where he offered two seemingly obvious, yet somehow controversial statements: 1) "Muslims have the same rights to practice their religion as everyone else in the country." And 2) "Al Qaeda's cause is not Islam-it is a gross distortion of Islam."

It is undeniable that 9/11 was a Muslim tragedy too. Over fifty Muslims died in the WTC. For many protestors this detail doesn't register, along with the fact that there are already two other mosques in the neighborhood where the proposed mosque/center is to be built, or that this same area used to be called "Little Syria" because of its high population of Arab immigrants, or that Christian churches exist in every Arabic country except Saudi Arabia. Also relevant is that it was a Muslim street vendor who alerted the police in the recent Times Square bombing attempt, and that "Muslims are disproportionately more likely to be victims of terrorism, and whereas Muslims constitute about 22 percent of the world's population, close to half of all terror victims are Muslims" (according to a fact sheet at Denver Art Museum's The Cell).

Critics have made slanderous, even laughable, claims that the initiative's founder, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is linked to terrorist organizations and that he aims to replace the constitution with Shariah law, but for refutation, one needn't look farther than his U.S. State Department-funded trip to the Persian Gulf this week where he is part of a U.S. program to promote interfaith tolerance.

Cordoba House/Park51's Battle

Cordoba House/Park51's harshest criticisms are coming from two fundamentalist corners: the Islamophobic spewage of America's far right (often representing Christian Fundamentalism) and extremist Islamic groups who view the founders as infidel-loving apostates and without doubt new targets for assassination. A New York Times piece quotes Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies saying that "extreme anti-Muslim views in the United States ironically mirror a central tenet of extreme Islamists: "That the world is divided into two camps, and they're irreconcilable, and Muslims have to choose which side they're on."

A minefield of criticisms has materialized for the founders of Cordoba House, who are being vilified by ignorant Islamophobes while at the same time being denounced as hypocritical apostates by the extremists of the Muslim far right. UCI Middle East historian and journalist Mark LeVine commented in a phone interview that moderate Muslims are frequently finding themselves in the difficult position of being asked to explain extremism to a world in which certain audiences faultily "take explanation for justification." Analyzing historical backdrop and political landscape is crucial when grappling with salient issues like this one. "There exists a deep-seeded and often unacknowledged reality among people who don't want to hear the explanation," said LeVine, "because it somehow involves guilt or culpability of some sort. It forces us to ask what our own role is in this mess."

The Repercussions of Recent Media Coverage

Anti-mosque protest in Temecula, CA: (photo Mike Blake, Reuters)Plans to build mosques are meeting fierce opposition, not only in NYC, but across America. A New York Times article published in July listed countless embittered protests to new mosques being built across the US, in Temecula, CA., Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to mention only a few. This information, along with racist slurs such as Former Tea Party Chairman Williams' reference to Allah as a "monkey-god", have unfortunately made their way into the media in the Middle East.

Experts have suggested this anti-Muslim sentiment is creating more of an "us vs. them dynamic" that deepens the rift that terrorist groups like Al Qaeda need in order to survive. "Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda's claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence," states a New York Times piece.

Muslim historian and author Tamim Ansary agreed with this perspective when he stated in an email exchange with me that the protestors "might as well be working hand-in-glove with Islamic extremists." He expressed concern that opposition to the mosque/center is creating "a rallying point for extremist political Islamists" who will seize the opportunity to negate the moderate Muslims.

However, whereas international press coverage of anti-Islamic protest may compliment the Taliban's rhetoric, whether it is actually demoralizing moderate Muslims is dubious. Mark LeVine said of the protestors, "I don't think they're silencing moderate Muslim voices. On the contrary, they are encouraging moderate Muslim voices to speak up, because if this guy (Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf) is silenced, they don't have a chance." Reza Aslan, scholar and best-selling author, echoed LeVine adding that "counter-protests have without exception been larger."

Our Battle? Our Role?

Most Americans are capable of distinguishing Christian extremism from mainstream Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodox denominations. Another New York Times op-ed added, "The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn't mean he's in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers." The piece highlighted the distinction that the founders of Cordoba House—Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan—are Sufi Muslims (the same sect of Islam the Taliban suicide-bombed for their progressive ideals on July 2, 2010, killing 42 people at a Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan).

After being inundated with banter surrounding this initiative for weeks now, the imperative question still remains: Who is our enemy? "Our enemy is a small group of radical, sociopathic, and extremely dangerous individuals who happen to call themselves Muslims" said Kamran Pasha in a recent Huffington Post article.

Cordoba House/Park51 has continually stated that their purpose is to be a moderate Muslim voice that counteracts the terrorism that has tarnished Islam's reputation. Therefore the battle has clearly become one of moderation vs. extremism. We find the discourse contrasts fundamentalist worldviews with perspectives that reconcile with modernity-intolerance versus tolerance. The protesters are loud, but "they have very little support," said scholar and author Reza Aslan by phone. "The vast majority of Americans are much more wedded to the rights and privileges that they hold dear in this country than to any sort of anti-Islamic spirit."

In his book No god but God, Aslan claimed that the world's current problems with terrorism are not actually an East vs. West dilemma. He says now there is "a civil war raging within Islam" where the jihadists have declared war not only on the West, but on their moderate Muslim brothers. He goes on to explain that events like 9/11 were, by Osama bin Ladin's own admission, a strategic attempt to provoke the U.S. into an exaggerated response that would galvanize Muslims to join their extremist cause, urging Muslims to, in the words of George W. Bush "choose sides."

Saudi Arabian student Sufyan Alkhalaf agreed with this view animatedly, telling me, "This is the real issue, the moderates against the extremists, and I hope the world is going to figure it out." LeVine—who frequently writes as a commentator for Al Jazeera English, said something analogous in a phone interview: "There is a conflict in Islam between those who want to create a positive open identity in dialogue with the rest of the world and those who prefer a closed hostile identity based on conflict and often violence."

America's "war on terror" marks our enemy as extremists who perpetuate violence in the name of religion. Therefore our allies are the worlds' moderates whose worldview is marked by a desire for peace and universal compassion, not whose war-cry sounds like the call to prayer. "Cordoba House is exactly the voice of moderate Islam that needs to be highlighted at a time when Muslim extremists and anti-Muslim bigots both want Islam to be seen as a religion of hate and death. They are in fact our most effective ally against these monsters that seek to destroy both America and mainstream Islam," says author Kamran Pasha on his blog-site.

Raising a mosque and cultural center with a message of tolerance and peace near Ground Zero is a gutsy move because of the nature of the site, yet it has drawn a crucial international spotlight onto voices of moderation. We must seek to amplify these voices instead of oppose them, because the moderate Muslims are the most important and influential soldiers in the fight against violent extremism. "Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists," said William Dalrymble in a recent New York Times op-ed.

To defame an entire religion in the name of fighting terrorism is erroneous and dangerous. The mosque is not a "13 story tall middle finger aimed at 911 victims", as Tea Party Express Chairman Mark Williams remarked in an initial diatribe before resigning his post. On the contrary, it is a middle finger to Al Qaeda and to militant Muslim extremists.

In rallying with our moderate Muslim counterparts, we can constitute an important part of defeating the roots of terrorism. NYT columnist Maureen Dowd said it perfectly when she concluded, "By now you have to be willfully blind not to know that the imam in charge of the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is the moderate Muslim we have allegedly been yearning for."

Jessica Proett is a research associate with the Levantine Cultural Center.