Inconsistency the Hobgoblin of Hitchens's Mind

Christopher Hitchens, who is nothing if not inconsistent, today backs the construction of the GZM. And he thinks he has some ripping ideas for doing so--because Abe Foxman is a git; because Cordoba, Spain is a fabulous place; and because, sadly, while he sorta gets the jihad, he has never gotten Islam or religion in general, for that matter:

...Where to start with this part-pathetic and part-sinister appeal to demagogy? To begin with, it borrows straight from the playbook of Muslim cultural blackmail. Claim that something is "offensive," and it is as if the assertion itself has automatically become an argument. You are even allowed to admit, as does Foxman, that the ground for taking offence is "irrational and bigoted." But, hey -- why think when you can just feel? The supposed "feelings" of the 9/11 relatives have already deprived us all of the opportunity to see the real-time footage of the attacks. Now extra privileges have to be awarded to an instant opinion-poll majority. Not only that, the President is urged to use his high office to decide questions of religious architecture!

Nothing could be more foreign to the spirit and letter of the First Amendment or the principle of the "wall of separation." In his incoherent statement, Foxman made the suggestion that it might be all right if the Cordoba House was built "a mile away." He appears to be unaware that an old building at the site is already housing overflow from the nearby Masjid al-Farah mosque.

I notice that even the choice of the name Cordoba has offended some Christian opponents of the scheme. This wonderful city in Andalusia, after the Muslim conquest of southern Spain, was indeed one of the centres of the lost Islamic caliphate that today's jihadists have sworn in blood to restore. And after the Catholic reconquista, it was also one of the places purged of all Arab and Jewish influence by the founders of the Inquisition. But in the interval between these two imperialisms it was also the site of an astonishing cultural synthesis, best associated with the names of Averroes ibn-Rushd and Moses Maimonides. Here was a flourishing of philosophy and medicine and architecture that saw the recovery of the works of Aristotle. We need not automatically assume the good faith of those who have borrowed this noble name for a project in Lower Manhattan. One would want assurances about the transparency of its funding and the content of its educational programs. But the way to respond to such overtures is by critical scrutiny and engagement, not cheap appeals to parochialism, victimology and unreason.

Where to start deconstructing this edifice of bollocks? How about here: Abe Foxman, being a doctrinaire lefty, gets plenty of stuff wrong. He is bang on, though, when it comes to building a mosque on this highly symbolic, highly redolent site. You see, Hitch, it isn't about "demagogery" or "feelings"; it's about optics. And the optics of building an Islamic house of worship there are incredibly bad. Even if the forces backing construction have the best of intentions--and, so far, that's a matter of debate--the optics projected to the Muslim world, especially to those given to triumphalist dreams, will show an infidel superpower in decline, one that, with concerted effort, might be toppled as easily and breezily as those two emblematic towers.

As for the city of Cordoba--it may, indeed, be a gorgeous place, a wonderful tourist spot, and,  back in the day, a hub of "interfaith" harmony. But such harmony as existed did so under the auspices of Islam and on suffrence of the Muslim ruler, who in this case happened to be benelovent, but in many other cases, not so much.  Would Hitch like to live thusly, under the rule of Muslims, and hope that his overlords will be Cordoban rather than, say, Riyadhian? I think not. Even Maimonides had a problem with it, famously pegging Islam's founder as "Ha-meshugah"--the madman, being forced to relocate when his part of the Muslim-ruled world was no longer congenial to Jews (to colossaly understate it), and lamenting Jewry's travails living in abject dhimmitude under Islam, rightly seeing it as roundabout means of forced conversion. These are his actual words:

…the continuous persecutions will cause many to drift away from our faith, to have misgivings, or to go astray, because they witnessed our feebleness, and noted the triumph of our adversaries and their dominion over us...

That should hit home, to Hitch and the rest of us, that nothing--and I mean nothing--has changed since Maimonides' time.

Update: In a joint essay, scholars Andrew Bostom and Bat Ye-or handily dispatch the myth of Al-Andalus's kid glove treatment of lesser peoples:

...By the end of the eighth century, the rulers of North Africa and of Andalusia had introduced Malikism, one of the most rigorous schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and subsequently repressed the other Muslim schools of law. Three quarters of a century ago, at a time when political correctness was not dominating historical publication and discourse, Evariste Lévi-Provençal, the pre-eminent scholar of Andalusia, wrote: "The Muslim Andalusian state thus appears from its earliest origins as the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in a blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation."

The humiliating status imposed on the dhimmis and the confiscation of their land provoked many revolts, punished by massacres, as in Toledo (761, 784-86, 797). After another Toledan revolt in 806, seven hundred inhabitants were executed. Insurrections erupted in Saragossa from 781 to 881, Cordova (805), Merida (805-813, 828 and the following year, and later in 868), and yet again in Toledo (811-819); the insurgents were crucified, as prescribed in Qur'an 5:33*.

The revolt in Cordova of 818 was crushed by three days of massacres and pillage, with 300 notables crucified and 20 000 families expelled. Feuding was endemic in the Andalusian cities between the different sectors of the population: Arab and Berber colonizers, Iberian Muslim converts (Muwalladun) and Christian dhimmis (Mozarabs). There were rarely periods of peace in the Amirate of Cordova (756-912), nor later.

Al-Andalus represented the land of jihad par excellence...