The NYT Turns Against New Yorkers

The New York Times is really quite fed up with New Yorkers. It polled a bunch of them to find out how they felt about a multi-storey mosque popping up in the Ground Zero neighbourhood, and when the poll didn't go the way the Gray Lady thought it should, it proceeded to castigate the naughty in a spiteful editorial. Here's my favourite excerpt:

As the site of America's bloodiest terrorist attack, New York had a great chance to lead by example. Too bad other places are ahead of us. Muslims hold daily prayer services in a chapel in the Pentagon, a place also hallowed by 9/11 dead. The country often has had the wisdom to choose graciousness and reconciliation over triumphalism, as is plain from the many monuments to Confederate soldiers in northern states, including the battlefield at Gettysburg.

The country often has had that wisdom, but how is it "triumphalist" to abjure this construction? And for goodness sake, what has it--or the jihad, which last time I checked, was still all systems go--to do with the American Civil War? Why is the paper determined to remain blind to the triumphalism of the triumphalists who want to erect a large triumphalist edifice? Why isn't it questioning their wisdom? Their graciousness? How dare the Times' bien pensants turn on regular Americans--who know what's fitting, and who realize the elites are trying sneak something past them so they can feel good about themselves--and refuse to even acknowledge the egregious lack of "wisdom" and "graciousness" being displayed by Iman Rauf and Co.

Only one thing for the paper to do, I guess: elect another, more cooperative people.

Update: You may not have caught this, because it was on al Jazeera TV. But here's MEMRI's clip of A-J's recent interview with the imam:

Feisal Abdul Rauf: "The Cordoba Initiative is an initiative to improve relations between the Islamic nation and the Western world and the non-Islamic religions. The Cordoba House, within the framework of the Cordoba projects, began before 9/11.

"I have been in the U.S. for 45 years, and I felt that there is a need for a cultural center, with an agenda that differs from what goes on in the mosques. Here in the U.S., we need to establish an Islamic-American community. Of course, we knew that [the choice of a site] near Ground Zero would make the place well known. This is what we expected, but we did not anticipate this negative reaction, with such violence. First of all, this is not a mosque. It is a community center."

Interviewer: "A center for the [Islamic] community?"

Feisal Abdul Rauf: "Generally speaking, yes. Secondly, it is not at Ground Zero. It is two blocks from there. 'Ground Zero Mosque' is not the name of the place.

"There is widespread ignorance about Islam in the U.S. One of our goals is to make people understand what Islam is, and who the Muslims are. Islam is a religion that loves tolerance and peace, and the people who carried out [9/11] were not... That action was not an Islamic action.

"One of our goals in the future is to make people understand what Islam is and who the Muslims are."

Yes, because if Rauf doesn't 'splain it to them, they might take it into their heads that Islam is a religion that embraces violence as one means of conquering and dominating the globe--"jihad is the way, sharia is the goal"--instead of "understanding" that it's an innocuous faith chock full of unicorns and kittens.