主题：纽约伊斯兰中心的故事 -- 红绿

最近美国大报小章热闹无比的为一个还没落成的建筑争论不休。政治家，未来的政治人物，大到总统小到平民，都有激情的参与到这个伟大的事业里面来。主张无外两种：这事忑不靠谱，在911原址上面建伊斯兰活动中心？这不是打我们美国人的脸么？另外一派也不是热情拥护，就是说这个没什么的，而且可以反应美国的自由和包容，持这个观点的偏左的，自由派一点的政治家居多。和大多时候一样，美国又不可避免的分裂成两块。

如此高调的为一件并不太重大的事情在各种媒体上争论，为的什么呢？

我的看法，不外以下几点：

1。为即将到来和正在进行的选战提供话题，保守派的到时攻击民主党的有了武器，而在不同的选区，民主党的又可以说保守派的后进。反正大家都有的说。

2。继续煽动国内对伊斯兰的仇恨。这也是可以理解的，爱国小青年们一般对时事容易‘私人化’的去理解。

3。硬币的另一面也不要忘了，那就是政客们会以此契机，展示伟大的胸怀，和对伊斯兰的亲近。具体的表现就如同奥巴马对此事的反应，要表达的是我们美国人对伊斯兰是有容忍力的。当然这是虚的，实质还是要对伊斯兰世界实施进攻性的政策。但民主党人士里的新自由主义人士比新保守主义人士高明就在于此，同样的实质它们表面伪装的更有礼貌，更加克制。这也是为什么老毛早就说共和党比较好打交道的原因。乔姆斯基同志也犀利的指出，其实克灵顿（奥巴马的模型）和布什在外交政策的实质上是没有什么区别的，只是表现的外在形式不一样，一个比较直接而鲁莽（对一部分美国很有吸引力），一个比较礼貌和克制（吸引另一部分美国人和一些国际人士）。因此，这个事情就成了一箭三雕，挑起民意的矛盾，对伊斯兰的仇恨，还有政客们务虚的麻痹伊斯兰世界。所以美国的宣传机器才会对此事津津乐道。

玩手段，玩宣传这门手艺，各国还得好好学习英美两国阿。

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/26islamic.html?hp

差不多和我想的一样。纽约时报不愧为美国人民的喉舌阿:

Looking at Islamic Center Debate, World Sees U.S.

By THANASSIS CAMBANIS

For more than two decades, Abdelhamid Shaari has been lobbying a succession of governments in Milan for permission to build a mosque for his congregants — any mosque at all, in any location.

For now, he leads Friday Prayer in a stadium normally used for rock concerts. When sites were proposed for mosques in Padua and Bologna, Italy, a few years ago, opponents from the anti-immigrant Northern League paraded pigs around them. The projects were canceled.

In that light, the furor over the precise location of Park51, the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, looks to Mr. Shaari like something to aspire to. “At least in America,” Mr. Shaari said, “there's a debate.”

Across the world, the bruising struggle over an Islamic center near ground zero has elicited some unexpected reactions.

For many in Europe, where much more bitter struggles have taken place over bans on facial veils in France and minarets in Switzerland, America’s fight over Park51 seems small fry, essentially a zoning spat in a culture war.

But others, especially in countries with nothing similar to the constitutional separation of church and state, find it puzzling that there is any controversy at all. In most Muslim nations, the state not only determines where mosques are built, but what the clerics inside can say.

The one constant expressed, regardless of geography, is that even though many in the United States have framed the future of the community center as a pivotal referendum on the core issues of religion, tolerance and free speech, those outside its borders see the debate as a confirmation of their pre-existing feelings about the country, whether good or bad.

“America hates Islam,” said Mohaimen Jabar, the owner of a clothes shop in Baghdad, Iraq.

“If America loved us, it would help the Palestinians and stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said. “It would stop Iran and Israel from distorting the image of Islam.”

Interestingly, leaders in Iran, Afghanistan and even occasionally prickly rivals like China and Russia — both of which have their own tensions in some of their heavily Muslim regions — have refrained from making much of the Park51 debate.

China’s state-run news media has used the story to elaborate on the need for a secular state strong enough to police extremism, a matter near and dear to its own ideology.

American diplomats are selling the controversy as Exhibit A in the case for America as a bastion of free debate and religious tolerance.

But “the harmonious image of the melting pot, of the ability to integrate all immigrant ethnicities is tottering dangerously,” Federico Rampini wrote in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

That was echoed by Pierre Rousselin, a French columnist writing in Le Figaro: “America is discovering that its Constitution and liberal principles don’t protect her from the debates that the practice of Islam stirs up in our countries.”

In Thailand, which has contended with its own Islamic insurgency, an editorial in The Nation worried aloud that America’s handling of the cultural center would affect relations worldwide between Muslims and non-Muslims. “If the era of former President George W. Bush tells us anything, it is that how the U.S. deals with the Muslim world affects us all,” the editorial said.

Far more common, however, was a sort of shrug of the shoulders from clerics and observers accustomed to far more unpleasant debates. While extremists have presented the controversy as proof of American hostility toward Islam, some religious leaders have taken quite a different stance, arguing against placing the center close to ground zero.

Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Grande Mosquée of Paris and one of the most senior Islamic clerics in France, told France-Soir: “There are symbolic places that awaken memories whether you mean to or not. And it isn’t good to awaken memories.”

A senior cleric at Egypt’s Al Azhar, the closest equivalent in the Sunni Islamic world to the Vatican, said that building at the proposed location sounded like bad judgment on the part of American Muslims.

“It will create a permanent link between Islam and 9/11,” said Abdel Moety Bayoumi, a member of the Islamic Research Institute at Al Azhar. “Why should we put ourselves and Islam in a position of blame?”

That is not to say that the language in the United States has not agitated some observers, like Aziz Tarek, who wrote on the Saudi Web site Watan that America was in the grip of “intolerance and racism.”

He referred to Newt Gingrich’s widely reported statement that there should not be a new mosque in Lower Manhattan until Saudi Arabia allows construction of churches or synagogues.

“How can they compare building a mosque in N.Y. with building whatever in Mecca?” Mr. Tarek wrote. “I thought they viewed themselves better than that country of Saudi Arabia with its many human rights violations, as they love to put it.”

One Cambridge University researcher, writing in the Palestinian daily Al Ayyam, said Muslims could win their case for a center near ground zero in a court of law, only to end up losing in the court of public opinion.

“Provoking the other side will eventually create public opinion that will undermine the very laws that the Muslims evoke today,” wrote the researcher, Khaled al-Haroub, adding that many Muslim states do not tolerate Christian or Jewish houses of worship: “We keep increasing our religious demands vis-à-vis the West, while refusing to meet even a few of the demands made by religious minorities living among us.”

Paradoxically, the public reaction has not been heated in Lebanon, a country with 18 recognized religious sects where Muslims and Christians have a long history of occasionally violent coexistence.

If the mosque were built, many Lebanese commentators said, it would increase the influence of the ideal of the secular state. Many Lebanese, however, seemed more interested that Miss U.S.A., Rima Fakih, a Lebanese-American, had suggested that Park51 seek another location, than in the debate itself.

“Let’s be honest, it is kind of weird to build it there,” said Samer Ghandour, 33. “But the U.S. is also incredibly polarized and does not tolerate Islam.”

Mahmoud Haddad, a history professor at the University of Balamand in Lebanon, said that “the Muslim community should take the high moral and political ground” and agree to move the center, even though it has every right to build near ground zero.

“They should show they are more concerned about the general good of all Americans,” said Mr. Haddad, who studied and taught in the United States for two decades. “American society refuses to accept Muslims, even of the Westernized type, and consider them as a potential risk at best.”

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the project leader, has been speaking about his Cordoba Initiative on a two-week tour of the Persian Gulf sponsored by the State Department, although he has gingerly avoided discussing the Park51 location.

“What’s happening in America is very healthy,” said Muhammad Al-Zekri, a Bahraini anthropologist, after spending an evening with the imam.

The United States, he said, was still assimilating historical influences, including Islam, into its inaccurate self-image as a solely Judeo-Christian nation. The construction of Park51, Mr. Zekri believes, will help shape that.

“We pray for the people of New York, for peace,” Mr. Zekri said solemnly. “And if it matters, we apologize for what those people have done on 9/11.”

Thanassis Cambanis reported from Bahrain. Reporting was contributed by Anthony Shadid from Baghdad, Maa de la Baume from Paris, Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem, Nada Bakri from Lebanon, Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome, Mona El-Naggar from Cairo and Thomas Fuller from Thailand. Li Bibo contributed research from Beijing.

上youtube找找Ground zero mosque的video，好多人都有些歇斯底里了，他们意识到问题的严重性。一些保守派（Rush Limbaugh为代表）觉得，不管建不建清真寺，美国都输了：要是建了，极端穆斯林就觉得胜利了（将建的纽约清真寺叫Cordoba House，Cordoba是穆斯林攻占西班牙后的首都的名字，这个清真寺的名字有点想绿化美国的味道）；要是不让建，那就违反了宗教自由的宪法修正案，而且还给极端穆斯林口实，可以传播仇恨、美国人不接纳穆斯林。

伊斯兰在take 欧美“内部普世”的advantage，在欧洲、美国快速移民、繁殖。很多保守人士已经非常紧张，Mark Steyn的《America Alone》那本书就很有代表性，觉得欧洲伊斯兰化几十年就要成为现实。

为了平衡，最好看看 华盛顿邮报，这个是偏右派的。Foxnews就更加趋向保守，看看也可以了解保守派的想法。

Limbaugh 可以认为是‘保守’派里比较极端的角色，和fox有一拼。这些电台主持人一般都是片激进的，不然就不能引起大家的注意。平常的美国人应该说害怕是不会的，只是偏保守一点的觉得这个事情有点莫名其妙，不合时宜（它们的第一感觉是对的）。

整个操作的妙处就在这里，事情本身很可能就是一个setup（看看提这个mosque的imam现在还在用国务院的钱旅行去中东就略知一二了，正常的有头脑的imam不会去提这样耸人听闻的建议的，所以他本身就是一枚棋子），挑出事后，媒体一广播，然后保守党极端分子比如金里奇，佩林等就跳出来一顿咆哮，煽风点火后，左派头头开始反击，矛盾表面化，下面虾兵蟹将开始吵，最后群情激愤，人民群众也在媒体的滚动播出下参与进来。

要得结果正如你说的，也是如我说的，要点在于，国内激愤煽动一部分的仇恨，化之为力量，为‘国防’服务。同时它们要对外展示的是美国的‘自由’，纽约时报里面就提了‘only in america'。美国以外的国际分子们必然也是抱这个观点。当然对中期选举，民主党也是尽量搅混水，希望中间派能归顺它们。

所以整个事情可能没有真正要到改变美国心态的地步。只是一个有计划的插曲。

最大一些。保守派的反应是什么样，我也知道，但这里也要分清‘保守派’其实里面有很多细分，有老派的保守主义，新保守主义等等，它们的反应也是不一样的。

fox基本上就是比较好预测的了，必然是各种招数都使出来的攻击这个活动。

虽然不少民主党人支持这个清真寺，但挡不住民意，70％的美国人反对这个清真寺（建清真寺可以，但最好选个别的地方），好多民主党人也反对这个清真寺，比如参议院多数派领袖、内华达州民主党参议院Harry Reid。很多预测显示，这次11月的中期选举，民主党必败，有疑问的是败多败少的问题。

Close to 70 Percent Oppose Ground Zero Mosque

Reid breaks with Obama, comes out against Ground Zero mosque

我也每周(天)看看几个columnist和editorial的文章。比较喜欢 David Brooks, Roger Cohan。Herbert、Friedman 和 Paul Krugman 的可以看看，不过不是很支持他们的观点。

它并不重要，是它作为一个话题的力量。民主党人士，我也说了不是真情赞同这个事情本身（更多是不反对，如果谁热情欢迎此事，基本是政治自杀，too naive），而是想表现出一副普世的架势。它们想要赢得的是中间派的一些人。这对于本来就处于下游的民主党算是一个话题，一个可能的稻草。

不知道我说的清楚没有。

我觉得这个清真寺问题让民主党失分了（不仅仅党内分裂，拿不出很好的对策来，除了“宗教自由”这个普世老套），民众也开始对他们的“普世”价值的怀疑，反而保守派在捍卫美国的价值，可能会赢得一些中间派的选民。

民主党是试图把它当一个可能的稻草，而且两党嘛，总要有对立阿，既然总统同志都说话了，一些自由人士（注意，其实这次声音更大，更多的是保守人士，民主党里面发言的人相对要少）自然也要叫嚷一番，无效的话当然这帮发炎的就扯乎，没发言的就推托，避而不谈。

我不是说民主党一定能赢得支持。

纽约我去过，在零区附近建清真寺确实不妥。美国ZF可以表面大度，台面下则连劝带吓把事情顶回去。现在这样，各方都惟恐它不建，可见私利当头，都不把国家利益当回事了。

这不单是奥巴马的陈水扁化，也是整个“共-民党”的夏洛克化，堕落化。“国将不国”，可以用在这里。

这让我想起去年多伦多的“垃圾工人大罢工”，本来我要写一篇《垃圾超限战》专说此事的。现在简单说：垃圾工人罢工，是市ZF鼓励的。罢工计划从周一开始，上周五下班时，市ZF的各级小头头们就下来收市政工人手里的各类工作机械和车辆的钥匙，美其名曰干部自己顶上去，实际是确保周一工人无法上班，所有人只能跟着工会去罢工。你一帮肥佬领导，拆开能打几棵钉？

垃圾工人罢工，市ZF有什么好处？省钱。罢工其间不发工资，罢工结束后堆积的垃圾山靠加班清除，工人急于回家睡觉，不会磨洋工，干得快。最后算下来，去掉加班费，市ZF还省了很大一笔，有市议会议员要求公开这个收支情况，到底是赔是赚？市府赚了应该全分给市民补偿。市府百般推诿，议员估计应该有千万加币盈余（附近的伦敦市------不是英国的那个------几个月前刚罢完，老实承认是省了预算了）。

至于垃圾当道数以月计，市民的惨状，好像极左派（新民主党）的市长和一班领导都不大CARE。工会最后也拿到好处了，这对立的两面，双赢。

纽约清真寺问题，是个“垃圾门”的放大版。表面对立的共和党-民主党，也双赢。骨子里对立的美国主流JY和穆斯林激进派，还是双赢。真输的，只有911遗属，沉默的美国老百姓和温和派穆斯林。

中间选民不得不选择一个党来依靠？

也是犹太人。让不让造的这些老犹们私下里说一下就能定下的。

尽管老犹们没有冲在前台，但这事儿和他们在暗地里地撺掇脱不了干系。

现在造出这个话题为什么呢？

1.宗教和解？

2.刺激美国人的神经，激化美国国内的种群矛盾？

真要有好心求和解不会挑ground zero这么个刺激人的地方，风险大而没有必要。

那就是要挑拨了，为了让伊斯兰成为比华尔街更大的靶子，然后老犹们可以躲过一劫？

不过这么做确实比较歹毒，犹太人的确能够作出来。