Opponents of the proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York City (Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, most prominently) have adduced the feelings of the 9/11 victims’ families as the primary reason why it should not be built several blocks from the site of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. But at the risk of appearing even more heartless than these aforementioned conservatives,wounded emotions are not the reason to be against this particular Islamic worship center. Rather, the psychological and geo-religious symbolism a mosque at Ground Zero would represent is the problem. As former Muslim Sam Solomon so accurately puts it:

[A] mosque, totally unlike a church or synagogue, is a “sign” and a “symbol” of the establishment of “authority”—both religious and political—not just a place of worship for its adherents. A mosque is the symbol of the establishment of an Islamic authority, and an announcement of the beginning of the “rightful restoration” of the land according to Islamic claims that the “whole world is a mosque,” and is echoed in Muhammad’s words, “the whole earth has been declared unto me a mosque.” Therefore it is a matter of “restoring” rather than “claiming” the land to Islam, as any land not in current submission is at virtual war with Islam, and must be brought “back” according to the Qur’anic version of history. This process of “bringing back” has a name, it is called “Islamisation...” and is implemented progressively though immigrating, segregating, gaining rights, and slowly asserting the supremacy of Islam politically, socially and even culturally. So, yes, the Ground Zero Mosque would be a beachhead—and an important one….

In early Islamic history, a number of prominent Muslim theologians declared that establishing Muslim garrisons in enemy territory is more pleasing to Allah than prayer and fasting. And according to Professor Brannon Wheeler’s paper “Martyrdom and Territorial Claims,” the famous medieval Islamic scholar al-Suyuti categorized martyrdom as not just including Muslims killed waging jihad, but those “those killed under a collapsed building.” Some two dozen Muslims were killed in the 9/11 attacks. How long will it be before the imams at the “Cordoba Mosque” are preaching khutbas (sermons) on the “martyrs” who lie under American soil just a few hundred feet away? (Cavalierly ignoring, of course, the fact that they were killed by co-religionists.) This would almost certainly further spur the phenomenon, well-known in Islamic history, that “as soon as a mosque became a regular sanctuary, it became an object of pious visits” (Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. “Masdjid). And what better way to cap off such a pilgrimage than with a visit to the luxurious Marmara Hotel, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, to take advantage of its “birth tourism suites” where foreign women can come to bear their little, newly-minted American citizens. (Since the Marmara is Turkish-owned, I doubt that many of the 15 $5k+ packages they’ve sold so far have gone to Mexican Catholics or Swedish Lutherans.) New York City already has over 100 mosques, so it’s not only absurd but insulting for Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama to accuse Cordoba Mosque opponents of bigotry and religious intolerance. Instead, perhaps we should be given some credit for recognizing an obvious salient of Islamic religio-political da`wah (proselytization) when we see it.