Hamza Yusuf Hanson: Amid Mosque Dispute, Muslims Can Look to Irish Catholics for Hope
[Hamza Yusuf Hanson is an American Muslim scholar and cofounder of Zaytuna College, which opened last month in Berkeley, Calif.]
The controversy over the planned mosque near ground zero has devolved into an uncivil war between sense and sensibility. It’s a definitive dialectic between reason and emotion. Sense says: “Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda believe in a Manichean world of good versus evil, Islam versus America, but we know better. To repudiate that view we must assert that aspect of our national character that we cherish and they hate: religious pluralism."...
We’ve seen this tragedy-and-triumph saga many times before in American history. Notably, the mid-19th century struggle of Irish-Catholics to be fully accepted as Americans should give today’s Muslims hope that their efforts to weather the storms of controversy and mistrust will bear fruit.
My great, great grandfather, Michael O’Hanson, fled the impending potato famine of Ireland and arrived in America in the early 1840s with his bride, Bridget. They headed for Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, and a mecca for Irish-Catholic immigrants then.
They didn’t get a warm welcome to America, and instead found themselves smack in the middle of the Nativist anti-Irish-Catholic riots of 1844, which left scores of people dead and two beautiful Catholic churches destroyed. The riots were prompted by false rumors that the Irish-Catholics wanted the Bible removed from public schools to ensure Protestant doctrine would not be taught to their children....
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The controversy over the planned mosque near ground zero has devolved into an uncivil war between sense and sensibility. It’s a definitive dialectic between reason and emotion. Sense says: “Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda believe in a Manichean world of good versus evil, Islam versus America, but we know better. To repudiate that view we must assert that aspect of our national character that we cherish and they hate: religious pluralism."...
We’ve seen this tragedy-and-triumph saga many times before in American history. Notably, the mid-19th century struggle of Irish-Catholics to be fully accepted as Americans should give today’s Muslims hope that their efforts to weather the storms of controversy and mistrust will bear fruit.
My great, great grandfather, Michael O’Hanson, fled the impending potato famine of Ireland and arrived in America in the early 1840s with his bride, Bridget. They headed for Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, and a mecca for Irish-Catholic immigrants then.
They didn’t get a warm welcome to America, and instead found themselves smack in the middle of the Nativist anti-Irish-Catholic riots of 1844, which left scores of people dead and two beautiful Catholic churches destroyed. The riots were prompted by false rumors that the Irish-Catholics wanted the Bible removed from public schools to ensure Protestant doctrine would not be taught to their children....