Neither A 9/11 Mosque Nor An Auschwitz Convent

Charles Krauthammer on the 9/11 Mosque:

Now look, nobody in America would object to the construction of an Islamic center -- however the question is: Why here? Why in this spot? This is a spot that was for hours bathed in the ashes of the Twin Towers and the thousands of innocents who died in it.

It's not just any other spot. It's sacred ground.

[This is] not to indict Islam. It's not to indict the vast majority of Muslims who were appalled by this event.

But let me give you -- in 1993, Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns who established a convent in Auschwitz to evacuate and to leave it.
And the reason is not because the Carmelites had any involvement in, of course, Auschwitz -- the Catholic Church was not the perpetrator -- but because it was sacred ground and [the convent] was inappropriate. It was seen as a provocation and extremely insensitive.

In this case - in the case of the Carmelites it was an act of goodwill. They prayed for the souls of those who died. I'm not sure of the goodwill of this imam [Feisal Abdul Rauf] who [when] asked if Hamas is a terrorist organization answered: I'm not a politician, it's a difficult issue.

William McGurn used this same comparison when he wrote in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, WTC Mosque, Meet the Auschwitz Nuns:

Let's remember what this means. By their own lights, the nuns believed they were doing only good. They may have had a legal title to be where they were. And it is likely that they never would have been forced to move by local authorities had they insisted on staying.

There's a lesson here. Even those who favor this new Islamic Center surely can appreciate why some American feelings are rubbed raw by the idea of a mosque at a place where Islamic terrorists killed more than 2,700 innocent people. If feelings in Auschwitz were raw after nearly half a century, it's not hard to see why they would remain raw at Ground Zero after less than a decade.

...Without doubt Pope John Paul II did not share the more malevolent interpretations attached to the presence of the Carmelites at Auschwitz. By asking the nuns to withdraw, he didn't concede them either. What he did was recognize that having the right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Instead, we have the curious situation where liberals are standing up for the mosque by insisting on pursuing the letter of the law.

Technorati Tag: 9/11 Mosque and Auschwitz.