Süleyman the Magnificent going to the Mosque, 16th century Venetian School
I struggled to form an opinion about the Mosque at the Ground Zero debate. But than I drew an analogy with the new synagogue construction and my mental scale immediately tipped in favor of banning all new construction, for both Synagogues and Mosques alike and not exclusively at the Ground Zero.
There is no shortage of places of worship for the Jews. In fact there are thousands of empty Shules in the post Holocaust and the post communist Gulag Europe. There are thousands of empty Batey Knesset in the Middles East, left in heist after the Sephardic Jews fled to Israel or Paris. Long time ago there were thriving Jewish communities in Mecca and Medina before someone there unwisely helped to script the Islam. But even here in America there thousands of underused Reform and Conservative synagogues suffering the membership decline, much like their neighboring Catholic parishes. There are hundreds of synagogues left in the American urban centers, after the Jews moved into suburbs. Yet there is a high demand for these structures. Often a representative of an aggressive neo-chassidic movement would target these buildings for a takeover. The magnificent front facades provide an exceptional fundraising platform or even an outright lucrative real estate morsel. The takeover follows the familiar script, the oligarchs and the outside well-wishers are brought in to smooth the transition and the transaction or even bully or bribe the remnants of the dying congregations. These oligarchs don’t pray and as a rule don’t live close to the buildings. They don’t represent and don’t care about the decades of hope and the legacy behind the walls of these orphaned structures. In the unholy alliance between the Rabbis and the oligarchs, the real remnants of local Jewish communities play the last fiddle, they are the pawns and the props. Similarly the new Synagogue construction is frequently financed by the outside money and the big letter naming rights, visible from afar. Often a Rabbi today sees his main clientèle outside of his own congregation.
Now to the Mosques analogy. The American people welcome all worshipers but they instinctively dislike the houses of worship financed by the exotic, tipple derivative financing. America is built on the hard work protestant values and the religious freedom opposed to the oversees monarchical dictatorship. The recent statistic shows that the Amish built sixteen new distinct communities just last year, compete with the modest churches. But not surprisingly the Americans feel uneasy about the representatives of the most oppressive monarchy in the world, the Saudi princelings financing the monumental Mosque next to the gaping wound of the land of the free (also made in the Saudi dunes)? Just like the Jewish oligarchs, the Saudis don’t live near or worship in these buildings. Perhaps occasionally the Sheiks pass through the Wall St. on the way to visit their quants for hire. The negative reaction to the proposed Mosque at the Ground Zero has nothing to do with the Islamophobia. In fact even Jews must feel solidarity with the poor Islāmic worshipers spun on the oiled Chant Roulette by the Imams. The Jewish communities are all too familiar with the destructive power of these foreign invasions.
Perhaps the international oligarchy is the real enemy of the free nation under one God, Jews, Christians and Muslim alike. After the decimation of the American middle class and the working poor, Jews and Muslims must stand together in the struggle against the unholy alliance between the clergy, the new super rich and the old pretending to be rich. The Lumpenproletariat of the world unite! No more new Mosques or Synagogues except for the people and by the people!
Reproductions of the image licensed courtesy of Picture Library of the Royal Academy of Arts.
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To that last paragraph I can only say, amein.