How do you sling mean names and waste imaginative brain cells on a spirited developer who wants to open a center for tolerance in a part of Lower Manhattan that’s aching for business? How do you do it while subsidizing foreign dictators who practice a rigid version of the faith this developer wants to explain?
If you’re an American, you may have a deep-seated, or a shrill, answer to this riddle. Live with it. The wrongness of claiming to uphold the Constitution while trying to stall religious expression is too full for me to even honor. But here’s the bigger riddle:
If you could get a decent job working on new machines, or working on ways to make the human body a more efficient machine, would you fire off bile at people who pray on rugs?
If so, what’s the difference between an American who opposes a mosque at a site of memories and an American who opposes the future?
I pray that most of the vitriol against Muslims and the Cordoba House can quiet with the growth of decent jobs that snatch the treasure from petro-dictators. In future columns, I’ll talk about how those jobs can grow.
Alec Appelbaum
Alec Appelbaum writes about real estate, true-green business and architecture for the New York Times, Fast Company, New York magazine and others. He has also contributed to Architectural Record, the Architect’s Newspaper, Dwell and the Forum For Urban Design and ...
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