Politically Incorrect

45 Park Place stands two blocks north of Ground Zero. On the morning of September 11, 2001, it was a Burlington Coat Factory. That morning, as the staff sat around the basement, eating breakfast, preparing to open, an airplane's landing gear crashed through two of the store's upper floors. The store never reopened, and the building remained vacant for the next eight years.

In July, however, the building was bought by a group of Muslims led by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a moderate Sufi cleric known for "preaching tolerance and interfaith understanding" ("Muslim Prayers and Renewal Near Ground Zero"). Imam Feisal and his followers see this as the first step in creating an Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center memorial site--a concrete symbol of reconciliation for New York City and the United States.

By all accounts, Imam Feisal is sincere in his commitment to interfaith dialogue and mending rifts between Muslims and other Americans. Prominent rabbis and other members of Jewish and Christian organizations--as well as the FBI--speak highly of the Imam and celebrate his efforts.

And still. . .

At the risk of sounding terribly intolerant, we found ourselves upset by this news. The first word that popped into our minds was "colonization." We know this is irrational--in the most literal sense of that word: There is no reason for these feelings; they are completely the product of gut-level emotion. We know--we KNOW--that most Muslims are closer in attitude to Imam Feisal than to Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden. We personally know many members of the Islamic faith and have had nothing but positive--or, at worst, neutral--encounters with them. And a white, American male complaining about Muslims "colonizing" America--even if only in the privacy of his own knee-jerk thoughts. . . . Well, let's just say that somewhere a kettle is screaming about accused blackness.

It wasn't a Muslim who referred to the Solipsist as "a Jew" last week.

Is it possible we are not as liberal as we thought?

We wish Imam Feisal luck in his endeavors. We hope that he and like-minded figures of all social and religious backgrounds succeed in getting us back to--and beyond--the relatively tolerant mindset that prevailed on September 10, 2001. Because if our own reaction is any indication, he will need all the luck he can get.