Ross Douthat, thankfully rejecting the incoherent "stealth Jihad" narrative of Andy McCarthy, says just because Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf isn't an extremist doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize him:
[M]aking these kind of distinctions doesn't require us to suspend all judgment where would-be Islamic moderates are concerned. Instead, dialogue needs to coexist with pressure: Figures like Ramadan and now Rauf should be held to a high standard by their non-Muslim interlocutors, and their forays into more dubious territory should be greeted with swift pushback, rather than simply being accepted as a necessary part of the moderate Muslim package. (This is particularly true because Westerners have a long record of seeing what they want to see in self-proclaimed Islamic reformers, from the Ayatollah Khomeini down to Anwar Al Awlaki, and failing to recognize extremism when it’s staring them in the face.) And what’s troubling about some of the liberal reaction to the Cordoba Initiative controversy is that it seems to regard this kind of pressure as illegitimate and dangerous in and of itself — as though the First Amendment protects the right of Rauf and Co. to build their mosque and cultural center, but not the right of critics to scrutinize Rauf’s moderate bona fides, parse some of his more disturbing comments, and raise doubts about the benefits (to American Islam as well as to America) of having him set up shop as an arbiter of Muslim-Western dialogue in what used to be the shadow of the World Trade Center.
I'll reiterate what I said about law enforcement and Muslim communities themselves being better arbiters of who is extreme and who isn't than cable news hosts and self-styled Web vigilantes. But I think there's an important distinction to be made between Rauf's religious beliefs and his political views. Faced with overwhelming evidence that Rauf is a moderate with a record of condemning extremism and urging reconciliation between the U.S. and Muslims abroad, conservatives have latched onto statements like Rauf saying the U.S. has "more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida" because of the 1990s-era Iraq sanctions to argue, in Rick Santorum's words, that he is "a jihadist." No one's saying Rauf is above criticism. Conservatives came out the gate calling the man a terrorist sympathizer, liberals pointing out that he isn't is a fairly modest compliment.
Aside from being empirically defensible, Rauf's statement about Iraq sanctions is not a religious statement. It is a political statement. Rauf could have said this while being an extremist, he could have said it while scarfing down a half smoke covered in chili and cheese and washing it down with a Red Stripe. If Douthat wants to read Rauf's books and have a theological argument about Islam, or argue with Rauf about his views of American foreign policy, that's fine. But what conservatives are doing at this point is not looking for evidence of religious extremism but policing Rauf's political views for things they find objectionable and then presenting them as evidence of religious extremism.
These are two completely different things, but conservatives need to conflate them because "man with lefty views on American foreign policy tries to build community center in Lower Manhattan" isn't as objectionable as "Islamic extremist builds mosque at Ground Zero." Agreeing with the Republican platform shouldn't be a prerequisite for building an Islamic community center without the threat of widespread, organized political opposition. We don't hold any other kind of religious leaders to those kinds of standards.
