Jeffrey Goldberg has uncovered a moving tribute given by Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf at a memorial service for slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl at B'nai Jeshurun in Manhattan:
We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.
If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl.
And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.
It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.
To this I would add another excerpt from Rauf's speech:
We intercede with You that You place us on the path of righteousness and direct us towards actions done in fulfillment of the commandment taught by Your Great Prophets and Messengers Moses, the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, and Muhammad, which is to love our fellow humans as we love ourselves. Help us O Lord, in courage and commitment, in reducing ethnic and religious hatred, strife and violence, to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.
This is the man Newt Gingrich accused of being a "radical Islamist," building the community center as a symbol of Islamic "supremacy."
This is more than just a ecumenical statement. It is absolutely relevant, as Goldberg notes, that such a statement -- even more so than Rauf's record of aiding American law enforcement against terrorism or his public-relations work among Muslims internationally on behalf of the United States -- makes him a lethal target for the very radicals Bill Kristol, Liz Cheney, and almost the entire staff of National Review have accused him of being friendly with, because it makes him an apostate. When Goldberg wrote that Osama bin Laden would bomb the Cordoba Initiative, he was employing a rhetorical exaggeration to express the diametric opposition of Rauf's philosophy to that of al-Qaeda. But this statement? This stirring act of courage and humanity? Al-Qaeda and their allies would see this as a crime for which summary execution would be the only appropriate response.
Think of the contrast between the way conservatives high-fived each other over the keyboard courage displayed during "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," and their response to Rauf, whose own patriotism and intellectual challenge to those who would do terrible things in the name of Islam was ignored in favor of using his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy to smear him as a terrorist sympathizer. This whole incident has been an absolute disgrace, an indictment of American tribalism, craven political manipulation, and outright bigotry. Rauf's detractors had little actual evidence on which to base their accusations, but they didn't need much, because we let our fearful imaginations fill in the blanks.
Caught flat-footed by the outrage, the mainstream media merely recycled the poison spat by conservative conspiracy theorists into the American bloodstream, and allowed the fevered rantings of right-wing activists and demagogues to define the issue. There was barely enough space to breathe in between this incident and the firing of Shirley Sherrod, but the lesson of the Sherrod incident was as quickly forgotten as a goldfish forgets the castle it circles in the middle of its bowl.
