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Michael Bloomberg, the wealthy Jewish mayor of New York City, and Feisal Abdul Rauf, an imam and Kuwaiti immigrant to the US, together remind us that Muslims are part of America and that Islam is not attacking the West.

Foreign Policy’s December issue carries its second annual list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers, as decided by the magazine’s editors.

Sharing the No. 11 spot, just behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are the mayor and the imam behind the Cordoba House Project, the multifaith Islamic center planned near “Ground Zero”, the place in New York City where the World Trade Center (WTC) towers once stood.

Critics have called Rauf’s vision an insult because Muslims led the attacks on the WTC on September 11, 2001.

Bloomberg supports the project as a way to heal the wounds of the tragedy.

Bloomberg and Rauf are two leaders of the post 9/11 world trying to ease conflict between the West and Islam.

Both are important figures fighting the stigma imposed upon Islam after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

In order to understand their roles, let us recall the debate over the plan to build Park 51, or Cordoba House, a Muslim community center located two blocks from Ground Zero.

The project’s opponents controversially dubbed it the “Ground Zero Mosque” and insisted that the plan was insensitive and a symbol of conquest.

It is easy to sympathize with the families of victims who see the proposed building as a monument that will recall the painful memories of 9/11 and Islam as the force behind the attackers.

But this is only true if we accept the charge that 9/11 was an attack on America by Islam.

Here lies the core of the problem: the notion that Islam itself is the attacker.

In fact, this is what the terrorists who claim they represent Islam want us to think.

This thought has led too many to believe that Samuel Huntington’s theory about the “clash of civilizations” is some kind of prophecy come true.

However, there are people who resist this notion and the mayor and the imam represent them.

They believe it was not Islam that attacked America. It was a small group of discontented people who said they represented Islam.

The terrorists realized that if we follow their line of reasoning, it would mean ultimate surrender to the forces of irrational radicalism.

Bloomberg’s action to defend the Cordoba initiative was really meaningful to this resistance.

As quoted by Foreign Policy, the Mayor said in defense of freedom of religion: “Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure ­­­— and there is no neighborhood in this city that is off-limits to God’s love and mercy.”

By defending the Cordoba initiative he recognized that Islam is part of America and is entitled to the same freedom as any other religious group.

The message he conveys is that Islam and the Muslims he knows in America are not Al Qaeda and terrorists but moderates like Feisal Abdul Rauf.

The imam has been working with the US State Department in promoting pluralistic and democratic Islam across the world.

The imam and the mayor present us with a choice: surrender to the logic endorsed by the terrorists who say they represent Islam, or reject such a shallow notion and accept that Islam has peaceful values we need to support and promote.

“Ninety-nine plus percent of Muslims all over the world, I assure you, absolutely, totally find extremism abhorrent,” Rauf said in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor.

“Let there be no mistake, Islam categorically rejects the killing of innocent people. Terrorists violate the sanctity of human life and corrupt the meaning of our faith. In no way they represent our religion. And we must not let them define us.”

In a world where pessimism about the possibilities of multicultural societies defines the early part of this century, Bloomberg and Rauf’s stance bring optimism back into the debate about the relationship between the state, religion and human rights.

Indonesia, as the largest democratic country in the world with a Muslim majority population, should affirm its moderate stance, especially since similar problems also arise in our country where religious minorities are denied access to basic human rights.

We are more Bloombergs and Raufs.
 

Gde Dwitya Arief is a graduate student at the Center of Religious and Cross Cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta .