If It's Good Enough for Auschwitz Nuns, It's Good Enough for NYC Muslims

Concerned Christians continue their crusade against Muslims who want to build the Cordoba House, a Muslim community center (with a pool, basketball court and a suitable place to pray) two blocks from the World Trade Center, the large site that contains Ground Zero where the Twin Towers stood. Such a community center is deemed offensive simply because it is for Muslims, even though there is a sizable Muslim American population in that part of Manhattan, and they really need the space.

The concerned Christians' latest argument is that New York should be like Auschwitz.

The association is already troubling. But it gets worse.

Auschwitz in Poland was the site of a massive complex of concentration camps (today called Auschwitz-Birkenau) run by the Nazis during World War II. Over a million people were executed there as part of a plan to exterminate Jews, Roma/Sinti, homosexuals and other unwanted populations.

In 1984, a group of Carmelite nuns converted a theater (used by the Nazis as part of the complex) into a convent. That same building was where the Nazis stored Zyklon-B, the poison that killed hundreds of thousands of inmates in gas chambers on the other side of the complex. These nuns planned to pray for the dead, including more than a few Polish Catholics, some of whom were murdered near the convent. But Jewish groups protested, and the Pope ordered the nuns to move.

According to people who hate the idea of a Muslim chapel in a Muslim community center located so near to Ground Zero, New York Muslims should be just like these Auschwitz nuns.

I think they are right.

First, the new Muslim outreach center should stay in its present location until 2019. When the Pope asked the nuns to leave by 1989, they stayed until 1993. They occupied the premises for nine years.

Second, when the Muslims do move, they should relocate closer to Ground Zero, not further from it, and be right across the street instead of two blocks away. The Carmelite nuns moved across the street from the concentration camp grounds. Apparently, that made everybody happy.

Third, they should place a large moon and crescent on Ground Zero. When the nuns were still in the old theater, they erected a 26-foot high cross on complex property. When they moved, they left the cross on the site. It is still there.

For the record, I admire the nuns for setting up the convent in the first place. Their intentions were good. But if they really wanted to help, they should have set up a 26-foot Star of David as well as their cross, indicating true solidarity with the Jewish community, and invited Jewish people to pray with them. Like the planned Cordoba House, their building should have been a place for outreach.

I likewise admire the Jewish people who demanded the nuns move across the street. The large cross standing alone on the grounds of the concentration camp complex is hugely problematic all by itself, never mind the nuns.

Hurray for Rabbi Avraham Weiss, who pulled a mini-Stonewall by getting into a fistfight with renovators at the convent in 1989. His willingness to push back brought the nuns and their cross to the attention of the media, resulting in the convent being moved across the street 6 years later.

But the cross remains. One more thing: there is currently a Carmelite convent right next to another concentration camp, the one in Dachau, Germany. The convent includes a Nazi guard tower as an entrance to its church. Nobody pays much attention to the Dachau Convent nowadays.

When faced with the facts concerning those bold and sassy Carmelite nuns in Auschwitz and Dachau, I think the location of Cordoba House on 45-51 Park Place is kind of wimpy.

Look at the real estate around the World Trade Center. It is apparent that one Muslim building in the neighborhood is not enough. Let's take the loving Christian Islamophobes seriously for a second, and call the Cordoba House the Ground Zero Mosque. There are already four Ground Zero Churches (and these are full-fledged churches, not chapels) on property even nearer to the WTC. Instead of getting rid of the Ground Zero Mosque, we need three more! And we may be in desperate need of more Ground Zero Synagogues, Hindu Temples, Wiccan Centers and Atheist Meeting Places.

While we're at it, Let's not forget a Ground Zero Stonewall Center. Actually, since Stonewall is relatively close by, we already have one.