de Tocqueville in the House of War

Anthony Mansueto

President and Senior Scholar, Seeking Wisdom

It is strange indeed to hear Americans talk about “hallowed ground.” Most of our cities, especially in the South and West, can barely manage minimal zoning regulations. Our cities have risen haphazardly, at the whims of developers. And even those which, like Chicago, benefited from wise civic leadership and the art of great urban planners like Burnham and Olmsted, lack the sacred centers which define the great cities of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We have no Tien Amen, no Ayasofia, no Zocalo, and no Notre Dame. Even when a Cathedral seizes the high ground, as in San Francisco, or calls itself National, as in Washington, it ultimately still serves a niche market, however prominent or elite. Even the network of national monuments which line the Mall in Washington are not so much the center of that city (is there one?) as a separate space, set apart.

This is as it should be. The United States is defined by its ideological and cultural pluralism. Our public arena is constituted not by a debate around the interpretation of shared principles (at least not any beyond those of logic and natural law), but rather by a contest over which principles ought to order our common life. This is the real meaning of the radical disestablishment effected by the First Amendment, which does not separate church and state so much as to exclude the hegemony of any one “church” (or secular equivalent) and thus render the relationship between church and state forever contested and problematic. At the level of the urban landscape this means that our cities can never be built around an undisputed sacred center. Even the monuments of our civil religion are not so much central to the urban space of our capitol as outside it, marking the abstract point of reference that the rules of logic and the principles of natural law serve in an otherwise radically open and pluralistic public sphere.

And yet we do have sacred spaces. Our greatest cities are, in fact, teeming with them. It is just that they tend to be tucked away inside the neighborhoods of those for whom they are sacred or hidden between shops or skyscrapers in busy business districts, little distinguishable from the commercial spaces which surround them. Taken together they define a distinctive kind of sacred/social space, one that Phillip Bess has called Tocquevillian, because they embody in the formal, architectural order the radical pluralism of our society. Our cities were built around financial and commercial centers, which in turn are surrounded by working class neighborhoods that grew up around factories. But the people themselves altered this high modern space by placing at the center of their neighborhoods countless churches and synagogues and temples that are the real centers of meaning in the city, and by creating shopping districts that serve the needs of distinct ethnoreligious communities (with dietary laws creating distinct economic niches).

It is in this context that we need to understand the Cordova Initiative’s proposed community center in lower Manhattan. Aside from the fact that the group has visionary leadership and the support of some important institutions, including the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, and thus promises to make a greater than average contribution to the spiritual and cultural life of the city and the country, it is entirely unremarkable and a quite ordinary, very American project. It is just another locus of meaning in the complex Tocquevillian space which defines our cities.

The opposition to the project, however, is something else entirely. It is, of course, not unheard of for people in the US to oppose controversial religious buildings. And we wouldn’t want to strip people of that right. I would, for example, vigorously oppose a proposal to a build temple in which children would be sacrificed to Moloch –or any other project which advocated beliefs, values, or practices plainly opposed to natural law. But the groups opposing this project are attempting 1) to establish that the events of 11 September 2001 were an act of Dar-al-Islam as a whole, and not of a particular political-theological party, and that the “war against terror” is in fact a “war against Islam,” and 2) (especially in the light of growing opposition to the construction of mosques around the country) to redefine public space in the US as Christian or secular or at least as non-Muslim.

The first move does not merely fly in the face of the facts; it is not merely unfair to the overwhelming majority of Muslims, (including most conservative, “fundamentalist” or Islamist Muslims) who stand opposed to terrorism. It amounts to a declaration of war on an entire civilization. And it invites a response in kind from members of that civilization, millions of whom now live peacefully and productively in our midst.

The second move also flies in the face of the facts. The claims of the religious right notwithstanding, the United States is not a Christian country. The preferences of much of the Left notwithstanding, it is not secular country either, and never will be. It is a country where questions of meaning and value are always and only contested, and where being a citizen means engaging in debate around fundamental questions of meaning and value, advocating forcefully but civilly for what one believes, but forever forswearing establishment or de facto hegemony.

If, on the other hand, the opponents of the Cordova project and other mosques are merely saying that the US is a non-Muslim space, then we are back to a war on Islamic civilization. Islam historically divided the world between Dar-al-Islam and Dar-al-Harb: the house of peace and the house of war. Being here, in this Tocquevillian space means allowing for something new in the history of Islamic civilization, for Convivencia in the House of War. It means a new way of being Muslim. This may be challenging to many of my Muslim colleagues, but it is a challenge I am willing to make. The Jews faced this challenge long ago, learning how to engage and transform civilizations in which they were a permanent minority, and both prospered and made great civilizational contributions as a result. Every immigrant community which has come to these shores has had to face this challenge, learning first from the Jews, who are our elder brothers in this spiritual maturing, and then from each other. Islam as a whole, including the great civilizational centers of Dar-al-Islam itself, will be much enriched by this process, recovering the diversity, dynamism, and creativity which marked Islam’s early centuries. This is, in fact, one of the central aims of the Cordova Initiative. But if we deny Muslims the opportunity to engage in this process, then we declare ourselves to be simply Dar-al-Harb.

I don’t want that war on my hands.