Ground Zero mosque
Morality vs. legality?
The debate over the Muslim mosque and community center near Ground Zero has resulted in a number of different, passionate reactions. Once the media took up the subject, politicians and leaders from all over the US weighed in rather quickly.
On Friday, even President Obama shared his view in favor of the mosque, stating “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”
Not surprisingly, critics of the mosque pounced. And their response was strong enough to push the President and his staff to “recalibrate” his comments from Friday evening more than once. Although his remarks were initially received as a deliberate endorsement of the mosque construction, President Obama apparently meant only to speak in favor of the project’s legality—not in favor of “the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque [near Ground Zero].”
Regardless of how you interpret the President’s statements this weekend, his clarification here suggests a crucial distinction underlying this Ground Zero mosque debate: even in a society that emphasizes personal liberty and freedom of religion, there may be a difference between what is legally permissible and what is morally permissible.
Most leaders, even critics, seem to consider the construction legally permissible. But they also speak of it as being highly offensive to many Americans. This raises two related questions:
1) Can something be legally harmless but nevertheless reprehensible for other, probably moral, reasons?
2) Can something be legally harmless but unpleasant enough for us to rightly or morally require
legal intervention at the cost of others’ legal rights?
In the second volume of The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Joel Feinberg illustrated this question with six sets of hypothetical, uniquely offensive situations on a public bus. His third set of examples is particularly relevant, and involves “shock to moral, religious, or patriotic sensibilities.”
For example, imagine you’re on a bus on your way to an extremely important meeting. Then:
After taking the seat next to you a passenger produces a bundle wrapped in a large American flag. The bundle contains, among other things, his lunch, which he proceeds to eat. Then he spits into the star-spangled corner of the flag and uses it first to clean his mouth and then to blow his nose. Then he uses the main striped part of the flag to shine his shoes.
Undoubtedly, the average American would be offended in this situation. Some would even maintain that citizens deserve legal protection from this level of offensiveness, even if it is the result of perfectly legal exercise of private rights.
In some ways, this example resembles what is happening with the Ground Zero mosque: the construction’s supporters are exercising their rights, but in ways that are extremely offensive to other citizens. As a result, many of the mosque’s critics advocate legal prevention of the construction, implore its supporters to cancel their plans, or even deny that the mosque is proper exercise of a right at all.
For similar reasons, Feinberg goes on to recommend something called the ‘offense principle,’ and concludes that the state is sometimes justified in imposing criminal penalties for offensive, but legal, behavior.
So, setting aside the original legality of the construction: is the Ground Zero mosque offensive enough to justify the state in denying a legal right?
-Jonathan
This image was used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user Todd Ehlers.
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4 Responses to “Ground Zero mosque”
To answer the concluding question, I think it isn’t offensive enough to deny it its legal right to be built. The premise that the mosque ought to be taken as offensive in the first place is suspect. The attacks on September 11th were perpetrated by a very radical fringe of Islam with views that would ostensibly not be perpetuated by the mosque near Ground Zero. If anything, the building of the mosque grants the opportunity to become better acquainted and more comfortable with a faith and culture that many Americans may be unfamiliar with. Labeling the mosque’s construction on its face offensive only perpetuates this xenophobic stance. Doing so misses a chance for greater healing and understanding. We do so at our own peril.
[...] the germane issue is exactly the balance between sensitivity and principle, and whether, as Jonathan asked yesterday, something can be “legally harmless but unpleasant enough for us to rightly or [...]
I Live in Canada and I think to Build a Mosque at ground zero is sick why dont you build it somewhere else and leave ground zero alone so the
people that passed away there can rest in peace.
I am pretty sure you got enough space in the dessert.
@Ellen – unfortunately, you are incorrect.. desserts tend to be quite small, and frankly serve as unsuitable foundations for mosques (with the possible exception of flourless chocolate cake, which tends to be quite dense).
If you meant to refer to deserts, well then yes, they may have some historical context, but, unfortunately, centers of worship tend to be, and probably should be, located where people congregate. It just makes more sense that way.
If you indeed did mean desert, and by desert you meant it as a proxy for the middle east, well, that is silly! Because the thought of traveling all the way to the middle east on a regular basis to pray seems ridiculous to me if, as I would suspect, there is a significant population of muslims in New York. (or do you mean to suggest that as Americans we are not able to be Muslims?)
Now, if you were to take that parallel a little further, and suggest that this center was to be used as a “Mecca for Jihadists,” then, and perhaps only then, would I agree with you. A sanctioned “Mecca for Jihadists” within the United States is as ridiculous a concept as constructing a building atop a tasty tiramisu, and we should not under any circumstances allow for it. But if you were suggesting *that*, then take a step back, because that would be false.
I propose that those of us that don’t live in southern NY city leave the local government and population to weigh all the information presented by both sides, and decide if they want the mosque there… oh, wait… they have.
Let’s not let the tyranny of an uninformed majority infringe upon our freedoms.
Please?