In Support of the Cordoba Initiative / Park 51 / Muslim Cultural Center
August 16, 2010, New York, NY: Stuart Appelbaum and Martin Schwartz, President and Executive Director, respectively, of the Jewish Labor Committee, today issued the following statement.
We join the many voices in our support of the planned Cordoba Initiative, a Muslim community center to be built a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
As Muslims in New York and around the world mark the holy fast of Ramadan, we are mindful that from George Washington's day to Barack Obama's, the defense of freedom of religious expression has been a part of the fabric of American society, both when it was respected and when it was denied.
The right of anyone in the United States to observe their religious traditions without government interference has been a distinctive feature of American society, and, indeed, the diverse faiths and cultures of the U.S. have made the country stronger and more vibrant. We cannot allow either passion or trauma to dictate public policy about the Cordoba Initiative.
That the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan is a model that the directors of the Cordoba Initiative are drawing upon is important. We applaud the vision of a center that incorporates diverse elements, cultural as well as spiritual and religious, a center that will include place for prayer and study, but is not a mosque per se. The center will add to the diversity of possibilities of religious and cultural expression in a part of New York that has a wide range of Christian and Jewish houses of worship.
We feel impelled to add our voices in support of the Cordoba Initiative precisely because this is a time of rising anxiety about, fears of, and outright hostility towards religious, ethnic and cultural minorities, including physical attacks in Staten Island, legislative threats in Arizona, and opposition to mosque-construction projects in diverse communities. In earlier eras, Catholics and their churches were held suspect as having ulterior motives; the same canard was leveled against Jews and Jewish institutions. We can and must be better than the most fearful and the most xenophobic among us.
We extend a hand of friendship and solidarity to those of the Cordoba Initiative, and look forward to working with them as their important project comes to fruition.
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The Jewish Labor Committee, an independent secular organization, is the voice of the Jewish community in the labor movement and the voice of the labor movement in the Jewish community. Whether through its national office in New York or local offices and lay-led groups across the United States, the JLC enables the Jewish community and the trade union movement to work together on important issues of shared interest and concern, in pursuit of our shared commitment to economic and social justice.