Limits of Con: An Islamic Center in Lower Manhattan

by Richard Kostelanetz (November 2012)

Likewise out of town (or out to lunch) was his third wife, Daisy Khan, once an interior designer, now under her own surname the director of ASMA (the American Society for Muslim Advancement) that portrays itself as indigenous as apple pie, though some doubt. How indisputably American cool are these cleverly hot immigrant operators.

II

The ulterior motive of such schemes, as well as reportage about them, is generating discussion of a question recurring in America. How liberal can a liberal society be toward social groups that are fundamentally not liberal. In the past 100 years, Americans have had to decide how to regard native fascists, then Jewish Communists, Black Panthers, and nativist militias, among others, all of whom could be portrayed as advocating illiberal violence from different directions to realize their social visions. Too often, while some Americans have excused the predisposition for violence for one or another of these groups out of sympathy for their ultimate aims, most Americans were opposed. All of them finally failed.

Fundamentally disagreeable though all these prosecutions were, they benefitted the status in America of each once-suspect group. Stay tuned.

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