You are here: Home » Featured » ENVY In The Shadows of 9/11 – Ground Zero Mosque

ENVY In The Shadows of 9/11 – Ground Zero Mosque

Rachel Wahba -August 04, 2010

Back in 1978 new to America and in New York City for the first time, I found a postcard in a little shop in Greenwich Village; for some strange reason it spoke to me.  Feeling the freshness of my new home, America, loving it, despite the alienation at times; an Egyptian-Iraqi Jew who rarely saw her trajectory mirrored.

So here was a cool card embracing my old and now my new worlds; it featured BOTH the Twin Towers AND the Pyramids!  I felt mirrored by the intersection of cultures that I identified with. The New York Twin Towers, looming from the desert floor towered over the Pyramids, a fact of modernity – while both stunningly beautiful—Modern New York juxtaposed with its Mid-Eastern equivalent, Ancient Egypt.

In l978 America had yet to lose her innocence. My perception of course; coming from my stateless childhood; Baghdad to Egypt, then India, and refuge in Japan, marred by a traumatized Nagasaki and the horror of Hiroshima.

Never could I have imagined a ‘9/11,’ all that time ago when I found my 3D treasure, the Card, the type that changes according to movement and positioning impacted by reflection.  This card shimmered and shone, depending on how one moved it and so I shared it with friends who came over to the house: “hey look at this cool card I found in the Village. That was then way back in the 70’s.

By the time 9/11 occurred I had probably shown this card to most of my friends if not all of them.  On that dreadful day the Cool Card suddenly became something totally different. Its significance took on a meaning that shed its beauty with one foul new look.

Just as it would if positioned at any angle, the Card changed when those buildings toppled; and my relationship to it factored in my work as a psychotherapist.  I have studied envy.

America has not had the envy phobia that we Middle Easterners have. It’s a new country built on hope and freedom that asserts “Why would what I have, diminish you, if you can go out there and make it happen for yourself? Right?  (I am not commenting here on how viable this hope is, just that it is much more alive and possible than in many old tradition bound countries).

At any rate, speaking envy: “I hate you because you have or you are something that makes me feel less than you, hence, you DIMINISH my sense of Self. I have two options: to get rid of you (the offending object) or  get rid of me (the diminished subject.)

Islamic fundamentalists have found an even more satisfying solution: get rid of you and me— by using brainwashed homicide bombers to do the job. They don’t get to live and tell or regret or change their tune. They are gone along with the offending objects.

In this case the tallest most powerful buildings in America were intolerable.  In magnificent financially powerful New York,  homicide bombers on a mission to restore self esteem  and idealization of a culture suffering from low self esteem — experiencing themselves as victims of a disrespected and wronged Islamic world. What better solution for a restoration of Idealization by brainwashed self sacrificing homicide bombers pumped up with promises of heroism, eternal salvation, and most important: a restoration of worth for self and the greatness of God/Islam.

In the process of getting rid of the offending mirror that cannot tell a lie any more than Snow White’s stepmother’s mirror could, what else can the devastated do? How else to avoid the feeling that Snow White’s survival DIMINISHES the aging BEAUTY of her stepmother, shattering her faltering SENSE OF SELF. Snow White must go. The stepmother’s sense of self as the most beautiful must be restored.

Snow White’s stepmother could not bear to no longer be the BEST MOST BEAUTIFUL in the Land.  Her mirror told the truth. The Twin Towers told the truth. America was on top.

America is a vibrant country, flourishing, and a slap in the face to Islamic fundamentalist mentality.

Snow White’s stepmother had to get rid of her stunning daughter. The mirror refused to lie.  Islamic fundamentalism is diminished by a flourishing Western culture.  It is diminished by women showing cleavage and walking free. The list goes on.   Now look at the postcard again.  After 9/11 it took on a deeper meaning for me. I see it as a stark portrait of the inability of Islamic Fundamentalism to tolerate the success of the West. The pyramids are sinking in the sand. Although they are beautiful and nothing short of stunning they no longer command the power of an ancient civilization.  And in the eyes of the envious (and the Middle East  and North Africa understand the Evil Eye of Envy), the contrast is intolerable.

Like Snow White’s envious stepmother’s  mirror didn’t’ lie, the towers had to be destroyed in a flaming burst of seething raw rage of envy.

Now masking as peace loving community building stalwarts, there is an attempt to put a mosque in the shadow of those Towers, at ground zero.    Is this the icing on the cake? A slap in the face, unmitigated chutzpah, and disrespectful at best, where is the sense of shame to even have such an idea?

The worst part of this is that this action of attempting to build an Islamic Center next to Ground Zero, forces us, the United States, to put up boundaries and conditions a “free” Country abhors, running against the grain of what we hold so dear, our freedoms – including that of religion.

At the same time we can no longer bask innocently as an open society. Better we face head on the misguided calls of “racism” by those who think being blown up by hateful Islamic Fundamentalists who cannot bear to see us thrive is ‘just dessert’ for the West –and in this case America.

So perhaps by saying “NO Not Here,” we have to let go of some of the open society we have so valued and protected in order to keep what we still can have: self respect and no apology for taking care of our own. I see no other choice. Build the mosque and all its trimmings someplace far away from Ground Zero.   After all like the Anti-Defamation League notes – the stress and pain it would cause to victims and family far outweighs the very freedom which ADL usually services so vigorously.

Rachel Wahba

Related articles by Zemanta

• Jewish groups differ over 9/11 mosque plan (thejc.com)
• Alan Dershowitz: Anti-Defamation League Should Not Oppose Mosques at Ground Zero (huffingtonpost.com)
• “ADL Surprisingly Opposes Islamic Center Near Ground Zero” and related posts (religionclause.blogspot.com)