Michela Murgia I return from this article. For those who do not know, Michela Murgia is a young Sardinian writer. Advice to all his wonderful book " Accabadora ... It's worth it! Vittorio Zucconi
This article was published in the Republic of August 15, 2010. Because the next day the newspapers do not go out, there is likelihood of it being a double bed under the umbrellas and make people think some intolerant ours.
We wanted liver, massive civil courage and a bit of a vocation to electoral suicide to do what Mr Obama did Friday night. An unpopular choice of civilization. The courage to stand up strongly, according to the American culture and history in favor of the future mosque two blocks from the spectra of the Twin Towers, because the United States of America are built on the freedom to practice "any religion, by any citizen, anywhere."
In a horrible time for her popularity begins to approach the depths of the "Bush area" and therefore to the fortunes of the Democratic Party started to blow a historic election in November, caution, opportunism and cunning were to advise the silence, on a story that does not directly address the White House and from which he has nothing to gain and everything to lose then. Caught between a right and a left populist bilious condescension impermalosita, breaded in an economy that continues and drags him down, Obama could have used the tried and tested trick newspeak "triangulation" invented by Bill Clinton: saying one thing and do the opposite.
Clinton would have thundered against Islamic fanaticism and concealed it would encourage the Muslim community to build its own center maybe two blocks away, or would have relied on religious freedom, then working quietly to prevent what many New Yorkers consider an insult to the memory of victims of Islamist terrorism.
But Obama is not Clinton. His personal history, its nature, its aspirations to be an ethical leader and not just an administrator, he was unable to look the other way as its own Consigliori's recommended. His is only a civil religion, a faith in America's history and the Constitution that only the first generation of citizens, as he is, and ethnic minority who have known the bitter taste of marginalization, they cultivate. When the opportunity for a discourse high, noble, lay, as always, beautifully acted, it has, can not resist.
made the choice to speak, had no choice. He could not say more than "as a citizen and as President - note the priority given to the word citizen - I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion than anyone else in this nazione". Quando ciò che dovrebbe essere sacrosantamente ovvio diventa elettoralmente rischioso, il segno dei tempi non è buono.
Invano il suo addetto stampa Robert Gibbs, ormai avviato al licenziamento, gli aveva raccomandato di tenersi fuori da "una questione strettamente locale" come questa moschea di 13 piani da erigere due isolati a nord dal cratere dell'11/9, che a ormai quasi dieci anni di distanza dal massacro resta un grande vuoto nel cuore di Downtown Manhattan. Il sindaco della città, Bloomberg, si era già detto pienamente a favore della richiesta, nonostante l'opposizione della comunità ebraica. Il potentissimo comitato di zona aveva respinto all'unanimità - evento miracoloso nella città più litigiosa del world - a motion to block the "Centro Cordoba," as the promoters have called the project, pointing out the vast and exquisite Andalusian multiethnic city ruled by Arabs until the thirteenth century. Obama would therefore have the power either to block or to enforce the building.
If you felt the need to act in front of Muslim leaders and clerics invited to the White House the 'iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, it is because Obama feels the inheritor and guardian of a story begins with Thomas Jefferson two hundred and twenty years ago, when the father of American democracy and the separation between church and state conversing with religious Muslim, because in His life has been exposed to different cultures, experiences, faiths and different ethnic groups that make it incomprehensible that intolerance and hatred that crater in the center of Manhattan represent. "I understand the emotions that this issue arouses, but this is America and the principle that peoples of all faiths are welcome, and will not be treated in different ways by their government, is an essential part of who we are." Wonderful
principles that have done more than guns and certainly more than the dollar, the size of this "city on a hill" that the U.S., but politically they forget a terrible truth: that there is an America and a pre-September 11, 2001 ' America post September 11th. A mosque with skyscraper 13 floors of a hundred meters from an open grave dug by those who believed killed in a mission belongs to God "after". There is no rational conciliation among those in New York, and the ranks of followers of skilled manipulators of politics as Sarah Palin ("a provocation" that called Islamic Center) asking "why a mosque right there" and those who, like Obama, asking "Why not here?" given that dozens of Muslims died that day next to Christians, Jews, atheists.
In fact, Obama has managed to irritate everyone and not to please anyone, as happens to those who say the right thing, apart from the developer, the manufacturer Sharif al-Gamal, enthusiastic. World Arab and Muslim get accused of doing much "symbolism", as was the famous speech given to Islam in Cairo, and little substance, and the field of Guantanamo remains open and the victims' side ", that innocent people in Afghanistan and in Pakistan during the bombing, accumulate. The main Jewish organization in the U.S., the Anti Defamation League, the critical and fiercely opposed to the mosque, amid the cries and the din of the Republicans who accuse the President of "sacrilege".
And the economy, which is the only altar at the foot at the end every shrine, every book, every hanging, every faith in America bow, the goddess remains a sullen and angry that he would ask the sacrifice of a civilian president, Obama still believes that too much to the civilization of the policy and spirit of America, also, and especially when brutally injured and offended by the barbarians.
