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BY HEATHER HAHN
UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE

Each year, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Rev. Myrna Bethke has visited the World Trade Center site to remember her brother who perished in the towers that day.

The United Methodist pastor does not blame Islam for those attacks or her family’s loss. She associates the faith with the Muslims she has joined for interfaith Thanksgiving services and the mosque that welcomes visits from her confirmation students.

“This, to me, is Islam,” she said, “not the people who got together and decided to hijack the religion as they hijacked the planes.”

Bethke, pastor of Red Bank UMC in New Jersey, supports the Islamic cultural center planned near ground zero.

However, others who lost loved ones that day vehemently oppose the proposal, and the issue has become a source of political debate on cable news and the campaign trail.

The controversy has not been limited to the proposed center in lower Manhattan. In recent months, confrontations have broken out over the construction or expansion of mosques across the United States — far from New York’s hallowed ground. These include protests in Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Sheboygan, Wis.; and Temecula, Calif.

The United Methodist Book of Resolutions calls for “better relationships between Christians and Muslims on the basis of informed understanding, critical appreciation and balanced perspective of one another’s basic beliefs.”

Another resolution calls for United Methodists to denounce discrimination against Muslims and “counter stereotypical and bigoted statements made against Muslims and Islam, Arabs and Arabic culture.”

When it comes to the issue of allowing Muslims to build mosques, supporting their right to worship is not just in line with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, said the Rev. Stephen J. Sidorak Jr., the top executive at the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns. It’s also part of Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, which as the parable of the Good Samaritan shows, can include those of different religions.

Welcoming local mosques also may help national security. A two-year Duke University study on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that mosques might actually be a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam.

The proposed Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan won the unanimous approval of New York City zoning authorities. Plans call for the building to contain a fitness center, swimming pool, space for art exhibitions and an auditorium for public programs as well as a place for Muslim prayer. Organizers say their goal is to promote tolerance and community cohesion.

However, the ethical case for locating an Islamic center near ground zero is more complex.

Some critics have likened the debate surrounding the Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan to the acrimony that followed when Carmelite nuns moved into a convent near the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. After a public outcry, Pope John Paul II ordered the nuns to move in 1993.

Taking a similar stand, some argue that it is insensitive to those who lost loved ones for Islamic center organizers to build near the World Trade Center site.

Bethke sympathized with those who oppose the Lower Manhattan center.

“You want to be sensitive to people’s feelings,” she said, “but at the same time remember that we do have religious freedom in this country.”

Addressing the mosque disputes and other issues in United Methodist-Muslim relations is going to take more than a press release of solidarity or conference resolution, interfaith advocates said.

Bethke and other United Methodist leaders urge fellow Christians to learn more about Islam and get to know their Muslim neighbors. When you know someone well, she said, you won’t judge that person by the worst acts committed in his religion’s name.