Many opponents of the Park51 center being built on Park Place say they wouldn’t object to it if were further away from the old World Trade Center site. But apparently Murfreesboro, Tennesse, isn’t far enough away, either. Alaska? No, forget Alaska. Maybe Hawaii. Maybe Mongolia.

The question is, why is so much raw bigotry erupting now, nine years after the terrorist attacks? Not that there haven’t been examples of it all along, but not as much as now.

And the obvious answer is that until recently, or at least until Barack Obama became president, it wasn’t really all that useful to conservatives and the Republican Party to whip up the sheep into rage about Islam. But now it’s very useful, so they’re doing it. They’re probably slapping themselves for not having gotten the anti-Muslim propaganda cranking at full speed a lot sooner, like about May 2008.

Ben Evans writes about the hypocrisy of conservatives on Constitutional issues. The people who go about waving copies of the constitution as badges of their patriotism and call themselves as “constitutionalists” are the same ones pushing for the biggest changes to the document. They not only want to repeal the 14th Amendment, but they also want to revise a lot of the provisions in the main body of the Constitution. They want to require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, for example (the same provision that is killing California).

Weirdly, some of them are saying they want to change the Constitution to make it closer to what the founders originally intended. The original provisions don’t express what the founders originally intended?

[Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia] who is among the most conservative members of Congress, said he sees no contradiction in his devotion to the Constitution and his desire to rewrite parts of it. … “It’s not picking and choosing,” he said. “We need to do a lot of tweaking to make the Constitution as it was originally intended, instead of some perverse idea of what the Constitution says and does.”

This reminds me of the folks who want to erect monuments to the Ten Commandments at schools and courthouses but who cannot name all ten of the commandments if put on the spot to do so. And of Bible-thumpers who evoke the Bible as their bulwark against Evil but who don’t know the Beatitudes from a McDonald’s dollar menu.

I’ve written before that righties tend to interpret events through myths and symbols rather than facts. Just so, I think they also tend to regard documents such as the Bible and the Constitution more as totems than texts. The documents are cherished as icons of whatever it is they think America or Christianity is, not for what they actually say.

And if you understand that, you can see how it isn’t inconsistent for them to, say, claim they believe in religious liberty while forming a mob to stop the building of what they think is a mosque. “Religious liberty” is something iconic to them, but they don’t understand or appreciate how it is applied to real-world situations.

Along those lines, there’s a “small government” teabagger running for governor of New York (no chance he’ll be elected) who not only promises to use the power of his office to stop the building of Park51; he wants to convert state prisons into work camps for welfare recipients. Apparently “small government” is just another totem, a meaningless phrase that commands loyalty but doesn’t have any fixed meaning.

Sorta kinda related must read: Paul Krugman’s column today.

… our political culture has become not just dysfunctional but deeply corrupt. … What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent

He goes on to say that the same kind of campaign of lies and deception that sold America on the Bush tax cuts were then used to sell America on invading Iraq, and now the same kind of campaign is being used to sell America on reinstating the Bush tax cuts for the rich. As I wrote earlier, the Usual Rubes are being scammed into thinking that the Dems want to raise everyone’s taxes.

I realize I’ve been something of a stuck record lately, but I really hate bigotry. And while I’m far from an expert on Islam, I’ve come to realize that compared to most people in the U.S. I’m a bleeping Islamic encyclopedia. Which is pretty pathetic.

This knowledge came slowly, though. The first time I can remember the Middle East conflict getting my full attention was during the Munich Olympics. I was in college at the time, and I remember going to the Hillel House on campus for a memorial service for the slain Israeli Olympians. Like a lot of people, back then I associated Palestinians with terrorism. It was quite a while before more information seeped in and I realized the Palestinian-Israeli issue wasn’t nearly as black and white as I’d assumed.

Now, fast forward to the Gulf War. You might remember that at one point Iraq launched Scud missiles into Israel, and television news showed Palestinians dancing in the streets because Israel was being bombed. I was really angry at this, flashing back to the Munich Olympics. But by then I was a Zen student, and part of the practice is to not harbor anger.

The local Ethical culture society was hosting a series of lectures on Islam, so I went to as many as I could as a kind of anger therapy. The lectures were given by Muslims who were professional people in the community. One fellow I remember was a heart surgeon, originally from Afghanistan, who had lived in the U.S. most of his life. I liked this guy, because I recognized he was a real spiritual seeker, not a dogmatist. For example, he explained that he understood “jihad” to be the spiritual struggle with oneself, not “holy war” with other people.

The other thing I got out of the lecture series was an appreciation of the power of Islamic practice. I could see that the daily prayers and other practices would not only make the religion the center of one’s daily life — for good or ill — but also forge a deep sense of communal bonding with other followers around the world. So although I was not at all tempted to adopt it for myself, I certainly developed a deep respect for it. And folks, it ain’t going to go away.

In a weird kind of way I got to know Sufi Islam through Buddhism, in particular Sufi poetry published in Buddhist journals. A lot of mystic Sufism comes uncannily close to some aspects of Buddhism. I also understand that Sufism was an influence on G.I. Gurdjieff, who was something like the father of New Age spirituality, or at least every hippie New Ager I ever met told me they’d started by studying Gurdjieff.

Something else I learned along the way is that Wahhabis really hate Sufis. In fact, Abdul Wahab (1703-1792) began his movement primarily to “cleanse the Arab Bedouins of Sufi influence,” it says here. To this day, Wahhabis consider Sufis to be dangerous heretics. As I’ve said earlier, the rise of jihadism and fundamentalist Islam in recent years has brought a lot of punishment to Sufis. Mosques and shrines have been attacked by suicide bombers, and lots of Sufis have been killed by Jihadists. And the fundamentalist Shia regime in Iran doesn’t like them either and tends to round up Sufis for detention from time to time, just because.

So, you would think that the same people who are perpetually sniffing out evidence of the depravity of fundamentalist Islam would have some sympathy for the very non-fundamentalist Sufis and their frequent victimization by jihadists. But no. Because, you know, all Muslims are alike to them. For example:

Who is investing in this project? I doubt many moderate businessman will want to attract the sort of publicity swirling around this, but I bet there is plenty of Wahhabi money in Saudi Arabia that would love to get behind the Victory Mosque.

One does want to pound one’s head against the wall in frustration sometimes. If you have any appreciation at all for the situation of Sufis, you could argue that putting up a big Sufi “mosque” near Ground Zero amounts to sticking Wahhabis in the eye, since Sufis and Sunni jihadists are pretty much natural enemies. But try explaining that to the bigots.