RUTHFULLY YOURS

If there is a silver lining in the fight over Manhattan’s “Ground Zero Mosque,”
it is to see that the events of September 11, 2001 remain strong in the public
mind.

Thus it is affirming, in an ironic way, to see partisans on the left and right
joining to defend the legal and Constitutional right of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
to build an Islamic center and mosque at 45 Park Place, two blocks from the
perimeter of the former World Trade Center towers.

It will be an irony of a different sort if the $100 million Islamic center rises
13 stories while the new the World Trade Center site, nine years after, remains
a pit of dust-covered construction struggling to rejoin the life of New York
City. For the most extreme elements of Islam, this must seem a crude, enduring
victory.

Recall the ringing cries that rebuilding the annihilated 108 stories would be
the “best answer” to the terrorists. Absent that, the next-best answer New York
City gave recently was to reassert its belief in freedom of religion and legal
title. In an August 3 speech on the Islamic center’s building approvals, New
York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg summarized those freedoms as “tolerance.”

One must agree. This is tolerance.

Along the way, Mr. Bloomberg noted that denying someone the right to build a
house of worship “may happen in other countries” but shouldn’t here. There is a
school of thought in this controversy that bringing up the denial of religious
practice in “other countries” is irrelevant to discussing the appropriateness of
the Ground Zero mosque. I disagree.

Indeed in the wake of much praise for Mayor Bloomberg’s defense of civil and
religious liberty, let me modestly suggest that he next go to Rome in October
and deliver a sequel at Pope Benedict XVI’s synod on what the pope recently
called the “urgent” plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East. Here, Mr.
Bloomberg was preaching to the choir. Try it over there, where it really
matters.

We didn’t discover tolerance. Islam coexisted for centuries with Christianity
and Judaism. No more. Minorities such as Coptic Christians in Egypt or the
Chaldeans and Yazidi in Iraq are being punished or driven out. Churches are
destroyed, not built. In April, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams,
described the disappearance of Christians from the Middle East as “a possibility
that appalls me.” Iran this week sentenced seven Bahái leaders, merely for being
Baháis.

These are national policies, not merely “extremist” Islam. This is directly
linked to why the West, including lower Manhattan, is being attacked.

It’s always stirring to see the American Constitution prevail on behalf of
unpopular groups, whether neo-Nazis marching in Skokie or Imam Rauf’s Cordoba
House in New York. But here’s what’s galling about the Cordoba House affair.
There is a sense in which these unpopular causes and people always free-ride on
the rest of us who defend freedom. It would be good to see them in return doing
their part to keep these principles alive, and that includes Imam Rauf’s
unambiguous public support for the embattled Christian minorities in the Middle
East.

Islam isn’t just another religion in America. It is bound up in the biggest
political struggle of our time. Notwithstanding Imam Rauf’s commitments to
“dialogue,” what has he or the rest done to promote and protect the traditions
of Western civil society, for which many here and in Europe have fought and
died? Maybe the Constitution doesn’t explicitly require it, but where is the
good faith on their part?

No institution has spent more time trying to bring Islam toward the modern
world’s tradition of civil liberties—that is, the world as we’ve known it for
about 250 years—than the Vatican. On behalf of tolerance in the Middle Eastern
countries, the Vatican has set up active directorates, sent envoys and held
endless symposia on behalf of “understanding” and “dialogue.”

In 1995, the Saudis and others, with the Vatican’s support, opened a large,
beautiful mosque in Rome. The expectation was that the Saudis would loosen their
restrictions on Christian practice. Despite some one million immigrant Christian
workers there, the Saudis have done nothing.

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Frustrated by the repeated failure of Islamic leaders to match promises with
practice, Pope Benedict added to the Vatican’s strategy of accommodation a
one-word policy, which the tolerance advocates here should adopt: “reciprocity.”

The idea: There will be support for fewer new mosques in the West until the home
countries stop hammering non-Islamic religions. Until they reciprocate good will
with good will.

Imam Rauf and his partners are getting more than they’ve earned. That’s nice.
But even in tolerant America, political life isn’t a one-way street. Islam is in
political tension with the world over Islamic terror. The next time one of them
tries to blow up New York, let’s hope the TV cameras’ first stop for a
denunciation won’t be the mayor, but the front steps of Cordoba House.

Write to henninger@wsj.com