The Park51 controversy isn’t really about a building. It’s about erasing individuals.

Let me begin with a question: Who is a Muslim?

Virtually everyone who has commented on the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy claims to know the answer to the above question. As Leon Wieseltier once put it, “On September 10, 2001, nobody in America seemed to know anything about Islam. On September 12, 2001, everybody seemed to know everything about Islam.”

The National Republican Trust PAC recently produced a television ad—“Kill the Ground Zero Mosque”—to advocate opposition to the planned mosque. The ad repeatedly presents Muslims as armed, masked men intent on destruction. The ad is so virulent that it was rejected by both NBC and CBS.

On the other side, there is pious commentary by those who invoke the U.S. Constitution as the foundation on which a cultural center would be built. In this legalistic narrative, Muslims are the non-descript citizens who all look the same in the impartial eye of the law and deserve the freedom of religion.

Are both sides guilty of denying ordinary Muslims their humanity?

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