OMG!

I was waiting for my daughters to emerge from the international arrivals gate at Boston’s Logan. From a London flight, out comes a Muslim family. He, with an extravagant beard, sticking straight out of his chin, perpendicular to his chest. She? Well, it’s hard to say. She was clad head to foot in a black burka. And, to add poignancy, she held the hand of her cute six-year-old daughter, dressed in the usual little girl garb because, presumably, she’s not old enough to excite lust.

But soon she too will be wrapped up like a central Asian burrito.

So sad.

Among the crowd of greeters was the normal cross-section of American humanity. As it was a hot day, the women, young and not so young, wore shorts and skimpy tops, lots of tanned skin on display. And lots of mysterious straps crisscrossing bared shoulders. The West, god bless it. No one gave a damn. If anything, the casual buzz of beauty and pleasure in being alive made the wait bearable. Dignified, even. Human, certainly. The burka woman passed through us, ostentatiously invisible. I think we all felt bad for her, and, especially, for her little girl.

The extremes of religion observance are always cringe-inducing, whether it’s a ringlet radical waving his Uzi on the West Bank or a red-faced televangelist humping his call-boy. But are they extremes? Perhaps they are the most explicit, the most honest expression of a religious tradition.

Maybe not.

The burka made me think about the current bout of hysteria concerning Islam. I have spent some years with that tradition, having researched and written Sea of Faith. Certainly, the burka has nothing Islamic about it. It is the expression of a depressingly timeless and deep-seated fear of female sexuality, or rather the male’s supposed inability to cope with it. Thus the wig an orthodox Jewish woman wears, to hide her hair from the eyes of all men who are not her husband. There’s no point in reminding them where else she has hair; civilization might come screeching to a halt. The irony, of course, is that in any society where half the population has to hide its entire body, is precisely where civilization has come to a halt.

And Islam, being a highly social religion, actively encourages interaction and, thus, civilization.

One wishes that the Prophet Muhammad, who was no stranger to friendship with women, incidentally, would come back for one day and tell the bearded fellows with the burka wives that they are contemptible misogynists who have misinterpeted his message.

Am I being disrespectful to different traditions? Okay, let’s bring back slavery.

And torture and the death penalty.

Oops.

While he’s here, the Prophet might also want to talk to some Americans. The thought of an Islamic civic center being built in lower Manhattan has driven some of them out of their minds. In my opinion, this is precisely where such a center should go, to promote tolerance and encourage intercultural outreach in a very high-profile location. It is precisely the message that should be sent to the entire world, including the young man in some slum of Cairo who is drawn to harebrained Islamist rhetoric about this country’s hatred of him. At the moment Predator drones and I.E.D’s seem to be the preferred form of dialogue, which, of course, is even less civilized than the burka.

The name of the project, Cordoba House, evokes the splendor of Umayyad Cordoba, where Muslim, Christian and Jew came together to build a civilization of jaw-dropping sophistication and beauty. Of course, Camelot it was not – Christians and Jews were second-class citizens – but, hey, for the years 750-1010 it was astounding for its multiconfessional nature.

The Islamophobes don’t see it that way. A congressman from Arizona (state motto: “Hate Is A Phoenix”) sees the name as evocative of Cordoba’s mosque, which was built on the site of a Christian church. So Cordoba House is religious imperialism, QED.

One: the Cordoba mosque, or the Mezquita, is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

Two: when the Christians took over in the Middle Ages, they built a church smack dab in the middle of it, a project which was criticized even then (by the Spanish king, no less).

Three: the Visigothic church the Muslims appropriated for their mosque in the eighth century had itself been built on the site of a Roman temple and re-used its pillars for a Christian purpose.

So, Congressman, people who live in glass houses…

Or glass loony bins. He also said that congressional interns who are Muslims should be investigated. Not that he has anything against Islam.

And, finally, as is to be expected of invincible ignorance, this rep from Arizona also referred to Allah as the Muslim god. I’ve got news for him. Allah is a word meaning god in Arabic. Period. Arabic-speaking Christians pray to Allah, too. Pick up a book, idiot.

Newt Gingrich, that great American solon, said Cordoba House, which includes a mosque, should not be allowed until they allow the construction of Christian churches in Saudi Arabia. I’ve got news for Newt, too. We don’t live in Saudi Arabia. We live in the USA. We have other traditions, one of which is religious freedom. I became a citizen of this country just last year. What? Is the party over? Damn!

Gingrich also said that sharia law must not be made the law of the land. Okay. I’m down with that. But he spoke of sharia as it if it were a single, established thing, as opposed to several schools of thought in Sunni Islam, with variants in Shia Islam. When you open your mouth to say something inane, Newt, at least google it first.

The Anti-Defamation League came out against Cordoba House. This is absolutely disgraceful. You would think that this is the one organization that would have drawn lessons from the past.

Others have said that Ground Zero is “our Auschwitz,” drawing a parallel between Cordoba House and the Carmelite Convent at that death camp. Ground Zero is not Auschwitz. And Pearl Harbor is not Pompey. And apples are not oranges. A church in Florida is organizing, for the next anniversary of 9/11, a mass burning of Korans.

I do hope the Anti-Defamation League is happy with the company it’s keeping.

It’s at times like this this, as a secular person, I get tired of religious people. Look, the Enlightenment happened, and we won. At least for the moment.

It is obvious what is needed at this juncture of history: outreach, dialogue, understanding. When religious people interfere in this, I almost feel that we seculars should play hardball in return. Lift the tax-exempt status on church, mosque and synagogue. Tax the hell out of them. Is that tax exemption in the Constitution? And if they’re going to investigate Muslim congressional interns, then I say we should investigate the Air Force Academy for its evangelical Christians. Does believing in their Allah trinity impair their judgment? I don’t know, but shouldn’t we find out?

Seriously, now, the only argument against Cordoba House that holds some merit is that it would be offensive to the families of the victims of 9/11. Perhaps. But…

One: presumably, the families of the 9/11 victims are not a monolith, all having the same point of view.

Two: is it not possible for them, and most of us, to view Cordoba House as an olive branch, a gesture of respect? Why think it triumphalism, when, at least from what I’ve read, it is patently not that?

Third: and this is hard to say, but the hypothetical feelings of a group of citizens does not trump the Constitution. Mayor Bloomberg was right in his remarks in front of the Statue of Liberty, when he said the State had no business interfering with the perfectly legal activities of the Cordoba group.

But there are some people who just want to get their hate on. Some people truly hate Islam, even when they know next to zilch about it. And I would say that the people who hate Islam the most are those who use its teachings to promote violence and terrorism. Osama bin Laden is an Islamophobe.

So the two types of Islamophobes should all go to an island somewhere and have a tea party.

Because the children of the Enlightenment are getting mighty fed up with y’all. And you know who the children of the Enlightenment are? The professors in the universities? No. The priests in the pulpit? No. The generals in the army? No.

They are the crowd waiting at Logan, relaxed and respectful of each other – even of the guy whose wife they can’t see.