Editor's Introduction

Abstract

I sit to write this Introduction having just returned from a long weekend at APSA's 2010 annual conference discussing the politics of hard times. In the background is the sound of one or another cable news announcer, reminding me, for the thousandth time, that this coming weekend is the ninth anniversary of “9-11.” Controversy still rages over the plans of Muslim American citizens of the US to build a community center in lower Manhattan, two blocks from “ground zero” (or is it “Ground Zero” in deference to its apparent sacralization?). At the same time, attention has recently turned to an obscure Florida pastor, one Reverend Terry Jones, who has declared his intention to publicly burn copies of the Koran in protest of Islam and “commemoration” of 9-11. His plan has caused an outcry of opposition from national and local interfaith coalitions committed to religious and social pluralism, and provoked denunciations from a range of groups that include the Vatican and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Numerous high-ranking Obama Administration officials, from Attorney General Eric Holder to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have loudly criticized the proposed Koran burning as an affront to the American commitment to tolerance. Perhaps the loudest critic has been General David Petraeus, the US Commander in Afghanistan, who has insisted that such acts seriously undermine the US military in its war against the Taliban. One of his assistants, Lt. General William Caldwell, nicely summed up this logic in a CNN interview: “There is no question about First Amendment rights; that is not the issue. The question is: What is the implication over here? It is going to jeopardize the men and women serving in Afghanistan.”