The Anti (ish) Defamation League and NY's Cordoba House

Here is the Anti-Defamation League's mission statement:

"The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens."

And here is the Anti-Defamation League's public stance regarding the building of the Codoba House NYC, an Islamic community center near Ground Zero:

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.

I don't see anything in the ADL's mission statement dealing with saving the families of terrorism victims from unnecessary pain. And so at first blush it seems somewhat odd the ADL would feel compelled to issue a public statement on the issue at all.

But especially interesting is what the ADL's statement leaves out. We are not told how it is exactly that the presence of an Islamic community center near the site of the attack would cause some victims unnecessary pain. But the answer is to that question is obvious: some victims, like most others who oppose the center, conflate Islam with terrorism, and Muslims with terrorists. For this reason, the ADL is correct to some extent - the community center will cause some victims pain as a result of their associating the center and the Muslims who use it with the men who flew planes into the Twin Towers. While acknowledging the right of Muslims to build a community center at the proposed site, the ADL argues it "is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right." And to the ADL, some people cannot see a Muslim without thinking about terrorists, Muslims should show their respect and sympathy for those people by relocating their center (whose purpose is "promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture") to a less controversial site.

And this is exactly why the ADL's public stance opposing the community center runs counter to its mission "to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens." Which, of course, is the reason the ADL could not articulate the basis for its position - a group which is dedicated to ending religious bigotry cannot ask Muslims desiring to build a center dedicated to tolerance and integration to defer to bigots without simultaneously exposing itself as being hostile to Islam and Muslims. But considering the ADL had no legitimate reason to enter the debate in the first place (at least based on its self-stated justification for doing so), and chose to take a position running counter to is ostensible mission in order to oppose the center, it is difficult to find another motivation besides an organizational prejudice against Islam.