Should the mosque be built near the World Trade Center site? Yes.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria makes the case:

Ever since 9/11, liberals and conservatives have agreed that the lasting solution to the problem of Islamic terror is to prevail in the battle of ideas and to discredit radical Islam, the ideology that motivates young men to kill and be killed. Victory in the war on terror will be won when a moderate, mainstream version of Islam—one that is compatible with modernity—fully triumphs over the world view of Osama bin Laden. ...

The debate over whether an Islamic center should be built a few blocks from the World Trade Center has ignored a fundamental point. If there is going to be a reformist movement in Islam, it is going to emerge from places like the proposed institute. We should be encouraging groups like the one behind this project, not demonizing them. Were this mosque being built in a foreign city, chances are that the U.S. government would be funding it.

The man spearheading the center, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a moderate Muslim clergyman. He has said one or two things about American foreign policy that strike me as overly critical —but it’s stuff you could read on The Huffington Post any day. On Islam, his main subject, Rauf’s views are clear: he routinely denounces all terrorism—as he did again last week, publicly. He speaks of the need for Muslims to live peacefully with all other religions. He emphasizes the commonalities among all faiths. He advocates equal rights for women, and argues against laws that in any way punish non-Muslims. His last book, What’s Right With Islam Is What’s Right With America, argues that the United States is actually the ideal Islamic society because it encourages diversity and promotes freedom for individuals and for all religions. His vision of Islam is bin Laden’s nightmare.

Rauf often makes his arguments using interpretations of the Quran and other texts. Now, I am not a religious person, and this method strikes me as convoluted and Jesuitical. But for the vast majority of believing Muslims, only an argument that is compatible with their faith is going to sway them.

Project Implicit is complete garbage

After reading a CNN article titled "You may be more racist than you think, study says," I followed a link in the article to Project Implicit on Harvard University's website, where you can supposedly take tests to discover your hidden biases regarding things like race, religion, age, weight, etc.

So far, I have taken three of Project Implicit's tests, and I am not impressed. First, I took the Black-White racial preference test, which said I have a strong automatic preference for White people. This apparently put me in Ku Klux Klan territory, as it was the most racist option possible.

Second, I took Project Implicit's Obama-McCain test, which actually tested two things: racial preference and politician preference. Regarding racial preference, it said I have no automatic preference for either Black people or White people, which was in complete disagreement with the racial preference test I had just taken a little while earlier. Regarding Obama vs. McCain, it said I have a slight preference for Obama. Although I did vote for Obama, I actually like both men but favored McCain most of the year. My switch from supporting McCain to supporting Obama was due to my dislike of Sarah Palin, not McCain, himself.

Finally, I took Project Implicit's "Presidents" test, which supposedly compares how one likes George W. Bush compared to other recent U.S. Presidents. For some background, I have despised George W. Bush as long as I have known about him. I contributed to McCain's 2000 campaign, in an attempt to prevent Bush from winning the Republican nomination. I voted for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Even after the September 11 attacks, when Bush's approval rating soared to around 90%, I was in the other 10%. I think he is one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. So what did Project Implicit's test say? (You know where this is going, don't you?) It said I have a strong automatic preference for George W. Bush, which is complete garbage.

I don't know what research Project Implicit's tests are based on, but from my experience the tests are no more accurate than random chance. The New York Times has also noted that "there isn’t even that much consistency in the same person’s scores if the test is taken again." Yikes! This is science? Wikipedia lists some of the criticisms of their testing methodology here. In fact, if you search for the term "Implicit Association Test," which is the testing methodology Project Implicit uses, you keep coming back to the same very small group of researchers. This suggests that their methodology has not passed the peer review necessary to verify that it is reliable. I get the uneasy feeling that Project Implicit's tests are as bogus as polygraphs. You've gotta love social science research.