Is There a "Right" Kind of Mosque?

In an effort to quell the furious response to the proposed Park51 Islamic Cultural center in Lower Manhattan, its proponents and liberal defenders stress that it will look nothing like a mosque. Stanford doctoral student Aisha Ghani sees in these arguments an insidious undercurrent that not only assumes Islam to be problematic, but that will make it that much more difficult to propose and defend visually distinctive mosques in the United States.

"[T]hese efforts - to present the Community Center as 'innocuous' via nomenclature - are just part of the problem; the very same rhetoric is being materially reproduced in the architectural plans for Park51. The structure, as it is being currently imagined, literally looks nothing like a mosque. What we see instead of minarets or a crescent moon, is an eyesore that screams of capitalist excess. There appears to be some 'Islamic influence' in the geometric art that 'may' be visible through its a glass exterior, but the aesthetics of this structure overwhelmingly suggest that its design is a carefully constructed attempt at attracting as little attention as possible. The gaze of those working and visiting the area will seamlessly move from Park51 to the other glass monuments that line the financial district, but it appears that this is precisely the point."