Politics & Power Quote by Kilari Anand Paul

The line lands like a courtroom verdict followed by a gut-level rebuke: yes, you can, but you should not. Kilari Anand Paul, speaking as a priest rather than a jurist, borrows the language of liberal democracy only to pivot into moral gatekeeping. It is a rhetorical two-step designed to sound even-handed while narrowing the acceptable uses of freedom. Rights are affirmed in the abstract, then quietly subordinated to a second standard, "the right thing", where the speaker gets to be the referee.

The subtext is about ownership of grief and the policing of proximity. "Ground Zero" is not treated as Manhattan real estate but as sacred, wounded ground whose meaning is presumed to be fixed: Muslims may belong in America, the sentence implies, but they must not be too visible near the nation’s trauma. It frames Muslim presence there as an avoidable provocation, shifting the burden of social peace onto the minority rather than onto those who might react badly. That’s a familiar move in public arguments about pluralism: tolerance, but on condition of self-erasure.

The final clause is the pressure point: "most Americans, and most moderate Muslims". It’s a coalition conjured into existence to isolate dissenters as extremists or outliers. By claiming Muslims on his side, Paul seeks to preempt accusations of bias and recast the debate as common sense rather than cultural anxiety. In the post-9/11 context, that’s not neutral; it’s a bid to make deference feel like virtue and to rename exclusion as sensitivity.