the Ground Zero Mosque as a Means to Pursuing a Stronger America

People commonly attach strong psychological values to physi-cal landscapes that are associated with their group history. Even if the land does not provide valuable resources, group members still react passionately when the integrity of the land is perceived to have been compromised by an out-group. Such is the case with the Ground Zero mosque controversy in the United States. Ground Zero is the name given to the former site of New York City’s World Trade Center towers, which were destroyed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. When the news broke in mid-2010 that developers had pro-posed building an Islamic community center, which would house a Muslim prayer place, near the Ground Zero site, the topic rapidly generated criticism and anger. Opponents typi-cally argued that Muslims were the “enemy ” who were respon-sible for the current state of Ground Zero in the first place. How could “we ” allow them to build a “mosque ” so close to Ground Zero?1 Indeed, as attested by the two headlines opening this arti-cle, most people attributed the vehement reactions to the con-troversy solely to a general anti-Muslim sentiment. Although we agree with this obvious wisdom, we argue that Americans’ opposition toward the Ground Zero mosque may also have arisen from a latent motivation to regain a positive American identity, which had suffered from the economic recession and accompanying decline in international influence during the years preceding the mosque controversy. More broadly speak-ing, we used the Ground Zero mosque controversy as a case study to demonstrate that in-group members may participate in intergroup conflict for reasons other than their hostility toward an out-group