This week, U.S. Representative Ted Poe gave an angry speech this week about how “insensitive” it would be for American Muslims who live in New York City to renovate and expand their community center, the Cordoba House. Poe spoke a great deal about “victims” in his speech, but never explained how it would be “sensitive” to treat the families of Muslims who were working in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 as second-class citizens without equal rights to worship and peaceably assemble.

Congressman Poe’s speech was full of half explanations. Poe gave an account of the old city of Cordoba, the city that the Cordoba House is named after, that went halfway toward the truth, but then veered sharply away.

Poe said, “Iman Rauf calls his project the Cordoba House. The first great mosque of Cordoba was built by medieval Islamic invaders. They built it on the site of a ransacked Roman Catholic cathedral in Spain. The name Cordoba–is that just a coincidence–the Cordoba mosque initiative at Ground Zero–too many in America thinks this mirrors history too closely.”

What actually happened in Cordoba is a bit different from what Ted Poe says happened. The Islamic Moors did invade Spain, but they didn’t steal that church where they built a mosque. They paid for the site of the church.

Then, the Muslims of Spain established Cordoba as the intellectual and cultural jewel of western Europe. Jews and Christians in Cordoba were given political autonomy and freedom of worship.

Then came 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella invaded Muslim lands, and force all Muslims to leave. They outlawed Islam in all of Spain, and closed all the mosques. Next, Ferdinand and Isabella kicked out all of the Jews. Then, they began the Spanish Inquisition, a program to torture people who they regarded as insufficiently orthodox in their practice of Christianity.

When Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf chose the name Cordoba House for the community center in Manhattan, he did so with a purpose: As a signal that Muslims in New York City wish to live in an atmosphere of respect for religious and cultural diversity. Ted Poe doesn’t want to hear that message, it seems. Perceiving the tolerance of Cordoba in Muslim days as a sign of dangerous radicalism, Poe makes the following demand:

“Iman Feisal Abdul Rauf – the man behind the Ground Zero mosque – should instead build a memorial to the victims of the radical Muslim extremists instead of a mosque. That would be sensitive. That would be compassionate.”

Actually, part of the renovation plan for the Cordoba House is to build a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001. The plan also includes worship space for Christians and Jews, going even further than what Ted Poe demands.

So, what is Representative Poe so angry for? It seems that Poe’s anger against Islam is more calculated to earn the support of voters back in his home district in Texas than to deal with any problem in New York City.