08/12/2010 at 06:09 PM
It’s not a mosque, it’s a Muslim community center, with a prayer room in it, along with exercise rooms, meeting rooms, etc. If your cities are like mine, you have a Jewish community center that’s similar, and you have people of all varieties of ethnicity and faith there. It’s not at Ground Zero, it’s two blocks away. How far away would it be OK to have a Muslim building? A quarter mile? Half a mile? Ten miles? A thousand miles? There are already two mosques in the neighborhood. Do we need to close them because they are an affront? What do Muslim people who had a loved one die on 9/11 do so as not to irritate us? Convert so they can mourn without being offensive? How exactly are Muslims who do not hate America supposed to demonstrate that? By just hiding, so that we can complain “Well, where are all the moderate Muslims, then?” And since when did Sarah Palin of all people become the guardian of the feelings of New Yorkers? No thanks, I’ll take my chances with the Muslim Community Center.
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08/12/2010 at 05:18 PM
Many in the Jewish community have been fooled into thinking that this is about freedom of religion. It isn’t.
If all the Muslims wanted to do was to build a mosque, they could do it more easily and for a lot less money almost anywhere other than lower Manhattan.
If it is not intended as a victory monument then why insist it be near
Ground Zero? If it is not intended as a victory monument why spend so much more to put it there than it would cost anywhere else in New York?
The religious freedom argument is a red herring. It is consciously disingenuous. And Mayor Bloomberg and his happy band of useful idiots have bought it hook line and sinker.
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