http://www.pensitoreview.com/2010/07/23/there-has-been-a-mosque-at-ground-zero-since-1970/
There Has Been a Mosque Near Ground Zero Since 1970 – Same Year the World Trade Center Opened
Jon Ponder | Jul. 23, 2010
I lived four blocks east of the World Trade Center in the 1980s, so I've followed the controversy about Park51, formerly known as Cordoba House, the new Islamic center being built two blocks north of the trade center at Park Place, with insider-y interest.
Andrew Sullivan has been posting notes sent to his site, the Daily Dish, from people who live in my old neighborhood — including this factoid that shouldn't be surprising: A mosque, Masjid Manhattan, has been holding services on Warren Street, four blocks north of the World Trade Center for the last 40 years. (It's about a block west of the Tweed Courthouse, if you know the area.)
Our members are city, state and federal employees, as well as professional employees of the Financial [District] who come to our Masjid to perform their daily prayers. Masjid Manhattan and its members condemn any type of terrorist acts. In particular, the attacks of 9/11 where non-Muslims as well as Muslims lost their lives.
The fact that Masjid Manhattan was started in 1970 is significant because the World Trade Center also opened that year. The first tenants moved into the North Tower in December 1970; the South Tower opened a year later, in January 1972.
The fact that Muslims have been worshiping four blocks away from Ground Zero for so long makes it hard to argue that it's a sacrilege for Muslims to worship so close to the attack by their fanatical coreligionists. (So should the fact that about 60 innocent Muslims died in the trade center on 9/11, roughly 2 percent of all fatalities.)
Ideologues like Mark "Colored People" Williams, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin have been working overtime to demonize the Cordoba project, depicting it as a deliberate affront to the memory of the victims of the attack. But Cordoba's backers say its mission is outreach:
Park 51 is a creation of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, an organization that seeks to improve relations between Islam and the West.
"This is a way for me to give back, as a New Yorker, to my community," Soho Properties developer and project backer Sharif El-Gamal told The Jerusalem Post. "I'm a New Yorker. This is about giving back to a city that's given us so much."
Gamal pointed out that the proposed center would not be "on Ground Zero," but two city blocks away, and would include a September 11 memorial.
According to the Cordoba House NYC Web site, the 13- story project would include a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, art exhibition spaces, bookstores and restaurants.
"There will be a mosque component, which will be a separate not-for-profit component of the project," Gamal said. "It's going to be a small component in a community center, just like the 92nd Street Y has a synagogue."
This Dish reader who lives in the neighborhood sums up how I'd feel if I still lived there:
I first heard about the mosque project a month or two ago, and the thing that struck me the most about it was the overwhelming support it had from the local community board in Lower Manhattan.
I don't know how familiar you are with how zoning works in New York and the role that community boards play in that process, but let me tell you, to have a community board agree 29-1 on ANY land use issue is quite an accomplishment. Furthermore, why is land use in New York City the business of anyone else but the citizens of New York? If so, I would really like to know Sarah Palin's opinion of the Atlantic Yards (or Hudson Yards or the expansion of Columbia University) project, an issue that is 1,000,000x more controversial than this project. That's all this is: a land use issue.
Following her logic (no small feat, I might add), do I now have the right to protest the construction of a new office building in Anchorage because it may house the offices of Big Oil and insult the people who suffered from the BP oil spill? Or can I have a say the next time some city in the "heartland" decides to build more sprawl at the expense of more livable communities with mixed-use development, walkable streets, and public transportation? I think I should, because it really "stabs me in the heart" when places do that.
This is a local issue, plain and simple. The people of New York – the ones actually attacked on 9/11 and who had to live through the aftermath – are the only ones who are affected by this. It is no one else's business. Sarah Palin and the "heartland" do not have permanent veto power over what gets built in Lower Manhattan. If they want a say over what happens there, my advice would be to move to New York. They might even learn something about the values of living in a multi-ethnic, multicultural community. Short of that, please STFU.
Another Dish reader from the neighborhood:
Did Newt really claim that the Cordoba House mosque would "overlook" the World Trade Center site? Rubbish. It is three blocks away and has no line of sight.
And Cordoba House is not a mosque:
I live two blocks from Ground Zero in a six-building apartment complex with an active tenant association. As best I can tell, Cordoba House is a non-issue among local residents. I haven't heard a word from anybody on the subject – not in the elevators, not in the lobby, not at the neighborhood bars or restaurants. Nada.
Here are the facts. The proposed Cordoba House is not a mosque. It's to be a community center modeled after the YMCA and the Jewish Community Center, with most of its 13 floors devoted to classrooms, fitness and recreation – open to the entire downtown community, not just Muslims. There is to be a "prayer space" that can hold up to 2,000 people. I'll aver that "prayer space" could just be a PC term for "mosque," though I confess no knowledge of what procedures must take place to consecrate a facility as an official mosque. The group's leader, Imam Abdul Rauf, has held services in a small mosque in the neighborhood since 1983. It isn't as though the group materialized out of nowhere or has no history in the neighborhood.
