Mosque at Ground Zero? Plan angers NY

AirforcePilot

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N.Y. Governor to Meet With Ground Zero Mosque Developers, but No Plans to Relocate
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/17/ny-governor-meet-nyc-mosque-developers/

New York Gov. David Paterson has renewed efforts to broker a deal over a proposed Islamic cultural center that would include a mosque near Manhattan's Ground Zero, but a key voice in the discussion denied to Fox News any plans to relocate.

Paterson last week offered his help and the possibility that state land could be used for an alternative site for the project.After a similar report appeared Monday in an Israeli newspaper, Sharif El-Gamal of SoHo Properties, which owns the property at Park 51, said it's absolutely wrong to suggest that the site is being abandoned.

"No. No. No," El-Gamal said.

"The reports that we may be abandoning the project are completely incorrect. We are committed to our plans of building Park 51 to serve the community of lower Manhattan. Our mission is one of peace, understanding and tolerance," he said.

On Park51's official Twitter account, a statement simply said: "We're moving ahead with current plans."

The 13-story Islamic cultural center and mosque that would be located two blocks from where the World Trade Center stood until Sept. 11, 2001, has raised a national argument over the First Amendment and anger over the terror attacks.

Supporters say the mosque and its founders do not represent the beliefs of anyone associated with the attack on the U.S. that day, and its construction will represent the freedom of religion that America prizes.

Opponents say it's not a constitutional question, but one of right and wrong since no one wants to deny the Muslim community the right to practice its religion, but to show a greater respect and sensitivity for the tragedy.

The issue has caused a major debate among politicians, including President Obama, whose various comments over the weekend have forced lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to stake positions on whether they support the mosque's location or prefer the developers to move it.

Congress and the White House have no recourse to prevent its construction, and local officials last week approved new construction at the site, which is currently an old Burlington Coat Factory building that suffered damage from landing gear from one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers.

Late Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is in a tough race for re-election, suggested SoHo Properties find an alternate location. The statement was cast as a break from the president on an increasingly unpopular issue.

The White House said Tuesday it got the heads-up from Reid that he was going to side against the mosque's site.

"We had a sense of what they were going to do," White House spokesman Bill Burton said, describing Reid as an independent individual and strong leader in the Democratic Party.

However, one imam who complained that Muslims are being prevented from building mosques elsewhere around the country chastised Reid.

"It has political capital, but very negative political capital. It speaks to the worst of politics to advance aspirations for the White House, Senate or House or people already in the Senate, the majority leader of Senate, because the race is so close in Nevada. I'm talking about Harry Reid," Mahdi Bray, executive director of Muslim American Society Freedom.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who strongly opposes Park 51 as the site for the mosque, will attend a previously scheduled appearance at a fundraiser Friday night for Chris Gibson, a GOP congressional candidate in upstate New York, who says political opponents have tried to distort his stance that there should not be a mosque near Ground Zero.

"As someone who wore our nation's uniform and helped fight against those who share the extremist views of our attackers on that fateful day, I am disappointed political operatives would distort my words on the matter of how we best honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks," he said in a written statement.

"I do not support the construction of a mosque and have always felt it's neither the time nor place for it," he said.

Fox News' Eric Shawn and James Rosen contributed to this report.


"We are working with the developers on a staff level but there have not been any formal discussions between the governor and imam or developer," Morgan Hook, a spokesman for Paterson told The Wall Street Journal. "However, we expect to have a meeting scheduled in the near future."

Hook declined to say whether Paterson would offer state land to relocate the project -- a proposal he floated last week.

Rep. Peter King, a Long Island Republican who opposes the site of the project, said Paterson phoned him Tuesday to say he planned to meet with the developers to talk about an alternative site.
 

pankaj nema

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Such is the growing and strong opposition to the ground zero mosque ,that now the politicians who were supporting it are now " seeing" the likely consequences , if it becomes a reality.

The ground zero mosque will become a " permanent weapon " in the hands of the republicans , with which they will flay and slay the democrats.

Simply put democrats will be labelled as TRAITORS .
 

ejazr

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COERCIVE ASSIMILATION
- The lessons of Cordoba House and Babri Masjid -Telegraph India

Mukul Kesavan
For an Indian, the controversy about the proposal to build a mosque and cultural centre two blocks from Ground Zero is instructive. When polled, the plan, cleared by municipal authorities in New York, was opposed by a broad majority in America as a whole and by more than half of New York's famously liberal citizens. Sarah Palin asked its Muslim sponsors to give it up: "Ground Zero Mosque supporters," she tweeted, "doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate."

With the exception of Mayor Bloomberg, who has strongly supported the mosque project, Republicans have lined up behind Palin, driven both by their personal convictions as well as popular feeling, since the mid-term elections due later this year are an opportunity to snatch one house of Congress, possibly both, from the Democrats. President Obama in a Ramazan meeting with American Muslims seemed to endorse the mosque, then 'clarified' later that he was merely supporting the right of Muslims to build a place of worship wherever it was allowed by local regulations, and not expressing an opinion on the merits or otherwise of building the mosque in question.

The mosque's opponents have argued that while there may well be a constitutional right to build, good sense and consideration demand that the right not be exercised. Charles Krauthammer argued that just as the Japanese hadn't tried to build a Japanese Cultural Centre at Pearl Harbour, Muslim Americans should respect American public opinion enough to walk this proposal back. It wasn't a freedom of religion issue: Muslims were welcome to build mosques elsewhere — just not next to Ground Zero.

There's a plausibility to the anti-mosque position. Indians have lived with thin-skinned sensibilities for so long, that we are the world's champions at airing and understanding hurt feelings. We ban books, criminalize paintings, lean on authors and bully artists because some group's feelings have been or might be hurt. It's likely that some desis think that the plan to build the Cordoba House (as the mosque and cultural centre project is called) two blocks away from a site that has come to embody Muslim extremism is offensive and provocative.

Sadanand Dhume, journalist and commentator on fundamentalist Islam, said as much in a television discussion about the proposed mosque. He said that if the mosque's sponsors were seeking to promote understanding and reconciliation, the mosque near Ground Zero was amongst the stupidest ways of setting about it because the proposal had clearly alienated non-Muslim Americans. Dhume recognized the constitutional right of American Muslims to build the mosque, but made it clear that the people who opposed the exercise of that right were neither bigoted nor unreasonable and the sponsors of the mosque ought to be properly mindful of their feelings.

Barkha Dutt, the anchor for the programme in which Dhume spoke on the controversy, said at the end that a willingness to break out of the straitjacket of political correctness (that is, being open to the idea that the letter of a constitutional right to worship ought not always trump the spirit of sensible accommodation) was a good thing. Put that way, surely Palin and Krauthammer and Dhume are right?

No, they aren't. They are neither right nor reasonable. Arguments like this always, without exception, represent the thin end of an intolerant, majoritarian wedge.

Dhume, for example, has written elsewhere in praise of Sarkozy's determination to ban the burqa in France. It's worth following his arguments in some detail because on the matter of Muslims and the West, Dhume reliably represents the new majoritarianism. In his article for YaleGlobal, a Yale University website, Dhume contrasts Sarkozy's opposition to the burqa with Obama's unwillingness to make laws against individual costume, to the latter's disadvantage. The French parliamentary commission's report recommending that the burqa be banned in public facilities like buses, the Metro and hospitals, constitutes, according to Dhume, a proper recognition of the ideological threat posed by radical Islam.

The same man who would, for the sake of a majority's sensibilities, have American Muslims back off from the Cordoba House project, thinks it's a good thing that France has moved to ban the burqa because the 2,000 women who wear the burqa in that country represent, according to Dhume (and here he approvingly quotes a French legislator), "the tip [of] a black tide of fundamentalism". Dhume argues that every time a woman in a burqa boards a bus in Paris or enters a public hospital in Lyon, Muslim fundamentalists think they've won. Ergo, he concludes grandly, "[r]olling back the burqa contradicts this triumphalist narrative".

The costume choices of 2,000 women from France's poorest minority become an existential threat to the West in Dhume's lurid narrative. And France's move to partially ban the burqa is not just good in itself, it's also a sign of other good things to come. Dhume explicitly sees France as the necessary vanguard in the West's struggle to contain Muslims and Islam: "As a birthplace of the Enlightenment, and the principal political architect of a unified Europe, the French example is a bellwether for other countries on the continent struggling to assimilate large communities of recent Muslim immigrants. The Swiss recently voted to disallow minarets on mosques; and Geert Wilders, Holland's most popular politician and the maker of the polemical anti-Islam film Fitna, faces a trial over his outspoken criticism of the faith. Newspapers report that Italy, Germany and Denmark, among others, are already considering similar anti-burqa laws."

Notice, in this passage, the mention of the Swiss prohibition of minarets on mosques. Dhume sees the banning of the burqa in France (and possibly in Italy, Germany and Denmark) and the denial of minarets in Switzerland as part of the same effort in 'assimilation'. In this world view, Cordoba House near Ground Zero is a bad idea because of the majority thinks it is, in the same way as minarets are a bad idea because a majority of Swiss people think they are. This isn't a defence of republican virtue; it's a little paean to to coercive assimilation.

Dhume's instinctive majoritarianism is explicitly on display when, in the same essay, he argues that France's aggressive engagement with the burqa is superior to America's hands-off approach because France's position "strikes a balance between individual rights and the concerns of the larger community. (According to a poll published in the magazine Le Point, nearly six out of ten French citizens support the ban.)"

So that's all right then. Armed with this rudimentary compass, Sadanand Dhume sets out to find the West's moral North and, to no one's surprise, he consistently reaches a place where — regardless of law, principle or right — minorities properly defer to majority feeling. The same writer who would defend Geert Wilders right to robustly criticize Islam as also the right of Danish cartoonists to lampoon Islam's prophet, doesn't expect Western majorities to acknowledge or respect the rights of Muslims to wear what they want or worship where they please. In fact, he sees Western moves to curb those rights as a virtuous defence of republican values.

As I follow the Cordoba House controversy, I know that I've been here before. After the Babri Masjid was razed in 1992, a majoritarian common sense evolved about the resolution of the dispute. 'Reasonable', 'moderate' public men and women argued that Muslims, regardless of the historical merits of the Ramjanmabhoomi case, ought to defer to the Hindu majority's sensibilities in this one case. To concede the site as a gesture of goodwill would, they argued, earn Muslims enormous credit and disarm militant Hindus. To persist in laying claim to Ayodhya would merely aggravate the dispute, consolidate Hindu militancy and marginalize Muslims.

A decade later, with the Bharatiya Janata Party defeated and out of office, the realpolitik force of that argument is a little dissipated. Not to concede Ayodhya to a violent majoritarian mobilization was clearly the right thing to do at the time for anyone who took republican and constitutional principle seriously. If there's a lesson to be learnt from the Cordoba House and the Babri Masjid controversies, it is this: if you want to be principled about not 'appeasing' minorities, it's useful not to spend your polemical energies pandering to majorities.
 

White Clouds

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The debate over the planned mosque at Ground Zero seems a bit overblown to me; A mosque has existed before 9/11 near the planned cultural center and continues to operate to this day. I don't have a link, but I heard or read from what I considered a reliable source that the new one was replacing at least one of them as only 20% of their congregation could fit in another one at a time. The existing mosque and the proposed mosque are probably 800 feet apart; one city block, let's say. The imam's old mosque is approximately half a mile away or 12 city blocks. The imam has had a mosque in the neighborhood for over 27 years. The new Islamic center will be approximately 2 city blocks away from ground zero, has no line of sight to or from ground zero, and will be approximately 13 stories tall, by no means the tallest building in its block of blocks. This is not to be merely a mosque but a community center with an auditorium, pool, public meeting rooms, children's services, and all sorts of things for the entire community to partake of and participate in. Actually, it's an Islamic community center modeled on a Jewish community center farther up the island of Manhattan. It's the media and the proponents of the center who called it a mosque. And who also, by the way said it was on or at ground zero, which it is not.

Sarah Palin addressed this as hallowed ground; however, also on this block are a Burger King, betting/gambling stores, dive bars, and a strip club. While the actual WTC site is somewhat sacred to many, those who have lived in NY will tell you that the rest of it is business as usual....Why is it the most outspoken opponents are as usual the ones coming from the right wing also known as Republicans (G.O.P/ Tea Party)...most of whom are not New Yorkers? Is it a co-incidence that republican party (GW Bush was President when he ran from this party) mostly consist of far right (sometimes also referred as extreme radical right wing) Christians, Christian Zionist and many American-Jews?

No one seems to want facts when
1.) their emotions are involved and
2.) there's a pretty much a one-sided media blitz going on for their minds which is happening in western MSM (Faux News).

In addition, one of the very tricky things about this issue is that there are so many "reasons" and so many different factors at play. People are united behind one "cause" but for a dozen different reasons, ranging from the purely emotional and caring, to thinking it's insensitive to the families, to opportunistic reasons (Walid Shoebat and Pamela Geller...sell books and speaking engagements), to the religious and to the political (uniting a faction or getting votes). It's the perfect wedge issue too.

It's such a shame so many Americans confuse Islam with terrorism, and see the putting (another) mosque near ground zero as somehow 'wrong.' The reality is so different. It reminds me of the sad and shameful saga and a blot on India of Babri Masjid demolition event.

For me personally the whole thing is a non-issue - it's ridiculous to get upset about it from where I sit. It's such a complicated issue I could happily hit the word limit several times whilst explaining *why* I think it's a non-issue, but I suspect nobody who'd benefit from a bit of open-mindedness would ever read it. The more small minded you are, the more firmly the blinkers stay on.

Religious tolerance and freedom are supposed to be embraced in the USA, but based on the reactions in USA specially from Republicans and posts here on this issue you'd think people were mostly intolerant right-wing supremacists, which I'm sure isn't the case? I used to love the 'idea' of America when I was a kid, I always wanted to live there. Now it seems to have turned into a virtual island of paranoid people with big guns, lashing out at anyone who looks at it the wrong way. It's very sad.
 
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White Clouds

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The project has been mischaracterized, so I want to explain clearly what it would be. Our planned 13-story community center is intended for Park Place between Church St. and West Broadway. It is not a mosque, although it will include a space for Muslim prayer services. It will have a swimming pool, basketball court, meeting rooms, a 500-seat auditorium, banquet facilities and many other things a community needs to be healthy. The center will offer theatrical programming, art exhibitions and cooking classes. These are amenities missing now from this part of the city.

And, yes, the center will have a public memorial to the victims of 9/11 as well as a meditation room where all will be welcome for quiet reflection. The center will support soul and body.

The center will be open to all regardless of religion. Like a YMCA, the 92nd St. Y or the Jewish Community Center uptown, it will admit everyone. It will be a center for all New Yorkers.

What grieves me most is the false reporting that leads some families of 9/11 victims to think this project somehow is designed by Muslims to gloat over the attack.

That could not be further from the truth.

My heart goes out to all of the victims of 9/11. They are all heroes. But I urge you to include in your sympathy the family of Mohammad Salman Hamdani. Born in Pakistan, his parents brought him to New York as a small child. He wanted nothing more than to be an American, and he was.

A high school football player in Bayside, Queens, he graduated from Queens College. When he could not get into an American medical school, he became a part-time ambulance driver. He disappeared on 9/11; his body was found months later in the wreckage of the north tower. This 23-year-old Muslim died trying to save his fellow New Yorkers.

Religion did not separate the victims on that terrible day. Whether Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or any other faith, all of these people made up the fabric of New York. They all died together.

Freedom of religion is something we hold dear. It is the core of what America is all about, and it is what people worldwide respect about our country. The Koran itself says compulsion in religion is wrong.

American Muslims want to be both good Americans and good Muslims. They can be the best assets the United States has in combatting radicalism.

They know that many American values - freedom of religion, human dignity and opportunity for prosperity - are also Muslim values.

We believe that people of good faith can use the common core of their religions to find solutions to problems that will let them live together.

I have been the imam at a mosque in Tribeca for 27 years. I am as much a part of this community as anyone else. Our mosque is as much a part of the neighborhood as any church, synagogue or surrounding business. My work is to make sure mosques are not recruiting grounds for radicals.

Src: The truth about the 'mosque': The leader of proposed Muslim center near Ground Zero defends his plan
 
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This should never have became a political issue this is the same pattern that has been repeated in India politicizing religion. Religion is always a emotional issue for followers of any faith to politize this is the first signs of the degenarate path Obama is taking USA in. In NY this mosque is similar to Jerusalem Christians and Jews vs Muslims it has become a symbolic religious battle when it never should have been.
 

ejazr

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@ Ek Bharatiya

Not all republicans agree with the sentiment. Infact mostof theintellectuals of the party are down right disgusted by the rhetoric of Gingrich.

[video]http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/player.swf[/video]

Read more opinions by experts and watch the video here if the above link doesn't work
http://mediamatters.org/research/201008160028


I think the bad economic situation and lack of jobs is also playing into the hand of politics here. Its a fact that in times of harships populations turn intolerant. Until the Ameircan economy turns around and starts creating jobs we might see similar sentiment and not just about this cultural centre but any prayer/cultural centre across the US. Or even Gurudwaras and temples for that matter.
 
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AirforcePilot

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Decision Not to Rebuild Church Destroyed on 9/11 Surprises Greek Orthodox Leaders

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/18/leaders-disappointed-government-declares-deal-rebuild-ground-zero-church-dead/

Greek Orthodox leaders trying to rebuild the only church destroyed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks expressed shock this week after learning, via Fox News, that government officials had killed a deal to relocate the church.

The St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, once a tiny, four-story building in the shadows of lower Manhattan, was destroyed in 2001 by one of the falling World Trade Center towers. Nobody from the church was hurt in the attack, but the congregation has, for the past eight years, been trying to rebuild its house of worship.

Though talks between the church and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey stalled last year, church leaders say they've been trying to kick-start discussions ever since. But amid debate over whether a proposed Islamic community center should go forward near Ground Zero, government officials threw cold water on the prospect of any deal with the church -- telling Fox News the deal is off the table.

Confronted with the Port Authority's verdict, Father Mark Arey, of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, said it's the first he's heard that.

"Negotiations did break off last year. We were expecting to hear from their lawyers -- we never did. We're still expecting to hear from them," he told Fox News. "We're disappointed. ... 130 Liberty Street was promised to us."

Arey was referring to the address, about 100 yards away from the original site, where the government earlier proposed relocating the church. The Port Authority and the church announced a deal in July 2008 under which the Port Authority would grant land and up to $20 million to help rebuild the church -- in addition, the authority was willing to pay up to $40 million to construct a bomb-proof platform underneath.

Within a year, the deal fell through and talks ended -- apparently for good, according to the Port Authority.

The archdiocese and Port Authority now offer sharply conflicting accounts of where things went wrong. The Port Authority has previously claimed the church was making additional demands -- like wanting the $20 million up front and wanting to review plans for the surrounding area. They say the church can still proceed on its own if it wishes.

"The church continues to have the right to rebuild at their original site, and we will pay fair market value for the underground space beneath that building," a spokesperson with the Port Authority told Fox News.

But Arey said the original site is no good. Archdiocese officials disputed the Port Authority's claims, saying the church has complied with all conditions.

"It's not about money," Arey said. He expressed hope that the project can still be salvaged.

"This little church deserves to be rebuilt. It's symbolic, not just for Orthodox Christians, not just for Christians, but for all Americans," Arey said, calling the mosque debate "helpful" to the church's cause. "I believe that people around the country are asking themselves the question -- why all this talk about a mosque being built near Ground Zero? What about a little church that was destroyed on 9/11? ... This is basically a bureaucratic impasse. This will dissolve in the face of the American public consciousness."

Former New York Gov. George Pataki, who worked with the church as governor, told Fox News on Tuesday that the church should be rebuilt.

George Demos, a Republican candidate for New York's 1st Congressional District, also has drawn attention to the negotiations. He released an open letter to President Obama Tuesday urging him to, as he did with the mosque debate, weigh in on the church discussions.

"While we may disagree on the appropriateness of the mosque, we can surely agree that it is an issue of national importance that the only house of worship actually destroyed on September 11, 2001, the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, be rebuilt," Demos wrote. "Mr. President, please stand up and defend our Judeo-Christian values, express your public and unwavering support for St. Nicholas Church, and ensure that it is rebuilt."

Father Alex Karloutsos, assistant to the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, Archbishop Demetrios, told FoxNews.com that the Port Authority "simply forgot about the church" at Ground Zero.

Fox News' David Lee Miller and Kathleen Foster and FoxNews.com's Judson Berger contributed to this report.
 

Currywurst

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The Muslim community in America as a whole should rather introspect if this is the approach they would like to take with the Majority( A majority the does not know much about their religion).. At a time were the community feels itself targeted in mass and typecast as the enemy within.. was it the right decision to go about wanting to build a mosque at G-0 just because the constitution in the country you live in allows you the freedom to practice and preach your religion anywhere within its borders..

The spotlight on the Muslim community in American has been growing at it has not been a positive growth.. The tireless attempt by organizations like CAIR to just about go sue any one from the police to some red neck shopper who did not like a woman's veil all adds to ever present mass of material that anyone with a little bit of free time can use to showcase the religion in a negative light..

Going about building a mosque at G-0 is just about the most dumbest decision that the so called Sufi peace loving Muslims could do.. considering they align more to the spiritual wavelength of Islam.. You don't go about building a model of peaceful coexistence between Muslims, Christians by leading an in your face campaign to build a Mosque next to the place where America as a nation suffered its most bloody terrorist attack..attributed to Radical Islam.. This is just leading more and more American to develop a rather unsavory picture of the religion and like anywhere in the world people are earning some well deserved browny points.. as if there were not enough black images to color the distorted view of Muslims in America. Here goes some Muslims hammering nails onto their own foot.. Republicans could not be happier is seeing icing on the cake as this just provides the tea party campaign some much needed closet boost in morale and votes..

Pointing the reader' in the direction of Media Matters for opinions from experts is rather misleading as the sole purpose of MM is to just about criticizing everything that comes out of Fox.. Washington times.. and the Conservatives overall.. I don't believe that one can expect an unbiased opinion from Media Matters on the G-0 issue.. While I do enjoy the retorts on the likes of Beck..Rush..and team..

 

SHASH2K2

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Islamic Center Exposes Mixed Feelings Locally




In the storm of anger and accusation over an Islamic center and mosque planned near ground zero, one thing seems clear to Laique Khan: His fellow Muslims have a right to build the project.
"If this really is a free country," said Mr. Khan, 56, the manager of a trucking company in Brooklyn, "then, by all rights you must, you must, allow it."

The same holds true for Pervaz Akhtar, a tailor who keeps a shop a few blocks from the center's site — and who lost his first shop and nearly his life in the Sept. 11 attacks. "There is a principle involved," Mr. Akhtar, 58, said. "We believe in the American Constitution."

Yet with equal confidence, both men — who squared their shoulders and seemed to address an imaginary town hall meeting when discussing the issue — embrace a seemingly contradictory conviction about the center: It does not have to be two blocks from the site of the attacks.

"If they want to put it 10 blocks away, that's fine," Mr. Akhtar said. "I believe in compromise, too."

The debate over building a Muslim community center so close to where terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam killed more than 2,700 people has attracted the intense views of political and religious leaders, victims' families and pundits. But the outcome could have its most lasting impact on the estimated 600,000 Muslim residents in New York and its suburbs.

Many of them expressed a welter of mixed feelings in interviews this week on street corners, in stores and in mosques: Some said they felt embittered or hurt by criticism of the project, and of Islam in general, yet understood opponents' misgivings. Others said Muslim-Americans should continue to push for the center's construction as a means of asserting their full citizenship rights — but not too hard, lest they draw even more resentment. A few said they wished the project had never been proposed in the first place.

While these few dozen conversations do not represent the views of all Muslim New Yorkers, they show that many are grappling deeply, through the current tension, with the lingering ambiguities of their place in American society nine years after 9/11.

Malik Nadeem Abid, an insurance agent whose storefront window on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn framed a steady stream of men walking to pray at the mosque next door, said he was "not a big fan" of the decision by the Cordoba Initiative, a Muslim group that promotes interfaith cooperation, to build the center near ground zero.

"It was not a politically smart move, from my perspective," said Mr. Abid, 45. "No one wants a center in downtown Manhattan that stands as a permanent fixture of this terrible tension."

Yet the decision has been made, he said, "and we can't let the loudest voices dictate what happens." Still, he added, if the center were built 5 or 10 blocks away, as some people have proposed, "I don't think it would matter very much."

That kind of ambivalence over the downtown project, some said, was partly the point: Muslims in America embody the same diversity as everyone else.

"I see both sides," said A. Chowdhry, 27. She lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, and teaches in a New Jersey grade school. "As Americans, ground zero is our hallowed ground, too. But it pains me to be excluded from this part of being American."

For many Muslims, nothing since the 2001 attacks has crystallized the difficulties of being both American and Muslim like the fight over the nine-story center on Park Place, which is to be called Park51. Several compared the experience to the years just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when Japanese-Americans were presumed by many to be disloyal.

"It's been nine years, but it feels like we haven't moved an inch since then to come to terms with the issues," said Muntasir Sattar, 30, an anthropology student at Columbia University. "And now it is all coming back," almost like a symptom of post-traumatic stress, he said.

Some have noticed more anti-Muslim graffiti in the subways. Young Muslim-Americans said they had found themselves cornered at social events, usually by the older relatives of non-Muslim friends, and asked to justify what was usually referred to as "a mosque on top of ground zero."

Majeed Babar, 39, a Pakistani journalist living in Queens, says he talks to people concerned for the safety of their loved ones. "People just want to be able to go to work and support their families, and not worry that their children will be attacked in the streets because of all this drumbeat of anger," he said.
At the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens, Imam Shamsi Ali, the director, said the debate over Park51 was almost a distraction from what he believed was the real concern: "the Islamophobia that is causing the same resistance to the building of mosques in Staten Island and Tennessee and California."
He added, "I am more worried about the larger issue than about whether this project succeeds or not."

In Muslim neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, a mixture of bustle and otherworldly quiet defines street life these days, during the holy month of Ramadan, when as a spiritual exercise in patience and humility, observant Muslims refrain from eating or drinking between dawn and dusk.

Moinul Haque, 25, a soft-spoken graduate student in mathematics at the University of Texas, home for the summer in Jackson Heights, winced when asked about the hubbub over the Manhattan center. As a person who guards his privacy, he said, he was a little resentful at having to defend Muslims' citizenship rights in what he called "a wholly artificial controversy."

But he felt that the center's developers should not unilaterally withdraw from the downtown site. "It will solve nothing if the organizers back down now," he said. "It has to be worked out. There has to be dialogue."

Misunderstandings only compound themselves unless confronted, he said.

That was exactly the concern of Ahmed Habeeb, president of the Islamic Center of Long Island, in Westbury. He recently reached out to neighbors and the police through the local news media with a special appeal: Because the festivities marking the end of Ramadan this year will occur close to Sept. 11, Mr. Habeeb asked that residents not misinterpret the party atmosphere at the mosque on that final evening, when more than 1,000 people are expected to share a meal and exchange gifts.

"It will not mean that we are celebrating the 9/11 attacks," he said. "It sounds strange to have to say this, I know. But in this climate you can't be too careful."

Like many Muslims asked about the center near ground zero, Mr. Habeeb said he was tired of talking about it, and would be happier if it had never been conceived. "If I were in charge, I would probably rethink the whole thing for the sake of communal harmony," he said. "But there are risks in backing off."

In such a fierce conflict, he explained, the center's foes may interpret compromise as a sign of weakness — fueling opposition to new mosques everywhere.

"If we back off on it, it could be seen by them as 'One down, two thousand to go,' " he said. "It's very complex at this point."
 

bhramos

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Ground Zero Mosque - Why there? Freedom of Speech vs Freedom of Faith

 
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bhramos

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Obama: Build Mosque at Ground Zero

 
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ajtr

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Wah ji wah. the champion of religious freedom and human rights america was made to issue an statement from white house regarding emphasizing the chritian belief of president obama.....:emot15:


Obama is a Christian, clarifies White House

August 20, 2010 09:36 IST

The White House on Thursday insisted that United States President Barack Obama [ Images ] is a Christian and his faith is not a topic of conversation, a day after a poll showed that nearly 18 per cent of Americans think he is a Muslim.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said most Americans care more about the economy and the country's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and 'they are not reading a lot of news about what religion the president is.'

"The president is obviously a Christian. He prays every day. He communicates with his religious adviser every single day. There is a group of pastors that he takes counsel from on a regular basis," Burton said.

"And his faith is very important to him, but it's not something that is a topic of conversation every single day," he added.

Burton was responding to questions on the Pew Research Center poll which showed one-third of Americans or 18 per cent think Obama is Muslim.

That current rating was up from 11 per cent in March who said Obama was a Muslim. The survey also showed that just 34 per cent said Obama is Christian, down from 48 per cent who said so last year.

The largest share of people, 43 per cent, said they don't know his religion. "I just think people are focused on other issues and not paying all that much attention to exactly what the president does with his spirituality. But as you all know and have covered extensively, he is Christian and his faith is very important to him," Burton said.

The spokesman said Obama has spoken about his faith extensively in the past. "You can bet that he'll talk about his faith again. You could always play the "would-of, could-of, should-of," he said.

"But the president's top priority here is not making sure that Americans know what a devout Christian he is, it is making sure that we are getting the economy on track and we are creating jobs in this country," he said.
 

mayfair

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They won't build it! Hardhats vow not to work on controversial mosque near Ground Zero

A growing number of New York construction workers are vowing not to work on the mosque planned near Ground Zero.

"It's a very touchy thing because they want to do this on sacred ground," said Dave Kaiser, 38, a blaster who is working to rebuild the World Trade Center site.

"I wouldn't work there, especially after I found out about what the imam said about U.S. policy being responsible for 9/11," Kaiser said.

The grass-roots movement is gaining momentum on the Internet. One construction worker created the "Hard Hat Pledge" on his blog and asked others to vow not to work on the project if it stays on Park Place.

"Thousands of people are signing up from all over the country," said creator Andy Sullivan, a construction worker from Brooklyn. "People who sell glass, steel, lumber, insurance. They are all refusing to do work if they build there."

"Hopefully, this will be a tool to get them to move it," he said. "I got a problem with this ostentatious building looming over Ground Zero."

A planned 13-story community center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, Park51 has exploded into a national debate.

Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers' Association, said unions have not yet taken a "formal position" on Park51, but he understands why members would be hesitant to work there.

"It's a very difficult dilemma for the contractors and the organized labor force because we are experiencing such high levels of unemployment," he said. "Yet at the same time, this is a very sacred sight to the union guys."

"There were construction workers killed on 9/11 and many more who got horribly sick cleaning up Ground Zero," Coletti said. "It's very emotional."

L.V. Spina, a Manhattan construction worker who created anti-mosque stickers that some workers are slapping on their hardhats, said he would "rather pick cans and bottles out of trash cans" than build the Islamic center near Ground Zero.

"But if they moved it somewhere else, we would put up a prime building for these people," he said. "Hell, you could do it next to my house in Rockaway Beach, I would be fine with it. But I'm not fine with it where blood has been spilled."

Spina, who sells 9/11 apparel on his website, said he's printed thousands of stickers and plans to produce thousands more.

"They're going all over the country," he said. "They got pretty popular fast."

Popularity aside, there are some construction workers choosing not to set themselves against the project.

"Hundreds of guys here are wearing stickers as a sign of protest, but I'm on the fence about it," said Frank Langan, 50, a site superintendent from Queens working at Ground Zero.

"It's a tough debate," he said. "I sympathize with workers' position, but at the same time, you can't single out all Muslims because of a small number of terrorists."
 
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AirforcePilot

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^^^ In one of my post I stated that it will be almost impossible to find an American construction co. that will build the mosque at that location.
 

Daredevil

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Indian Muslims want 'Ground Zero Mosque' relocated

The Washington-based Association of Indian Muslims of America asked the Cordoba Institute and other promoters of the Islamic Center termed as the 'Ground Zero Mosque' to relocate it in the interest of the larger good of the community.

A statement issued by Kaleem Kawaja, a leader of the association noted that the initiative of a set of New York City Muslims to build the center, a couple of blocks from the site of the Twin Towers has generated a super-heated controversy and much tension in US. In this tense situation a national debate is raging across America. It is very laudable that the New York City government headed by Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the US government headed by President Barrack Obama, and a large segment of US intellectuals and community leaders have defended the religious freedom right of America's Muslims to build their places of worship anywhere in US, it noted.

However, it is time for the American Muslims to take the initiative and make a serious effort to resolve this unseemly controversy and diffuse this very divisive tension. With a view to respect the sentiments of many Americans, New York City Muslims should voluntarily relocate this Islamic Center, to a new location in lower Manhattan that is further away from Ground Zero.

In taking this initiative on their own they will earn much goodwill of the entire American nation, will resolve the current tense relationship between Muslim Americans and other Americans, and will build a very durable bridge of understanding between Muslims and others in America.

On behalf of about two hundred thousand American-Muslims with origin in India, we appeal to relocate it, the statement said.
 

The Messiah

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I wish they dont make it just to show the world that usa is not what it claims to be...plus it would show the muslims in good light. But you can bet right wing loonies will claim victory!

I still remember a sentence by usa president (dont know who?) who said usa is a beacon of light in a dark world...what a load of nonsense.
 

bhramos

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Gay Bar Proposed Next to Ground Zero Mosque.

In what could be a serious proposal or a thought exercise, libertarian commentator Greg Gutfeld wants to see if the tolerance expressed by proponents of the Ground Zero mosque extends to welcoming a bar that caters to Islamic gay men next door.

Gutfeld, who supports the controversial project that would include a mosque and cultural center near the site of the 9/11 attacks, said Monday that he had pitched investors his idea for the gay bar, which would serve nonalcoholic drinks to accommodate the Muslim faith. He said he wants to reduce homophobia in the Muslim world while making sure that the mosque builders are not hypocritical.

"Bottom line: I hope that the mosque owners will be as open to the bar, as I am to the new mosque," writes Gutfeld at The Daily Gut. "After all, the belief driving them to open up their center near Ground Zero, is no different than mine."

Gutfeld, the host of Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld on Fox News, was rated as an antigay voice in 2008 by GLAAD for his comments about the pregnancy of trans man Thomas Beattie.
What a sh!t games are they playing in Kabrastan. Allah, that place is basically an unofficial mass kabrasthan, considering a great number of people were never exhumed or found. does these need to play politics on Kabrastan!!! "Shavala meda Chillara erukune nayalalu."!!!
 

Vinod2070

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The Imam should have realized by now what he is up against. He is only being a fool in insisting on the location.

The bottom line is, it is a no win situation for him. He has caused as much resentment as that "burn a Quran day" pastor. To think that he didn't know it in advance is a folly.
 

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