After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero - the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York - it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site.
The decision follows a high-profile campaign against the project that included advertisements on New York buses showing images of the burning Twin Towers, an iconic landmark razed when al-Qaida terrorists flew packed passenger planes into them in 2001. The New York Republican party is also said to be planning a hostile television campaign.If only our own president showed some sensitivity to the American public.
Sources in New York said on Monday that Muslim religious and business leaders will announce plans to abandon the project in the next few days.
New York Governor David Patterson said last weekend that Muslim leaders had rejected outright his proposal tto swap the site in for another in Manhattan.
But several people familiar with the debate among New York's Islamic activists now claim that the leaders are convinced abandoning the site is preferable to unleashing a wave of bitterness towards Muslims.
They also hope the move will be seen as a show of sensitivity to families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and to the American public generally.
By VICTORIA MCGRANE And SIOBHAN GORMAN
President Barack Obama's weekend remarks supporting the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero reverberated across the country, nationalizing a debate over the New York City project.
A number of Republicans on Sunday folded the president's remarks into their election-year narrative that Mr. Obama, a former constitutional scholar, is out of touch with the American citizenry.
The dispute over the mosque is just the most prominent in a series of debates around the country where Muslim groups have sought to build mosques. In the community of Temecula, Calif., where a proposed mosque has sparked an intense dispute, Mr. Obama's comments spurred a surge of letters to local newspapers decrying his statements. Pastor William Rench of Calvary Baptist Church, next door to the proposed mosque site, said he now expected opposition to the mosque plan to harden.
"It will galvanize their desire for resistance to the mosque," he said. "It confirms in their minds the idea that Mr. Obama seems to be more accommodating to the Islamic world than he is for the Christian representation in America." Mr. Rench said former President George W. Bush, who also spoke of Islam as a peaceful religion, might have made similar statements, but Mr. Rench said he disagreed with those views.Mosque Disputes Around the Country
Mr. Rench said initially he opposed the new mosque next door because he thought such a large structure on two acres would tower over the church. But since he has begun reading more commentary from American Islamic leaders, he said, he has grown concerned about extremist statements such as one imam declaring Islam the "dominant" religion. He said he now worried that a large mosque could attract an extremist crowd in contrast to the current local Muslim community.
At a dinner Friday celebrating the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Mr. Obama said Muslims have a right, as a matter of religious freedom, to build a religious center near Ground Zero. "Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," he said to applause.
On Saturday, the president said, "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque" near Ground Zero, he told reporters during a visit to the Gulf Coast. "I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding."
Later Saturday, White House spokesman Bill Burton said the president wasn't backtracking. "The president is not backing off in any way from the comments he made last night," he said. He had no further comment on Sunday.
Backers of local mosque projects welcomed Mr. Obama's comments, but some said he needed to be more forceful in his support for Muslims to build houses of worship.
"He should be more firm about it," said Hadi Nael, chairman of the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley, which is seeking permission to build the new center there. "I know it's political stuff, but he should assure the Muslim community they have the right to build over there."
Still, the weight of the president's words in support of freedom of religion bolster the Islamic Center's efforts, Mr. Nael said. "It will help the case," he said. "I feel very strongly the project will be approved."
The center plans to build a 25,000-square-foot mosque in conservative Riverside County outside of Los Angeles. Opponents have said it will draw extremists and traffic. Plans for a public hearing this month were postponed until November to perform a traffic study.
In Tennessee, where the growing Muslim community wants to build a larger mosque in Murfreesboro, Darrel Whaley of Milton said the president's remarks angered him. A local pastor at Kingdom Ministries Worship Center, Mr. Whaley has spoken at county meetings against plans for the mosque and recreational facilities.
Asked how the president's comments might influence the local debate over the Islamic center, Mr. Whaley said Mr. Obama "didn't help it any, that's for sure." Mr. Whaley said he was concerned that "if Islam comes in with the Sharia law, there's not going to be any such thing as religious freedom."
Recently approved plans to establish a mosque in Sheboygan County, Wis., have also stirred intense feelings. Imam Mohammad Hamad, president of the Islamic Society of Sheboygan, appreciated Mr. Obama's emphasis on religious freedom. "The issue here is not the issue of a religious building, it is an issue of the Constitution," he said. Another Sheboygan mosque supporter, the Rev. Gregory S. Whelton, a pastor at St. John's United Church of Christ in Sheboygan, said Mr. Obama articulated the same issues of religious tolerance that were at stake there.
"It falls right in with the middle of our debate," he said, adding that the local debate centered on religious tolerance and opponents' concerns that the mosque would attract extremists, a notion Rev. Whelton called "really funny."
While he believes Muslims have a right to construct mosques anywhere, the mosque near Ground Zero is different because of the circumstances of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said. "To do it in light of what has happened," he said, "I'm not sure I would agree with that. But as far as their right to do it, absolutely."
On the national political stage, Mr. Obama's comments drew fire from Republicans. "Why isn't the president spending the time debating about jobs instead of moving into New York" local issues, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) asked on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday. Mr. McCarthy also said the president was "insensitive" to what Americans feel on the issue.
Mr. Obama's remarks quickly energized local opponents of the proposed mosque. Gary Berntsen, a New York Republican Senate candidate, fired off a statement Friday criticizing the president's comments. In an interview Sunday, Mr. Berntsen, a former senior Central Intelligence Agency officer who served in Afghanistan, said a mosque near Ground Zero would become a national security risk.
"He missed the point that people found this offensive because it's very, very close to Ground Zero," he said. "That mosque will become a magnet for militants. They will be drawn there in large numbers, and they will seek to impose themselves on that mosque, regardless of who the leaders are."
Conservative blogger Pamela Geller, founder of a group called Stop Islamization of America and a vocal opponent of the mosque near Ground Zero, blasted Mr. Obama in a statement. The president, she said, "has, in effect, sided with the Islamic jihadists."
Write to Victoria McGrane at victoria.mcgrane@dowjones.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com
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paula jo said...
What you don't hear about is the Greek Orthodox Church they are trying to build in the same Neighborhood,running into one roadblock after another from the NYC Government,Guess if their Faith took part in terrorism and preached Jihad from the Church,Obama would back them too.
