Pardon the typos. I had to type the article in, because it would not cut-and-paste.
Still waiting for the imam to denounce all terrorism.
The two developers including El-Gamal, do not care about "serving the Muslim community" or about making an ideological point about 9/11.
They care about finding wealthy Middle Eastern financiers to help them develop the land they own and the land they lease at a profit.
Their front man, Al-Rauf is indeed an ideologue who does want the mosque sited exactly where it is for propaganda purposes. That's why he is helping them.
Siting it elsewhere, as the Governor proposes, is absolutely pointless for both the interested parties: the developers will be left indebted with terrible properties that are earning no income for them and the imam will lose his platfortm for ideological grandstanding.
The whole point of this exercise was to get in the news and make their effort internationally famous so that when wealthy sheiks saw how angry Americans were about the mosque, those sheiks would write checks for $100mm - and the $4.8mm the developers spent for the property would take them out of their sour investment and net them $10+mm in management and consulting fees.
If they were to veto Mr. Paterson’s suggestion, perhaps my suggestion would suffice... I strongly recommend they build this monument to a cult at the bottom of the Hudson River...
How about a dog adoption center and KC Masterpiece chain right next door? (in the name of ‘tolerance’ of course )