No of course not. Praying is guaranteed right in the First Amendment, but building the mosque is decision left up to the city council who obviously have an ideological bend to the left. The voters of NYC didn't vote for the mosque, the city council did.
Had I been a member of the city council, I would have said "no" to the mosque because there's 20 other mosques in Manhattan, and about 20 or 30 in each of the other four boroughs of New York City. Imam Rauf runs a mosque about 12 city blocks from the site of this proposed mosque.
Thank you for clarifying that. I see problems that I don’t know how we get around (because you’re right, we have religious freedom, thankfully). I don’t know if there is an answer somewhere, but I do see that this mosque is a potential huge problem.