Posted on 08/04/2010 6:33:18 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Muslim community center to be built just blocks from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan cleared its final hurdle on Tuesday and was approved for construction.
As a pleasant surprise, New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 9-0, denying historic protection for the building that currently occupies the site where developers plan to build the $100 million center, which will include a mosque.
Though this news should hardly be noteworthy, it unfortunately is.
Since its incipient stages in July 2009, when a Muslim-run real-estate development company purchased the damaged, vacant building and land where the new center will be built, the project has sparked controversy and debate.
Repugnant Republican and conservative leaders and pundits have lashed out against the project, criticizing it as provocative and insensitive to the families of 9/11 victims. How could popular political leaders ever dare to speak out against religious equality in the United States?
They can, unfortunately, because they are simply saying what the many Americans are thinking. Polls indicate that 52 percent of New York City voters are opposed to the center and mosque’s construction.
Among the prejudiced right-wingers who have spoken out against the building, the most prominent are potential Republican presidential candidates such as 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Palin said the mosque and Muslim community center would create an “unnecessary provocation,” and went on to tweet: “Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.”
Her position is completely ignorable, based on her unintelligible contention — “refudiate” isn’t even a word.
Gingrich said he opposed the construction, though “it’s not about religion and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive,” he said.
He went on to posit that since the complex would be dubbed the Cordoba House, its name would be a symbol of Islam triumphing over Christianity, recalling the Moorish conquest of Spain during the eighth century.
The thinly veiled prejudice in Gingrich’s attack relies on a deliberate misinterpretation of the name.
The Cordoba House recalls Cordoba, Spain, as the capital of the Caliphate of Cordoba during the period of Muslim rule of Spain when the nation prospered and inter-faith diplomacy with Christian kings flourished.
The name is a symbol of religious pluralism, not the subjugation of one faith by another.
Romney’s opposition is the most worrying and hypocritical. Using his specious logic, Romney has conflated all Muslim terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida, with the Islamic faith itself. His statements and ideas thus smack of intolerance, stereotyping and naked prejudice.
In 2005, Romney called for what would have been unprecedented surveillance of certain mosques and other places of worship. These actions come from a former and probably future presidential candidate — and member of a religious minority, the Mormon church — who has trumpeted respect for all faiths in hopes of increasing his chances in future elections.
Worse yet, the tattered building that was bought by the Muslim real estate company had been owned by a subsidiary of Bain Capital, a company Romney founded in 1984.
So it’s OK if his company can profit off the sale of the land, but he’s ideologically opposed to how Muslims can use it.
Other prominent groups, such as the American Center for Law & Justice and the Anti-Defamation League have cited similar arguments in their opposition to the building of the center and mosque.
Yet, now that building can begin without any more approval hurdles, all those who opposed its construction will be desperate to clear their names as a part of this vile opposition. No one wants to be remembered as having been against equality, especially religious equality.
However, just like 9/11 must never vanish from the minds of Americans, we must never forget this intolerance and prejudice.
The GOP, the party of Abraham Lincoln, lost its civil rights appeal when it dragged its heels during the 1960s and the following decades.
The opposition to this mosque and community center by GOP leaders confirms that the party is irreparably obsolete and anachronistic.
Conservatives should find a new party to be a part of, because as the minority population in the United States multiplies, the GOP will become only a menacing shadow from the past.
***
E-mail: yzchaudh@indiana.edu
they are all in it for the money...check it out..they would sell their motheres false eyeball. The commitee and all the politician involved..but i see a lot more predjudiced Democrats than Republicans...
*YAWN*
Every American knows that the civil rights battles of the 1960s were won legislatively with nearly unanimous REPUBLICAN SUPPORT.
The Democrats, for the most part, actually OPPOSED THE CIVIL RIGHTS battles.
We already have enough truly "ignant" people here, we don't need Yahya!
Seriously. Uneducated idiot doesn’t know which party forced through the Civil Rights Act and which one opposed it.
Romney owns the ground? Maybe Palin too? Sigh. Yet another insane/criminal muslim to keep an eye on. So many creeps, so little time...
Yep. You betcha. What happened on 9/11 and the opposition to this mosque and Islamic center are two peas in a pod. Exactly comparable.
Romney doesn’t own Palin, dummy.
I wonder what this Yahyah person thinks of the right winger who is currently King of Saudi Arabia?
http://www.caiaweb.org/node/854
Wonder how unique that name is. It seems to be popping up all over the place in connection with corporate startup social networking. Didn’t chase any of them down except this.
Where did you get “Maybe Palin too?” from that article? Are you people so deranged in your hate for her that you need to make sh!t up?!
Course not. Just that the place he seemed to get Romney from was a paragraph also mentioning Palin. Guess I should have sprinkled an s over.
Confusing. Does Romney own the building or not?
libtard hit piece.....but whatever, in my mind, I know EXACTLY who the real racists and bigots are: Democrats and the Democratic Party. =.=
More recently I've amended that with the thought that it's actually Romney who serves as Huckabee's stalking horse.
A corollary of the reference to Sarah would be that Sarah is actually Romney's stalking horse now that "the Huck" is on his own.
Whatever, I'm a big supporter of whichever candidate will tell Obama that he's a lying POS without the cojones necessary to protect this country in a tough world.
Could be Romney; Could be Sarah; Could be "The Huck"; Could be that ol'gal down there in Arizona who's kickin' the Islamofascists and Democrat slavers in the crotch!
If he does, I wasn't aware of it :). File under "crazy muslim".
You have to be very careful with these radical Islamists, they lie through their teeth~
Which means ~ no one really knows and it's not worth digging up. We have a couple of earlier Freeper threads where this question is disposed of.
Unless Mit planted some really serious landmines in the basement I don't think it's an issue ~ but if he did plant landmines there ~ and I wouldn't put it past him to do that if, in fact, he owned it, then those pukes will never build their mosque on the site.
I sure hope Mit buried the landmines under the concrete floor so it's hard for the Islamofascist mine-sweepers to find them.
So the sell all our secrets to communist China loving company Bain, Willard Mittens Romney’s company Bain, owned and sold the ground to the Muslims so they could build this mosque?!
I knew that Mitt had built Bain into a traitorous company when they tried to unite the Chicoms with 3 Com a couple of years back. Now they’ve sold their little portion of ground zero to the Muslims. Well isn’t that like the filthy traitors Bain and Romney are.
New York has surrendered. Why should our troops be fighting to protect the rights of an idiotic majority of New York City voters who are so open minded that not only their brains have fallen out, but they are incapable of recognizing islamic extremism even if it crashed a plane into a building, twice.
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