Kathleen Parker continues to feel compelled to prove to the world she is an idiot.
I agree. I thought this was satire at first. The WaPo must be so proud.
There is no question about the legal right of a private owner to build on his or her own property whatever they desire, subject to local zoning and building regulations.
The issue here is the wisdom and decency of building a place of religious worship immediately adjacent to an infamous site which was destroyed at the cost of 3,000 souls by members of the same faith who claimed their actions in its very name.
In addition, there is no apparent reason to build a mosque in this desired location... save one. There are at present over 30 operational mosques in Manhattan, and by all accounts they provide sufficient capacity for those who wish to use them. There are numerous vacant and otherwise available buildings, even in lower Manhattan that might also be used for the intended purpose, were a mosque truly needed to accommodate new worshipers. Curiously too, the intended location is entirely commercial and devoid of residents. Who builds a church or a synagogue or any other place of worship in such a place, much less a $100 million high-rise palace of a mosque?
No one, that's who. But which religious group has traditionally built its places of worship directly upon the conquered sites of other faiths? Yes - the same faith that did exactly that in Cordoba, Spain in the 8th Century. And what is the proposed name of this mosque? Cordoba. And that is why there is only one reason why the Ground Zero mosque is now sought: as a monument and a tribute to those who tore a giant hole in the ground nearby, entombing thousands of innocents, and as an affront to the nation whose citizens they were.
For these reasons, the New Cordoba mosque, even if legal, would be the abomination and the insult it is intended to be. While Kathleen Parker may delude herself into viewing New York's accommodation as peace offering, I can assure her that those who are paying for and planning the mosque view the matter quite differently.