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...
