New York "Mosque" Row

There has been a lot of debate recently around the proposal for the so called Ground Zero Mosque, for those of you who do not know there is an application to build a Muslim community centre, featuring a prayer room, a few blocks from the former site of the World Trade Centre, there has been quite a lot of commentators stating that they believe that this is an outrage and I have to admit when I first saw the story I did think it was slightly bizarre decision, after all New York is a big city and so perhaps you need to question the decision to build this building at ground zero, after all whilst I agree that not all Muslim’s are terrorists it is a fact that all the terrorists of September the 11th 2001 were Muslim. My view did change however when I looked into it a bit deeper and saw that in fact the community centre is a few blocks away from Ground Zero, so to call a building “Ground Zero Mosque” (The name given by the media not by the people looking to build it.) is a bit misleading for a building that is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero. This seems to be a case of people hijacking a traumatic event in US history to fuel their own prejudice.

This is however a very hot political potato with perennial Republican Nutter Sarah Palin calling the entire area “Hallowed Ground”, a claim firmly beaten by evidence by New York Blogger Daryl Lang showing pictures of the area including the Hallowed “New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club.” I think however though that the real loser of this debate is going to be Barak Obama who has stated support in principal to the right to freedom to build a community building in a place that is wanted. (My extension of his comments.) This has annoyed the Anti groups as showing political support for the building and annoyed the Pro Groups as he stopped short of saying he supported it and even questioned the thought process of selecting this site. Either way with the ninth anniversary just a few weeks away and the tenth anniversary clearly looking to be very important this is an issue that will not go away quietly, and I would suggest one that any politicians should try and avoid.