Terry, I stand by the number I used before--69% of Manhattanites support this project. When you add in the population of the other boroughs, then that number goes down to 49%...so it is a bare majority of the greater NY population who object. They are perfectly within their rights to protest the mosque, but they are not doing so. The rest of the country seems to be doing that, and forgetting The First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. I guess that is true except when any Muslim wants to build a community center near the site of a terror attack that he or she had nothing to do with.
And I guess Gov't should keep out of religion, except when protestors are pushing for government control of private property to stop construction of a religious center. It's the government's role to enforce freedom of religion as articulated by the Constitution, and that is lost when emotion and proxy-battle-mentality takes over.
I also stand by what I said earlier. The ariwaves are filled with irrational Islamophobia. The objectors on this site have expressed their emotional misgivingsin a polite way, which is fair. The rest of the country has not. The campaign against this mosque is one of the ugliest and most odious controversies in some time. It's based purely on appeals to base fear and bigotry. There are no reasonable arguments against it, and the precedent that would be set if its construction were prevented -- equating Islam with Terrorism, implying 9/11 guilt for Muslims generally, imposing serious restrictions on core religious liberty -- are quite serious.
