Muslim leaders to abandon plans for Ground Zero community center

Wise decision. Shows some common sense on their part.

Good decision. Although they have every right to build a mosque/community center there the choice of location would make the whole exercise counter-productive. Instead of promoting tolerance it would just create resentment among a large portion of the American population.

Part of me regrets that they are giving in. This is not just a mosque and it is not ON ground zero. It is a couple (or more) blocks away. How far should it be? 10 blocks? 20 blocks? If the attackers had all been christian zealots protesting whatever, would that mean a church could not be built there?

.../don

It is probably the best decision to make given the provocation that's occurred. I don't like the hardcores getting their way but at least the issue itself essentially disappears altogether. Kind of indicative, once again, that the rightists only support property rights when it favours them. Everyone else who isn't one of 'us' can go fuck themselves, one has to assume.

Oh come on Thanos. This wan't just a Republican vs. Democrat issue. You really think New Yorkers, or the victims of the people who were killed on 9-11 would have been supportive of this idea?

People are making it sound like absolutely no mosque can be built anywhere in New York City, when reality shows this isn't the case.

Edited as the muslims are NOT abandoning this stupid idea.

Support for the mosque polled higher in Manhattan that it did in the other four NYC boroughs. Going by that it was hardly a cut-and-dried issue as you're trying to present it. And it got turned into a rightist issue by the rightists themselves, especially since most of them used it as an opportunity to ramp up more of the 'Obama is a secret Muslim' nonsense. It was also another clear display of how the right now invariably behaves when there's an indication that they might not get their way, i.e. yell, scream, conspiracy theorize, slander the President some more, hold their breath until their faces turn blue, etc, etc, etc.

I personally thought the idea of a mosque in that particular location was fairly stupid. Not to mention completely ignorant of the political firestorm that was inevitable. And very insensitive to a lot of New Yorkers who are still traumatized by what happened on Sept 11. But, assuming one actually supports property rights and the rights of religious freedom for everyone and not just for their own little group, then the local Muslims did have a clear right to build it there if they wanted to. Property rights should mean more than just a right to stock your armoured fortress in the woods with lots of machine guns, or allowing a corporation to poison every waterway within the vicinity of it's operations and then say a big 'fuck you' to everyone it ends up harming. At least that's the way I view it.

As a PR decision, it's a smart move. But like Thanos said, what this really means is that the ignorant and the xenophobes have won.

It's so nice to see that the First Amendment still means something in America. Except for the dirty Jews of course. Oops, I meant Muslims. Wrong decade.

Good decision. It's common sense. Going forward with that project with all the politics involved would have only been asking for trouble and provocate the New Yorkers. Maybe he is a "moderate" muslim after all.

You mean they're behaving like you do in your average post?

The decision to relocate the Community Centre not withstanding, what I found interesting was the President's apparent reversal on his Freedom of Religion Stand.




This reversal of position is proof that he's graduated from being a relative unkown running a country, to a polished professional politician, who, can twist weave and conjure up statements to suit what his and his parties needs are at the moment.

I guess midterms were just a little to close, to pick a position and stick with it.

No, everyone is better off this way.

The people who were offended by this can't cite this as a reason to be offended and they get the added bonus of not being offended by a mosque a couple blocks from the WTC.

The muslims in question get to look very moderate and very reasonable by relocating their mosque.

People like you finally get one solid example of moderate muslims who really want to get along with non-muslims. Feel free to bring this up with me in the future as I will probably cite it myself. I'm really impressed with these guys for backing down as I really didn't expect that.

I wouldn't consider myself hardcore. But I'll be honest I wasn't to crazy about the idea only because it's only been 10 years. Just some time please, little respect and comon sense.

I know there's a McDonalds in Hiroshima, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't built within 10 years after they dropped the bomb.