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New York mayor defends Ground Zero Mosque as free-of-faith issue
[APP] New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, speaking at an Iftar dinner he hosted Tuesday night, strongly defended the right of a Muslim group to build a mosque near "ground zero", the site of 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bloomberg received a standing ovation from some 100 Muslim-Americans for weighing in on the debate over the proposal to build an Islamic Centre mosque near the World Trade Center site."We must do what is right, not what is easy," said the mayor as he ruled out a compromised solution to the issue which has caused increasingly heated debate across the US. Bloomberg said a "compromise", with the mosque built further away from ground zero, would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. Property developer Sharif el-Gamal wants to construct a Muslim community centre, including a mosque and a 9/11 memorial two blocks from the site where 2,605 people were killed on September 11, 2001. The plan has outraged some Americans, and provoked demonstrations and protests, with Republicans, including Sarah Palin, spearheading the campaign. Last night Bloomberg told the audience the handling of the mosque plan would be a litmus test for "American values". The mayor said: "Let me declare that we in New York are Jews and Christians and Muslims, and we always have been. And above all of that, we are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose. "There is nowhere in the five boroughs that is off limits to any religion." Some opponents of the scheme have asked for the mosque to be constructed further away from ground zero, but Bloomberg said that this would not end the debate. "The question will then become, how big should the 'no-mosque zone' around the World Trade Center be?" he asked. "There is already a mosque four blocks away. Should it, too, be moved?" Said Bloomberg: "...If we say that a mosque or a community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom. "We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam. "Islam did not attack the World Trade Center - Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American. Today we are not at war with Islam - we are at war with Al-Qaeda and other extremists who hate freedom." Posted by: Fred 2010-08-26 |
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