Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues The Obama Administration Obama Defends Ground Zero Mosque Plans In Ramadan

I just find it interesting that it has been impossible for an existing church to be rebuilt, but a new church from a much more PC cause get approval.

As I said, I doubt that this mosque will ever be built, and to tell you the truth if it ever is it will be a boon to the community. It will also never be accepted as a vital part of that community because it is such a crass and insensitive project. My only point is that if a Greek Church has been rejected for 9 years, why was the Mosque green lighted?

I just find it interesting that it has been impossible for an existing church to be rebuilt, but a new church from a much more PC cause get approval.

In a statement Wednesday, Port Authority spokesman Steven Sigmund said the Port Authority thought it had reached an agreement with the church in 2008 but that the church then began to make more demands, such as a right to review plans for a Vechicle Security Center, that was to be built underneath the church as part of the reconfiguring of the World Trade Center.

He said the Port Authority made a final offer that included a commitment of “up to $60 million” toward the project, but that the offer was rejected by the church. (Emphasis added)

Thousands of workers spend their days toiling in the neighborhood around the World Trade Center site, a space that had gained renewed national attention amid controversial plans to build an Islamic center there.

The project, known as Park51, is opposed by a majority of New York residents in recent opinion polls. Politicians both local and national argue that the plan is insensitive to families touched by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others, has referred to the area around Ground Zero as “hallowed ground.”

But for Chris, who declined to give her last name, and other dancers at the two strip clubs within three blocks of the World Trade Center site, the neighborhood is just where they go to work.

As supporters held signs extolling religious freedom at the site of the proposed Islamic center Wednesday, a stripper who gave her name as Cassandra was working the afternoon shift at New York Dolls on Murray Street — just around the corner. She worried that calls to prayer from the mosque at Park51 might wake up neighbors. But when she was told that the organizers aren’t planning loudspeakers, she said she didn’t have a problem with the project.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” Cassandra said. “It’s freedom of religion, you know?”

I knew there had to be more to the story....

While plans for a cultural center and mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York have ignited a hot political debate, Muslims regularly pray at a chapel near where a hijacked jet slammed into the Pentagon nine years ago.

Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Mormons and Episcopalians regularly hold services in the multifaith chapel that was dedicated in November 2002 after reconstruction of the section of the Pentagon hit by Islamist hijackers on September 11, 2001.

"I've been here four years next month and the chapel and its function and role have never been an issue," George Wright, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said on Thursday.