Last week, we noted that the Islamic community center planned near ground zero is safe on legal grounds. Political outcry, nonetheless, has not subsided. (Note to our readers: The Park51 plan is indeed for a community center, which will house, among many other things, a mosque.)
While many opponents of the plan acknowledge a legal right to build two blocks away from the site of the 9/11 attacks in Lower Manhattan, they have argued instead about the need for sensitivity concerning the area around ground zero.
Op-eds and editorials from acrossthecountry have called for the mosque to be built “anywhere but there.” And the former House speaker Newt Gingrich, for one, has said he would be “quite happy” if Muslims wanted to build a community center near Central Park or Columbia University in New York.
Despite such rhetoric, mosques elsewhere in New York City—and across the country—often aren’t welcomed by local communities.
In recent months, New Yorkers have also opposed two mosques planned in Brooklyn and on Staten Island. Opposition to both those plans have cited practical reasons—such as parking and traffic—in addition to heated accusations that the planners have connections to terrorists. According to the New York Post, one opponent of the Brooklyn mosque even threatened to blow it up if it was built.
The Washington Post noted today that in Tennessee, plans for three Islamic centers—one of which has already been abandoned because of opposition—have also faced stiff resistance and organized protests from residents of suburban Nashville. (Read some of the local coverage.)
Time magazine noted over the weekend that a plan to build a mosque in Southern California has also split the community there. It, too, has sparked protests.
And USA Today, in a 2004 piece, reported that plans to build mosques had faced resistance in New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona and Georgia.
In one case in Illinois, a mosque in Morton Grove, a Chicago suburb, was permitted to be built after two years of dispute, a federal lawsuit, and a civil rights investigation by the Justice Department. Both the lawsuit and the investigation centered on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which, as we have noted, is a federal law passed by a Republican Congress in 2000 to protect against land use discrimination on the basis of religion. The agreement to allow the project to move forward was finally reached in 2004 with help from the Justice Department.
So perhaps USA Today is right to ask: Given the widespread opposition to such projects over the years, is anywhere far enough from ground zero to build a mosque?
