The group’s statement of purpose says, “Working as the national Interfaith Coalition On Mosques (ICOM) under the sponsorship of the Anti- Defamation League, our purpose is to assist Muslim communities who are being denied permission to build mosques in their neighborhoods.”

“While we are extremely concerned about discrimination against mosque building in America, we will also recognize that local governments have legitimate concerns about zoning and other planning issues within the framework of current federal, state and local laws,” the statement of purpose reads.

“We believe the best way to uphold America’s democratic values is to ensure that Muslims can exercise the same religious freedom enjoyed by everyone in America,” the statement adds. “They deserve nothing less than to have a place of worship like everyone else.”

Jerusalem Post coverage here.

Amid all the sadness and grief of recent events, it really excites me to see that on September 11, 2010 we’re finally seeing progress of moving forward and re-building the World Trade Center site.

President George W. Bush, November 11, 2001

Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.

Sandy Dahl, the wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl.

If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.

BusinessWeek’s cover discusses the Chinese deal with Australia. Or, as the title eloquently puts it:

The Deal Is Simple. Australia Gets Money, China Gets Australia

How’s that supposed to make a country feel?

Read on.

A few weeks ago, The Economist featured a book review on two new works exploring the touchy subject of Muslim attitude towards Jews.

From the Letter to the Editor section:

SIR – Your book review on Muslim attitudes to Jews (“People of the Book”, August 14th) ignored the evidence for substantial co-operation between the two sets of believers during the early development of Islam. One of the few Arabic documents to survive relatively uncorrupted from the first decades of the seventh century, the “Constitution of Medina”, explicitly places Jewish tribes alongside Muslims as “one community with the believers”. Contemporary Armenian and Syriac accounts of the conquest of the Near East describe Jews aiding and joining the Arab invaders of then-Roman lands.

Antagonism between Muslims and Jews is neither universal, nor inevitable, and is only more poignant when one considers the instrumental role played by Jewish groups in establishing Islamic rule in the first place.

Ben White
London

Good thoughts going into the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Really moving piece in the Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert. I disagree with his opinion that Park51 should relocate, but the rest of the points all ring true.

From the comments:

Mr. Ebert,

For the most part, I agree with you. However, I disagree that the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was in error in choosing this site. Even with the ensuing firestorm, I think the choice was a wise one, and should they stick to their choice it will be a real addition to the area.
Perhaps, it could be something even larger. A symbol of acceptance, just blocks from a scene of hideous rejection.

I’m a Irish-American of Catholic upbringing. I fell in love with Islam and the history of the faith white attending college at DePaul. I ended getting my MA in history, focusing on the “Golden Age” of Islam, specifically Egypt and the Fatimid Caliphate.

My second Arabic class was scheduled for 9/11/01.

It was, of course, canceled as were most classes in those dark days. In the ensuing weeks my class nearly halved in size. Many of my fellow “white” students disappeared. By the fourth week just myself and another white student were left. Funnily, the friends I made in that class worried at first that I was some kind of government mole, an FBI agent sent to keep an eye on things.

We were laughing about that very subject one night outside our classroom building when a group of older white men tried to start a fight with the Muslim students. They spat on female students, grabbed at their hijabs, shoved and poke at the men in the group. They called me a “Sand-N—–rlover” and had similar insults for my classmates.

A security guard scared them off, but it shook me to my core. That hatred, that raw ugly hatred for “THE OTHER” was a pure byproduct of television and media. What did those men know of Islam or Muslims except the fear and terror they’d been soaking up on the news? They came to their bigotry by proxy. They came to their hatred via a messenger.
How many of those 70% who oppose this mosque would ever even see it? How many of them have ever been inside a mosque? How many of them even know a single Muslim by name?

That’s the true ugliness of this issue. That Muslims are being vilified and used as props by political homunculi like Palin and Gingrich is simply those vile idiots acting to their nature. But that people are so willing to believe in that hate, to buy into the fear and panic, to be moved to intolerance by merchants of menace, is sickening.

We are better than this, are we not? I hope so, I really hope so.

A. Why don’t the couple of hundred Muslims who were also killed in the World Trade Center get any consideration?

B. So if the world of Islam is so terrible, why have we expended Billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to establish Islamic republics in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why did Bush Sr. send the Army of George Washington to put the prince of Kuwait back on his throne?

Roger,

I was honestly hoping that you, Sarah Palin, and the President would not comment on this issue. Its one for New Yorkers, plain and simple. But, here we are. So:

For point 1. Governor Patterson and Archbishop Dolan have referenced a time when Nuns did in fact move a site from Auchwitz with at the Pope’s behest. If Catholics can show that sensitivity, peace loving Muslims can too.

Also for point 1. The media has much criticized the strip clubs and shopping malls that are or will be built in and around the ground zero site. But strippers and mall guards did not bomb a financial center.

If I build a non-Muslim church inside Mecca and preach peace, what will the result be? Ok, ok, trick question since I can’t get in the city in the first place.

And lastly, point 4: please for the love of everything dear, Roger and all those who studied English in college back me up on this: Americans are under the mistaken impression that Barack Obama is Muslim because HIS NAME IS BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA. It is a simple mental association with 2 Muslims that you might have heard about on the nightly news at some point in the past 10 years. Its not racist, its not stupid. Its called being human.

For Allah’s sake Roger, you defended the sensitivity of Mexican-American students who felt offended by predominately Hispanic kids wearing American flag t-shirts on Cinco De Mayo. Shouldn’t the families of the victims of 9-11 be afforded even more sensitivity?

No one is saying Muslims don’t have a “right” to build a mosque. I would take our record of religious tolerance against any Muslim nation. There are countless numbers of Mosques in NYC that practice free and unharmed. It comes down to a question of “is it appropriate with respect to the families painful memories to have it right there?”

I would sincerely ask every Muslim and those who defend the Mosque plan, would it be appropriate for a (Serbian) Eastern Orthodox Church to be built right next to the Srebrenica massacre memorial? Even if the people building the chhurch had nothing to do with the crime and had good intentions? I can promise you the outrage would be far greater.

But to be fair to our Eastern Orthodox friends, I would also ask why the Mosque plans have been approved by the City of New York already but they are still stalling on approving the rebuilding of the Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church next the memorial? That was a religious site actually destroyed by Muslim terrorists when the towers fell.

Why is Egypt spending precious political capital on shaky US attempts to kick-start MidEast peace talks? Dina Ezzat seeks an answer.

A Daily Kos article about the fact that the majority of Republicans believe President Obama favors Islamic Law had this amazing quote:

Even if the President were not a target of lies about his beliefs, we should engage in a national conversation about the demonization of Muslims.

52% of Republicans believing in such a lie is horrible, though. Reminds me of this…