Obama Takes a Clear Position on a New Mosque in Manhattan

By John Ballard

The president joins the mayor of New York and an absolute minority of Americans by speaking in defense of the construction of a new mosque and community center a few blocks from where the World Trade Center was destroyed.

I join that minority in solid agreement with a sincere hope that public opinion will for once be changed by courageous leadership like this.

Here is the You Tube description of this video.

While celebrating Ramadan with Muslims at the White House, President Obama says that while we need to be sensitive about the events of 9/11, there is no reason the government should stop Muslims from building a Mosque in lower Manhattan on private property. Doing so would violate the First Amendment.

I watched once again Mayor Bloomberg's courageous statement and wondered if yet another New York mayor might be another candidate for a run to become president. Unpopular as his position may be there is already a Facebook page along that line. 
Muslims don't come close to Latinos in numbers but as the Obama presidency has shown those who ignore minorities do so at some political peril. The president just gathered yet another minority population into his basket.

Mayor�s Stance on Muslim Center Has Deep Roots by Michael Barbard (NY Times) should be read in full.

Michael R. Bloomberg is a former Wall Street mogul with a passion for the rights of a private property owner. He is a Jew whose parents asked their Christian lawyer to buy a house and then sell it back to them to hide their identity in an unwelcoming Massachusetts suburb. And he is a politician who regards his independence as his greatest virtue.

�

Mr. Bloomberg�s forcefulness has won him new admirers, but also a chorus of both familiar and fresh detractors. Reliable newspaper editorial allies have turned against him. Conservative pundits have mocked him (one called him �self-deluding�). Even some of his closest friends have angrily differed with him.

City Hall officials, who said the mayor had been swamped with angry correspondence, made some of it public.

�You are going to allow the Muslims build a trophy building there on HOLY GROUND,� one e-mail read. It concluded: �You need to be impeached.�

But none of the anger � hard to measure precisely, and amplified by talk radio and cable television � has moved the mayor. Indeed, interviews with his aides, advisers and associates suggest that it has only strengthened his resolve.

And they say the reasons are civic and personal. Mr. Bloomberg, for instance, has come to know the husband and wife who are among the principals behind the proposed center � a multipurpose religious and cultural institution that would be built two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center.

Then there is  that now famous letter from George Washington to the Jewish community of Newport Rhode Island. Link here to a more detailed description of that letter and the circumstances it addressed.

In a famous letter�the one that holds that the United States �gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens��George Washington offered a benediction:

May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

Lower Manhattan is a little short on vines and fig trees nowadays, though there are some excellent wine bars. Washington�s point remains. His letter was addressed to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island. But, as he knew, Muslims are Abraham�s children, too. By the McCain standard, [read the opening of the New Yorker column] George Washington was a three-time loser: as President, he lived in New York City; the nation�s capital bears his name; and, even by the standards of his time, he was an �tist. Nevertheless: he was right.