Day: July 23, 2010

There Has Been a Mosque Near Ground Zero Since 1970 – Same Year the World Trade Center Opened

Jon Ponder

Design concept for Cordoba House
Design concept for Park 51
I lived four blocks east of the World Trade Center in the 1980s, so I’ve followed the controversy about Park 51, formerly known as Cordoba House, the new Islamic center being built two blocks north of the trade center at Park Place, with insider-y interest.

I found an unexpected source for tapping into local attitudes about Park 51 on Andrew Sullivan’s site, the Daily Dish, where people from my old neighborhood have been posting comments about the project. The clincher was this factoid that, in hindsight, shouldn’t have been surprising: A mosque, Masjid Manhattan, has been holding services on Warren Street, four blocks north of the World Trade Center, for the last 40 years. (It’s about a block west of the Tweed Courthouse, if you know the area.) From the mosque’s website:

Our members are city, state and federal employees, as well as professional employees of the Financial [District] who come to our Masjid to perform their daily prayers. Masjid Manhattan and its members condemn any type of terrorist acts. In particular, the attacks of 9/11 where non-Muslims as well as Muslims lost their lives.

(UPDATE: Masjid Manhattan includes this disclaimer on its website: “Please be advised that we are by no means affiliated with any other organization trying to build anything new in the area of downtown Manhattan.”)

It is significant that Masjid Manhattan was started in 1970 because the World Trade Center also opened at the end of that year. The first tenants moved into the North Tower in December 1970; the South Tower opened a year later, in January 1972.

The fact that Muslims have been worshiping four blocks away from Ground Zero for so long makes it hard to argue that it’s a sacrilege to have an Islamic presence so close to the site of the attack by their fanatical coreligionists. (So should the fact that about 60 innocent Muslims died in the trade center on 9/11 — roughly 2 percent of all fatalities.)

[…]

Verbatim

Trish

I’ll have to look into it.

— Response by Florida governor candidate Rick Scott to a questioner on the campaign trail who asked what Scott would do about Pres. Obama’s birth certificate, and whether he feels that Obama’s name can legally be placed on the 2012 ballot. By indulging “birther” fantasies, Scott aligned himself with the most extreme rightwing elements. Scott was CEO of HCA/Columbia Healthcare until he was given a choice to resign or face criminal charges for his role in defrauding the government of millions of Medicare/Medicaid dollars. He now runs the Solantic chain of urgent care clinics, which serve mainly uninsured patients, and is one of the principle funding sources behind the anti-healthcare reform campaign.

Maddow Vs. O’Reilly: She Takes Apart His Assertion That Fox’s Ratings Justify Race Baiting

Jon Ponder

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Partial Transcript:

They are more watched than “The O’Reilly Factor,” my lord — which is totally immaterial to the discussion at hand, because when you got all kicked your network’s butt, and madam on me, you weren’t really trying to tout your network’s ratings. You were trying to take the attention off me saying that your network, FOX News, continually crusades on flagrantly bogus stories designed to make white Americans fear black Americans, which FOX News most certainly does for a political purpose even if it upends the lives of individuals like Shirley Sherrod, even as it frays the fabric of the nation, and even as it makes the American Dream more of a dream and less of a promise.

You can insult us all you want about television ratings, Mr. O’Reilly, and you’ll be right that yours are bigger for now and maybe forever. You are the undisputed champion. But even if no one watches us at all, except for my mom and my girlfriend and people who forgot to turn off the TV after Keith, you are still wrong on what really matters and that would be the facts, your highness.