Are you for it or against it?
Muslim Americans want to build a mosque in 9/11 location, in New York.
but there are a lot of opposition, and it may not be a good idea. how can you build the biggest mosque in New York where 9/11 happened?
Vote Endorses Muslim Center Near Ground Zero
After a raucous hearing, a Manhattan community board backed a proposal on Tuesday evening to build a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center.
The 29-to-1 vote, with 10 abstentions, followed a four-hour back-and-forth between those who said the community center would be a monument to tolerance and those who believed it would be an affront to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks
The group behind the project, the Cordoba Initiative, is seeking to make major structural changes to the five-story building at 45 Park Place, which was built in the late 1850s in the Italian Renaissance palazzo style.
The group needs the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which could decide as early as July if the building merits historic protection.
In addition, the center faces intense opposition in the United States and abroad. Over the past few days, Community Board No. 1, which represents Lower Manhattan, was flooded with hundreds of calls and e-mail messages about the proposal, most of them from outside New York, according to Julie Menin, the board’s chairwoman.
Some of the board members who abstained said they wanted time to learn more about the Cordoba Initiative, but the board rejected a motion to delay the vote a month.
The days leading up to the vote were marked by a feverish exchange of words, culminating in remarks about Muslims from a leader of the Tea Party, Mark Williams, that were widely dismissed as racist.
But Mr. Williams was not the only critic. Many families of Sept. 11 victims fervently opposed the proposal, saying they were offended by the idea of building a prayer space so near the site.
“That should be a serene site,” Bill Doyle, a leader of a group of 9/11 families, said in a telephone interview. “Now you’re going to see protests and demonstrations there all the time.”
City officials, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn; and the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, have rallied behind the proposal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/nyreg ... uslim.html
