Dig Deeper

Yesterday another step was taken in the building of an Islamic Community Center a few blocks away from the site of the 9/11 attacks. The matter was noted by New York Mayor Bloomberg in a powerful speech, the kind Rudy Giuliani is incapable of making, not that he won't try for a big check:

"Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values - and play into our enemies' hands - if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists - and we should not stand for that."

But the low point in this whole matter has remained the Anti-Defamation League, which took the tact, literally that "all this religious bigotry is too bad, but if the Islamic Center is built it will cause emotional harm to 9/11 victims, therefore the bigots must win".

Thankfully, this caused a lot of criticism of the ADL's position from people who can read the First Amendment everywhere. But Abraham Foxman of the ADL is not done digging.

"In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center would unnecessarily cause some victims more pain. And that wasn't right."

Once again, that logic train doesn't work so well. For example, by that logic should there have been a modern Israeli state in place of the Palestine and y'know the Palestinians that lived there?