Ground Zero Mosque
VIEW: The Manhattan mosque by Yasser Latif Hamdani President Obama and his government are now under great stress because of the difficult position the mosque issue has put the Obama administration in. Logically, there should not be a problem with building a place of worship, a right guaranteed under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, but the issue is much larger than one of freedom of faith The mosque in Manhattan has stirred a hornet’s nest. The issue now threatens to test the very ideals of western secular democracy that we admire and cherish and seek to emulate in the rest of the world. It is important, therefore, to weigh in logically and as reasonable people — though reason is hard to come by these days — on the unnecessary provocation in Manhattan created by Imam Feisal Abdel Raouf and his wife Daisy Khan that they refer to as ‘Cordoba House’ or ‘Park 51’, a $ 100 million Islamic centre in New York City. I say unnecessary not because I oppose the ...