Blue Mass Group

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Reality Check: Cordoba House is not at Ground Zero

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Hats off to HuffPoster Matt Sledge who produced this excellent piece on 28 July: “Just How Far Is the “Ground Zero Mosque” From Ground Zero?”

Now that this subject has become the designated Silly Summer Controversy for the dog days of August (beating out a late surge by Jet Blue man, with Fox’s help), it is worth adding a dose of reality: “The ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ that we have been and will be hearing so much about is not exactly a mosque, nor is it at Ground Zero. Here’s why: you can’t see Ground Zero — the former site of the World Trade Center — from the future site of the Cordoba House.”

In addition, the building planned for 45 Park Place is a cultural center with a prayer room — not a single-purpose house of worship for Muslims, which is probably what we should reserve the word “mosque” for. As Haberman also explains, “That it may even be called a mosque is debatable. It is designed as a multi-use complex with a space set aside for prayer — no minarets, no muezzin calls to prayer blaring onto Park Place.”

Sledge offers the following video record of his trip from the actual Ground Zero to the former Burlington coat shop, first sped up to 4X speed then slowed down to 1X:

Separately, a list of Muslim victims of the 9/11 attacks is here. Their families are presumably among those who would make use of the planned center.

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  1. … on the geography from NRO:

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    As an aside, I think that some of the concern over this mosque, especially among people who do not live in New York City, is based on a misunderstanding of the geography of Lower Manhattan. This is an area that had significant high-rise development before New York imposed setback requirements and floor-area ratio maximums (limits on how many square feet of building you can put on a lot). As a result, the area is denser and more canyon-like than Midtown.

    This means you can be two blocks away from something without any sense that you’re near it. City Hall is four blocks from Ground Zero, but you’d never stand there and think “I’m right near Ground Zero.” There is even a strip club three blocks south of Ground Zero, but nobody seems to have noticed that it is sullying the memory of the place.

    In most cities, including Washington, 13 stories constitute a very tall building. But in the environment of Lower Manhattan, Cordoba House will be just another structure-which is not exactly consistent with the view that it is a Towering Monument to Jihad. In short, people are overestimating the extent to which this building will interact with, or be noticeable from, the World Trade Center site.

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    p>Yglesias:

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    A completely legitimate undertaking that’s being stymied out of a mixture of geographical ignorance, a slanderous attribution of collective responsibility for 9/11 to all Muslims, and political opportunism. On the other side are people standing up for non-discrimination and religious freedom.

  2. We live in a society that embraces the wonderful differences between us but is united under a love for the freedom that allows it to happen.  

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    p>This beautiful experiment should be celebrated we should put a mosque, a church, a temple, a Hindu place of prayer (for which I admit I am ignorant of their names) an atheist learning center and any other form of worship directly in the new building.

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    p>What better way to give a big F’ you to the terrorists who took down our towers than to celebrate what unites us all.  

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    p>I reject this argument above because it buys into the idea that there is a wrong place for religious freedom in our country.  There is no place we should not celebrate that which makes us  better than those who want to deny freedom.      

    • Going on and on about this is just a sleazy campaign trick.

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      p>They get to rant and rave about the mosque, but guess what?

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      p>The legal right to build it under the law as implemented today is ABSOLUTE.

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      p>And there is nowhere near the broad, deep consensus needed to amend the US Constitution in order to outlaw this.

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      p>BELIEVE IT.

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      p>These hustlers get to talk about how they hate the mosque to drum up votes from boneheads with no chance of doing anything about it. And then they’ll really serve their true masters in big business.

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      p>It’s a dirty campaign trick.

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      p>Nothing more, nothing less.

    • They’re Muslims, not a monomith.

      “The monomyth is the cyclical journey undertaken by the standard mythological hero as described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The core concept of the monomyth is: ‘A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow men.'”

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