EW YORK — Weeks into the discussion about whether a mosque and community center can and should be built near the site of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, the city of New York (and the entire country) is still hotly debating the issue.
The foremost figure in American politics, President Obama himself, jumped into the fray to offer his opinion. The first-ever Arab Miss USA, the recently crowned Miss Rima Fakih, spoke of her take on the situation, according to the New York Daily News. And now that celebs as well as locals have involved themselves, the split amongst politicians is only growing.
Tensions are high surrounding the issue, there's no doubt about it. Hateful crimes against innocent Muslim Americans do happen here. And feelings between Muslims and Christians, Muslim Americans and non-Muslim Americans, are never more strained than when conversation trends toward September 11th, terrorism or the World Trade Center site.
There has been a lot of talk about separation of church and state, and other grandiose ideals that we as Americans say we support. And yet, as politicians so often do, most of those that spoke up said basically nothing, or at least nothing of any real substance or value. Those that interjected themselves into the debate, like President Obama, seemed originally to stand by the mosque in principal, but still without wholeheartedly supporting the project. Others straining to make their voices heard were extremists, denouncing the president and all other backers of the mosque project as radical Muslims or terrorists.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5725658/trade_center_site_mosque_project_talk.html
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