Another very prominent Democrat now says the planned Cordoba House Muslim community center in New York City should be moved away from the vicinity of Ground Zero: Former Democratic National Committee chairman and ex-presidential candidate Howard Dean.
“I’ve gotta believe there has to be a compromise here,” Dean said during a radio interview. “This isn’t about the right of Muslims to have a worship center, or Jews or Christians or anybody else to have a place to worship, or any place around Ground Zero. This is something we ought to be able to work out with people of good faith. And we have to understand that it is a real affront to people who’ve lost their lives — including Muslims. That site doesn’t belong to any particular religion, it belongs to all Americans and all faiths. So I think a good, reasonable compromise could be worked out, without violating the principle that people ought to be able to worship as they see fit.”
Dean said that after having met so many objections, the center should be moved somewhere else, but that this should be done with the cooperation of its organizers. He also said: “I think it’s great to have mosques in American cities. There’s a growing number of American Muslims. I think most of those Muslims are moderate. I hope that they’ll have an influence on Islam throughout the world, because Islam is really back in the 12th century in some of these countries like Iran and Afghanistan where they’re stoning people to death. And that can be fixed. And the way it’s fixed is not by pushing Muslims away, it’s by embracing them and have them become just like every other American — Americans who happen to be Muslims.”
Perhaps Dean is right, and the Muslim center could be moved to South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona, North Dakota, or New Mexico. Or it could go to California or Texas, or somewhere else in New York. Or perhaps it could go to South Dakota, or Oregon, or Washington or Michigan — or even to Washington, D.C. Yeah.
(Via Ben Smith)
