Building a Muslim community center in NYC

The Park51 project, sometimes described as the "Ground Zero mosque", is a Muslim community center and prayer space located a few blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center. The location is zoned to allow religious organizations to build there; as such, the Religious Land Use (and Institutionalized Persons) Act protects the group's right to build there. This is the same statute that protects the right of a Christian mega-church to expand, or a a small church to use a downtown space to hold services. This law was passed by Congress to protect the right to free exercise of religion, a right recognized by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In an interview on National Public Radio (NPR) on September 11, New York's Mayor Bloomberg discussed the recent controversy around the Park51 project. I was impressed by his analysis of the issues:

NPR: There've been so many controversies leading up to today, between the proposed Islamic Center there in lower Manhattan, the threatened burning of Qurans in Florida. Have 9/11 commemorations become politicized?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I think that a lot of it has become politicized. The whole issue of the Islamic center, which was proposed a while ago and nobody seemed to have any problems with it, all of a sudden in the middle of an election campaign became something that the candidates can't stop talking about. It's pretty hard to argue that they aren't trying to make something out of this for their own political gain. And that will go away after the November election.

The real issue here is history will look back and say, did we have the courage to stand up for the Constitution and keep us free going forward? The government shouldn't be involved in telling people who to pray to, where to pray, how to pray, who's going to fund their praying.

And I think that hopefully we'll be able to look back and say that, you know, a few people were a little bit of hotheads, a few people tried to take advantage of it, but in the end America understood that the Constitution has protected us for a long time and if we don't protect other people's rights, we're not going to have our rights.

NPR: Your support of the right of the Islamic center to open being noted, if the people who run the Islamic center on their own decided to move it, would you be relieved?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: The government should not be relieved or whatever - concerned, I guess, that they have a right to build a place of worship any place that's zoned for that kind of activity. This place is. And it's totally up to them. And if the government starts expressing a view of concern or relief, that's just the government trying to influence a decision which it should not.

Compare that expression to the pressure brought to bear by the Obama Administration (and others) on the church threatening to burn copies of the Quran - an attempt to affect a different right (free speech) under the First Amendment.