Last Sunday ABC’s This Week programme organised a television debate under the title “Holy War: Should Americans Fear Islam?”. One of the guests was right-wing Christian evangelist Franklin Graham, who said of US Muslims:

“They want to build as many mosques and cultural centers as they possibly can so they can convert as many Americans as they can to Islam…. I just don’t have the freedom to do this in most Muslim countries. We can’t have a church. We’re not able to build synagogues. It’s forbidden.”

Do most Muslim countries really ban the construction of churches and synagogues? PolitiFact.com subjects Graham’s claim to its Truth-O-Meter.

Visitors to the upper floors of the Muslim community center planned for near ground zero would walk through lofty spaces – for art exhibitions, for contemplation and prayer, for programs on interreligious dialogue, for a 9/11 memorial – as sunlight streams through irregularly shaped windows between white crisscrossing beams.

That is the image presented in the tentative architectural renderings that the planners of the center, called , have been showing at community meetings in recent weeks, and which were revealed to the wider public for the first time last week.

A sketch of the façade shows a latticework of white starlike designs, echoing patterns that can be seen in Islamic architecture and decorative tiles across the Middle East.

The design was meant to show “hints of tradition,” while the use of modern materials and glass panels would give an impression of translucence and “moving toward the future”, Sharif el-Gamal, the project’s developer, said in an interview last week.

An image of the façade has been in circulation since early this year, but last week the planners revealed renderings of how some interior spaces might look and how the center’s many amenities — including a restaurant, theater, day care center, gym and pool – might be stacked in a building of up to 15 stories.

There would also be a 9/11 memorial and a space open to people of “all faiths and of no faith” for prayer, contemplation and meditation, Mr. Gamal said.

New York Times, 2 October 2010

Over at the New York Post readers offer their views. Some examples:

“Wake up America, we have let the enemy in the gates. Only the return of Jesus Christ can save this doomed planet now. Mayor Bloomburg you self-hating Jew, take a stand AGAINST this travesty.”

“And new Yorkers did nothing. Disgusting.”

“I THINK I AM GONNA BE SICK!!!”

“what a slap in the face to all newyorkers. our city is doomed !”

“To be sure this is nothing more than a camel-humper’s wet dream that is never going to get built, all one has to do is take note of the burqaless, mini-skirted female in the 1st picture accompanying this article. That’s a complete pipedream with absolutely NO basis in muslim reality whatsoever.”

“Peculiar. It looks like the STAR OF DAVID crumbling from the top on down. Imagine that.”

“IF this provocative shaft for target pratice ever gets built, it will be proof that the politically correct idiots of New York have surrendered”

“Perfect place to hide WMD’s”

“‘We want to have a marriage between Islamic architecture and New York City.’ El-Gamal said. Hey… You already got that once, you jerk. It was a giant pile of rubble where the WTC once stood”

“Gee, which floor will house the ‘Muslim Women’s Issues Pavillion’? You know, the room where the forced cl1torectomies will take place? Anyone?”

“shortly after its completion, there will be more reports than you can count of radicals preaching death to infidels and ties to terrorist groups all over the world … as more and more mislams move closer to the mecca mosque, more and more people will move away including wall street taking NY’s brightest minds with them lower manhattan will become a no go zone like many places in europe … it will be a stark and depressing reminder of what happens when multicultural progressives are allowed to vote in your neighborhood”

“Osama Bin Laden and his boys must be very pleased to see a victory mosque rise from one of the buildings they damaged on 9/11”

“NO mosques, NO Muslims, NO exceptions”

“Note the falling Stars of David in the facade. Exactly the intended impression. Three cheers for Bloomberg.”

The rantings of ignorant bigots and anti-Muslim racists? Not according to Pamela Geller who advises her readers: “The comments over at the NY Post are the money.”

The former Democratic opponent of the town supervisor who wants a Muslim group to dig up two bodies they buried on private property says she thinks the reaction might have been different if the group wasn’t Islamic.

“I do wonder what the reaction would have been if a different group of people had owned the property,” Dawn Rivers Baker, Chair of the Town of Sidney Democratic Committee, told TPMMuckraker.

Baker ran against Bob McCarthy, the now-town supervisor for the village of Sidney, NY. He said in an interview earlier this week that the controversy over the town’s decision to consult a lawyer on whether they could have the Muslim Osmanli Naksibendi Hakkani Sufi Order dig up the graves located in town was ginned by the the “liberal media.”

“It’s kind of weird for me to be sitting here espousing property rights when I’m the Democrat and he’s the Republican, but it’s private property,” Baker said. “And it’s not even like these little private cemeteries are even unusual in rural areas because they’re not, because it’s not illegal, they’re not bothering anybody, and I don’t know why the town board has to bother them.”

The Muslim group is well liked and people don’t have a problem with the Muslim group, Baker said.

“There’s not a whole lot in the way of racial diversity here in Sidney, and there are certainly some people who are unpleasant about that, about race. It’s not a perfect place,” Baker said. “But at the same time, I know that I haven’t had any crosses burned on my lawn since I moved up here.”

Baker said that there were some initial plans to stage a protest at the next town board meeting, and Baker said she has heard the board is talking about moving the date or postponing the meeting because they want to avoid a media circus.

She said there are a lot of people concerned that the town is getting a bad rap because of the controversy. Stephen Colbert even joked this week about Sidney residents being scared of “Muslim vampires” in “sleeper-in-coffin” cells.

“They would very much like to set the record straight and let the world know, ‘Well the town supervisor might be a jerk, but the rest of us aren’t’,” Baker said.

TPM, 1 October 2010