USA Today religion blogger Cathy Lynn Grossman asks that question with the headline of her August 18 Faith & Reason post.
Grossman explained that the comparison stems from conservatives who pointed out an incident in the early 1990s when Pope John Paul II halted a planned convent near the Auschwitz concentration camp. The nuns had every right to build the convent, but it was unwise and insensitive to do so, leading the pontiff to scrap the plan. By way of analogy, Muslims have every right to build a mosque near Ground Zero, but the insensitivity of doing so blocks from the site of the deadliest radical Islamic terror attack in U.S. history should lead Muslim leaders to call for the project to be scrapped.
But Grossman then went on to quote two liberals who reject the Auschwitz analogy as invalid before she conflated the Ground Zero mosque issue with isolated incidents across the country where other folks are raising NIMBY objections to mosques in their hometowns (emphasis Grossman's):
Meanwhile, none of the analogies flying about address whether people who are enraged at Islam care about individual Muslms or mosque zoning -- from Manhattan, to Murfreesboro, Tenn., to Temecula, Calif., where a Baptist pastor objects to a mosque planned for near his church. And New York Gov. David Paterson will soon meet with Cordoba Initiative planners behind the lower Manhattan community center to discuss the location.
Does this sound familiar? Are we still on the post from earlier this week? Is anywhere far enough away to suit critics? How do you apply the First Amendment here?
