Ground Zero Mosque Is Sacrilege

Some places belong to others
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 13, 2010 9:56 AM CDT
Ground Zero Mosque Is Sacrilege
Construction workers take a break in their work as seen through a fence surrounding ground zero in Lower Manhattan, Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007, in New York.   (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

There are some places you just don’t build. Some places are sacred, and Ground Zero is one of them. “It belongs to those who suffered and died there,” writes Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post. That’s why a commercial viewing tower near Gettysburg was taken down, why Pope John Paul II ordered a convent near Auschwitz closed, and why there should be no mosque, or Islamic cultural center, built near Ground Zero.

All Muslims aren’t radical Islamists, just as all Germans weren’t Nazis. Yet even today, “no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka,” Krauthammer argues, adding that, “America is a free country, where you can build whatever you want—but not anywhere.” Zoning laws restrict all kinds of development for purely aesthetic reasons. And in this case, they should restrict it, “for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred.” (More Charles Krauthammer stories.)

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