Mosque Plan Near 9/11 Site Is 'Indecent,' Says Ex-Muslim

“I mean no disrespect to Muslims, but this is an unspeakably bad idea,” wrote Rod Dreher, director of publications at the John Templeton Foundation, in a Beliefnet blog on Thursday. “The 9/11 hijackers brought down those towers, and killed thousands, in the name of Islam.”

Although not all Muslims can be blamed for the 9/11 attacks, he said, “why on earth rub salt in the wounds of the 9/11 dead by allowing a mosque to go in just two blocks from where jihadists incinerated or crushed over 2,700 innocent victims, in service of their faith?”

Dreher highlighted the comment made by Community Board 1 member Rob Townley who called the plan a “seed of peace.” But he argued that even if there are good intentions behind the mosque, “there are some things you just don’t do.”

“[T]he inescapable fact is that those killings were carried out by Islamic religious fanatics who believed they were serving Islam through mass murder,” wrote Dreher. “I see the desire to erect such a building on the site not as a gesture of interreligious peace and reconciliation – which we need – but rather as an outrageous act of nerve and arrogance.”

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