The American Spectator : The Religious Left and the Ground Zero Mosque

The American Spectator : The Religious Left and the Ground Zero Mosque: "How fascinating that the U.S. Religious Left, usually so indifferent to religious liberty when relating to churches, at home, or abroad, has zealously embraced the Ground Zero mosque controversy as a Manichaean struggle between freedom and bigotry.

Churches, especially larger ones, routinely battle zoning bureaucracies or community resistance in the U.S. Poor St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church lost its sanctuary on 9-11 and has struggled for 9 nine years against government inertia to rebuild. If evangelicals had sought to tear down a 150-year-old building near Ground Zero to construct a high rise mega-church and 'cultural center' for evangelistic outreach in lower Manhattan, funded by murky sources, the reaction among New York elites can be easily imagined. The groundbreaking, if ever, might occur around 2025, almost certainly at a different location.

But the Cordoba House Ground Zero mosque has been zealously embraced by New York's mayor and countless others, with fast tracked hopes of completion within one year, just in time for September 11, 2011. The psychology behind the enthusiasm for the mosque on this particular site almost certainly includes a multi-culturalist fervor for non-Western religious and political movements. Touting the Ground Zero mosque is a cheap way to advertise virtue and tolerance in contrast with the ostensible xenophobia of all skeptics.