Religious Freedom by Martha Randolph Carr Last week President Obama supported the idea of a mosque being built near Ground Zero in New York City where 2,800 innocent people were murdered. The mosque would be built on private land and used as a religious gathering place. There is a lot of hurt feelings and controversy surrounding the site and no wonder. It will sit near the largest mass murder in American history....

Glenn Greenwald nails it about Howard Dean’s radio interview yesterday, in which he told WABC’s David Goodman that Cordoba House, the Islamic community center planned for construction two blocks from Ground Zero, is “a real affront to people who lost their lives” on 9/11:

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Here are a couple of things that have caught my attention this week: President Obama is a Muslim – According to a poll by the Pew Center, nearly 1 out of 5 people (18%) think that the President is a Muslim while 34% think he is a Christian and 48% have not got a clue what faith he may have. It is amazing to me that this is a story coming from a country that has systematically erased tenets of Christianity...

Who says that negatively defining someone — facts to the contrary — doesn’t work? It sure does in 21st century American politics. Just look at this Pew Research Center poll which indicates nearly one in five Americans think President Barack Obama is a Muslim: A substantial and growing number of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while the proportion saying he is a Christian has declined....

Perhaps it’s because Spain was hit with an al-Qaeda terrorist attack that killed 191 and wounded 1,800; it may be Spain’s long history with Islam, which goes back to the 8th century; it might even be simply because the ‘Cordoba House’ is the namesake of that Spanish city, in which Jews, Christians and Muslims coexisted peacefully for centuries. But whatever the reason, there has been...

Do Western countries have a right to demand ‘reciprocation’ from Muslim nations when it comes to freedom of religion? And was President Obama in error to come out apparently in favor of the building of a controversial Muslim community center near New York’s Ground Zero? Continuing with our global coverage of this expanding controversy, columnist Rufo Gamazo Rico of Spain’s La Opinion...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Opponents of the New York City community center and mosque located near the site of the former World Trade Center routinely cite polling data as evidence that the project should be killed. Setting aside for a moment the fact that public opinion impeded such civil right advances as giving women the right to vote and freeing slaves, let’s take a look at two of the most cited surveys of New Yorkers. Polling...

Should a Muslim community center and a mosque be permitted to be built four blocks from Ground Zero in New York? The proposed Cordoba House, so named to invoke Cordoba, Spain, between the 8th and 11th centuries, where Muslims, Christians and Jews are said to have co-existed peacefully, has sharply divided Americans. According to columnist Ignacio Camacho of Spain’s ABC newspaper, the failure of Muslim...

A reminder that Mayor Bloomberg is Jewish. This short speech is a great history lesson on religious tolerance, and it will be remembered, even though the mainstream media seem incapable of putting this story into any context other than “he said/she said.” They don’t even challenge geographically incorrect statements. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost...

One of the more bizarre reactions to Pres. Obama’s statement supporting the right of a Muslim group to build an Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero came from William Kristol:

It turns out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, — branded a radical Muslim leader on talk shows and some Internet websites — worked for the FBI and is not as he has been described by those who’ve also insisted plans to build a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero is really a mosque at Ground Zero. Here’s the beginning of a report by Sam Stein on The Huffington Post – seemingly yet...

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

I just read an excellent article by TMV colleague, Kathy Gill, titled “Burning The Qur’an, Literally and Figuratively.” The article made me reflect quite a bit on the disturbing increase in anti-Muslim, anti-Islam sentiments and rhetoric in our country, but it also reminded me of a very innocent act of 30 years ago. An act that—along with other “Saudi memories”—seems to be very relevant...

We just put up a report that so far seems to be untrue. The Ground Zero Mosque is apparently going forward. Here’s our original lead, what we had and the updated material on the bottom: The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Muslim leaders will soon announce plans to abandon building a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero – a plan that has been inaccurately described as being at Ground Zero...

Olle Johansson, Sweden This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Pandering Over a Mosque by Eugene Robinson WASHINGTON — Lies, distortions, jingoism, xenophobia — another day, another campaign issue that Republicans can use to bash President Obama and the Democrats. First it was illegal immigration. Now it’s the so-called “Ground Zero mosque,” which is not at all what its opponents claim. First, it’s not at Ground Zero. The site...

We in the United States often underestimate that gulf of mistrust and suspicion that separates India from Pakistan. In the midst of the worst flooding in it’s history, with a fifth of this densely populated country under water and upwards of 14 million people affected, this editorial from Pakistan’s The Nation calls on the government to reject emergency aid offered by India. The reason? The editorial...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from former Bush strategist Mark McKinnon for made these comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe about the use by Republicans of the controversy surrounding the building of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero and Barack Obama’s comments supporting the building, Via Think Progress: McKINNON: Usually Republicans are forthright in defending the Constitution. And here we...