Mosque at Ground Zero?

Does opposition to a mosque at Ground Zero mean you're a xenophobic, Islamophobic American hater-of-the-other?

Not necessarily. One prominent Muslim scholar claims that the plans for the Ground Zero Mosque are evidence of a nefarious plot by the Jews to discredit Islam!!! Read the whole piece. A teaser:

When the pope comes to London next month, he is going to be greeted by substantial numbers of protests organized by people calling for his arrest and accusing him of the wildest hatreds. Yet we do not hear that critics of the pope are bigoted, “Christianophobic.” Nor even if they were should it cause any alarm.  But Islam is different.

Why? It goes back to the “phobia” business. Arachnophobia is an irrational fear of spiders and claustrophobia is an irrational fear of small places. They are irrational because most small spiders and most small spaces do not kill you. There are, however, very sensible reasons to be fearful of many forms of Islam.  Commuters in London and Madrid know why. As do Dutch filmmakers. And so do the numerous Muslim-born writers, artists, and musicians who spend their lives in hiding for fear of murder from their erstwhile co-religionists for “crimes” like “apostasy” and literary criticism.

But the cowardice in identifying this and cringing stupidity of what passes for intellectuals and commentators in America, like the U.K., today is staggering. . .

For Muslims, the answer to radical Islam may well be some nice official version of Islam that hasn’t yet been discovered. But for free and open societies, the answer to radical Islam is not Islam. It is free and open societies. It doesn’t matter what Muslims believe, anymore than anybody else. But it matters how they behave. . . .

Your Tax Dollars at Work: The Ground Zero Imam is being sent by the U.S. State Department on a good-will trip through the Middle East.   What could go wrong?

Meanwhile, the church which was crushed when the towers fell has not been re-built due to bureaucratic obstacles. This demonstrates a double standard as officials rush to approve the building of the 13-story mosque in time for it to open on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Note: part of one of the planes hit the building where the mosque is proposed.