Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress (Lord, let November come so I can stop writing that), says the people behind the community center/Muslim prayer room a few blocks away from the site of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks are insensitive.
Per Politico, today:
“Everyone accepts the fact that radical jihadists were the ones that perpetrated this crime — leave out the state sponsorship — everyone knows the reasons those individuals boarded those planes that morning was because they felt their religion — Islam allowed them to do it, or their version of Islam,” Cantor said.
If they wanted to build a mosque somewhere else, Cantor said he’d be in favor of it.
“But think about it,” he said. “Why would you want, as an imam, why would you want to put a cultural center right there if it’s meant to heal people when right away it’s caused such a national uproar? That is in and of itself evident of the fact that they’re not interested in healing or bringing people together. They’re interested in posing their view. That’s what so insensitive about it.”
Why leave out state sponsorship? Who is Cantor saying brought it up? Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were Saudi — is he suggesting the Saudis sponsored the attacks? It’s an odd aside.
In any case, at the Daily Beast, Asra Q. Nomani wonders what the fuss is about — there’s not much of a plan. She wonders if this story isn’t what the British call ‘silly season" material, like last year’s Balloon Boy that wasn’t.
Without money, a nonprofit organizational structure, or a coherent PR strategy, the plan to build an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, dubbed Park51, remains nothing more than a pipe dream. And the growing media brouhaha is a little reminiscent of last year’s storm over “Balloon Boy,” the Fort Collins, Colorado, child whose parents claimed he had drifted away in a helium balloon.
Among the many issues facing the Islamic center’s development plan is its lack of an institutional structure, clear leadership, or money. For one thing, the effort to build the mosque isn’t yet a nonprofit with 501(c)3 tax-exempt status. That’s months from being cleared, according to most nonprofit experts. On its website, Park51 acknowledges that forming the nonprofit with an executive director and a 23-member board of directors is “the next step” in making the plan reality.
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