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Speakers of various faiths offer perspective on N.Y. mosque controversy
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Jewish, evangelical and Catholic speakers, some with backgrounds in national security and interfaith relations, called the controversy over plans to build an Islamic community center and mosque a few blocks from ground zero in New York "contrived" and likely to help those who would recruit potential terrorists. "The individuals and organizations who are contriving this controversy seem to will that (a war with Islam) will come into existence," said Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army officer and professor of international relations at Boston University, in a Sept. 1 teleconference organized by the group Faith in Public Life. "It is absolutely imperative that we act together to deny them this." Meanwhile, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal the same day, New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan said he was working with Jewish and Muslim religious leaders to identify clerics and laypeople to invite to interreligious discussions to work out conflicts as they occur. "I'm afraid we have maybe not been as energetic with fostering relations with our Islamic brothers and sisters," the Journal quoted the archbishop as saying in an interview. "Our coming together is not to say we can settle the mosque site issue," but "the wider issue of church, Jewish, Islamic tensions." At an impromptu news conference Aug. 18, Archbishop Dolan offered to mediate the dispute over the location of the planned Islamic center. He noted that "as Catholics, we ourselves are somewhat touchy about this issue because in the past we have been discriminated against."
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