Monday 16 August 2010

What a difference a day made

US President Barak Obama has withdrwan his support for plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero (see The House Barak wants to build)after families who lost loved ones on 9/11 labelled him “insensitive and uncaring”.

On Friday, he said: “As a citizen and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right ... to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in Lower Manhattan.”

On Saturday the President modified his comments: “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque [at Ground Zero]. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to [America’s] founding … my intention was simply to let people know what I thought. Which was that in this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion.”

Hamas co-founder leader its chief on the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud al-Zahar, speaking on Sunday on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC-AM in the US, said that Muslims “have to build everywhere so that followers can pray, just like Christians and Jews build their places of worship.”

Fair enough. But if Moslems must have freedom to build places of worship wherever they choose in the West, regardless of whether the places they choose to erect their mosques offends the sensitivities of bereft families, why don't Christians and Jews have the same freedoms accorded them in Islamic lands?

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