Missing the point

This makes it hallowed.

Mr Daryl Lang at History Eraser Button weighs in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy. He takes issue with the notion that the proximity of the former site of the World Trade Center is "hallowed ground". Just because Jihadists hijacked airliners packed with innocent human beings and slammed them into skyscrapers packed with more innocent human beings with the express purpose of murdering as many people as possible for the express purpose of glorifying Islam and declaring war on civilisation, why should this be any reason to object to the raising of a 13 storey mosque named after the capital of the Andalusian Caliphate?

To prove his point, Mr Lang posts a number of photos of the area showing things like strip clubs, tee-shirt vendors, and an Irish pub and claims that this refutes any possible claim of Ground Zero being "hallowed".

Aside from an obvious indulgence in the fallacy of equivocation, Mr Lang magnificently misses the point. If a load of tee-shirt wearing strippers from Limerick had slaughtered 2700 people in the neighbourhood as the opening salvo in a campaign of conquest and then proposed to open a pub called "The Boot on the Neck" on the site of their atrocity, I might see the relevance of his argument.

But they didn't, so I don't.

Update: Putting aside the question of should it be built, all things being equal, the proponents can build the Ground Zero mosque as soon as they like, but all things are not equal. There are still questions to be answered about who owns the site, the intended use of the mosque, the people behind it, how it is funded, and (wait for it) whether the federal government is using taxpayer money to support it in violation of the first amendment. These are all legitimate impediments that need to be addressed.

It doesn't end there. The notion that New York City's hands are tied and that they can only sit by and watch the Ground Zero mosque be built is a dubious one. Having dealt with many local authorities in the past, the official line never impressed me. If New York really opposed the mosque, they could quite legally hinder its progress for decades, if not stop it in its tracks, by reviewing permit after permit, requiring inspection after inspection, and demanding endless impact studies and proof of compliance with the smallest regulation, initiative, and revision. Then, of course, there's listening to every appeal from every pressure group no matter how thin the grievance or concern. The entire Californian electricity generating industry was destroyed by that one.

This isn't even in the abstract. A Greek Orthodox church that stood at the site of the World Trade Center since 1922 and was destroyed in the attack on 9/11 still remains waiting to be rebuilt nine years later. The reason? The Port Authority doesn't want it rebuilt and is dragging its feet in exactly the way outlined above. Surely if New York can be utter jerks with one religion, they can be so with another.

Update: The beginning of the end?