The proposed Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City took yet another controversial turn this week. In protest of the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition, CNN host Fareed Zakaria returned his 2005 ADL Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize and an accompanying honorarium. The up to 15-story structure will house a mosque, a 500-seat auditorium, a pool and be modeled on the Y.M.C.A. and Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, according to the “New York Times.” (Ironically, the building is called the Cordoba House, which echoes the medieval era in which Islamic-controlled Spain reached the world’s greatest level of religious coexistence to that date.)

Mr. Zakaria, whose move “stunned” ADL national director Abraham Foxman, was well within his rights to protest.

It is for certain extremely difficult to defend a Jewish group that opposes a house of worship or community center nearly anywhere, let alone amidst the nation’s most diverse major city. Likewise, it is impossible to understand the fierce emotional rejection some families of 9/11 victims have to the project. Indeed, questions have been raised about the Cordoba House’s funders – as the American Jewish Committee has noted while supporting the project. Those inquiries must be fully answered.

Yet, both Mr. Zakaria and the ADL could have been much more constructive in approaching this complicated and sensitive matter. For example, Mr. Zakaria could have challenged the ADL to work with him to push for an interfaith prayer space at the building, or to create a similar one nearby. Likewise, he could have asked the ADL to help him raise funds for a 9/11 monument in front of Cordoba House. He could even have asked for the Jewish group to co-sponsor an early event at the center – a conference on how to peacefully combat religious fundamentalism.

Ultimately, we must realize that Islam is engaged in an historic struggle for its soul, one that moderate American Moslems who favor coexistence can lead. Sticking a thumb in their eye cannot help their cause.

Kudos Neil! Unfortunately, your brand of reasonable analysis does not feed the beast which is the 24-hour cable news cycle of arguments followed by commercials….

The intellectual/cognitive problem with Mr. Rubin isn’t merely that he doesn’t know; its that, blinded by his politically-correct, multicultural fantasies, he can’t be told.

Well, Neil, perhaps you can thrill your readers with your acumen on this question:

Why didn’t the Japanese build a Shinto Shrine in Pearl Harbor? How about placing that shrine on top of the USS Arizona in the middle of harbor in 1954?

I think 9/11 families have every reason to be upset in opposing this mosque.  After all the terrorists that blew up the World Trade Center did so in the name of Islam and one would think the funders of the Mosque would be sensitive to their feelings. Imagine if it would be the other way around and Christians had blown up one of the towers in Dubai then a few years later tried to build a mega Church by the site.
The issue is not moderate Islam, for which there really isn’t any, but rather you are in search for Muslims who are ready to choose Americana over the Koran…good luck its not going to happen.