Free Republic

The developer of the Ground Zero mosque is being bounced from his SoHo office, the Daily News has learned. Sharif El-Gamal, who runs the real estate firm Soho Properties and is heading the project two blocks from Ground Zero, was slapped with eviction proceedings last month after tallying up $39,000 in back rent, a Manhattan Housing Court filing shows.

The Park51 mosque and community center near Ground Zero is not Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s first venture into real estate development. As The Record reports, beginning in the late 1970s, Rauf acquired five apartment buildings in Union City, North Bergen, and Palisades Park, all urban areas along the New Jersey bank of the Hudson River. He developed the properties with the help a series of government grants and loans totaling in the millions — including $384,000 in 1989 endorsed by Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), then mayor of Union City, and $1,295,000 underwritten by then Hudson County executive Robert C....

The right-wing, blinded by its own hysteria By Eugene Robinson Tuesday, August 24, 2010 When did the loudmouths of the American right become such a bunch of fraidy-cats and professional victims? Or is it all just an act? The hysteria over plans for an innocuous Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan -- two blocks from Ground Zero, amid an urban hodgepodge of office buildings, eateries and strip clubs -- is wildly out of proportion. It would be laughable if it didn't threaten to do great harm to the global campaign against Islamic terrorism. It is by now firmly established that...

Alternate headline: “Confirmed: Alvin Greene only the second-nuttiest Democrat in America.” In fairness, she’s now “clarified” to say that both sides of the issue should be investigated, but even lefty Greg Sargent isn’t buying that cop out. Apart from a few 527 ads, there’s no organized opposition to the mosque. Who is there to investigate? The freedom of religion is a Constitutional right. Where a place of worship is located is a local decision. I support the statement made by the Interfaith Alliance that ‘We agree with the ADL that there is a need for transparency about who is funding...

New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is currently on record excoriating opponents to the construction of the Islamic Cordoba Center mosque scheduled to begin construction on September 11, 2011 in Lower Manhattan. The proposed mosque’s site is two blocks from the former World Trade Center’s Twin Towers destroyed ten years previously on September 11, 2001 by Islamic jihadists. Bloomberg’s demands of religious tolerance from his city’s citizens is inconsistent in a city with 100 mosques already in operation but with a school system that will not acknowledge Christianity or Christmas, or even allow the repairs necessary for the Greek Orthodox...

Raheel Raza, a Muslim Canadian Congress Board Member, ripped into New York City Mayor Bloomberg as a “bleeding heart white liberal” and questioned how building a mosque at a place where Muslims murdered so many other Americans is seen as a sign of respect, saying it was in bad faith– not to mention flat-out controversial. Apparently the residents within the state of New York agree. A poll shown within the video also tells that 61% of New York state residents oppose the mosque, compared to a mere 26% support it– more than a 2-1 margin of opposition over support for...