re: #464 Obdicut

More that such a thing would bring them happiness and peace.

That claim seems unlikely and contrived. I doubt that it would have any such effect at all.

I”Yep, pretty much. I mean, not that one should be built, but that the rationale of “think of the victims’ families” is rather stupid when you have to say, “Well, except for the Muslim families. Fuck them.”

The “Fuck them” is your own comment, not something I see Foxman saying or implying. It’s not as if any family that suffered a loss therefore should expect a Community Center associated with their religion built nearby, and that Muslim families are being deprived of that right, as your “Fuck them” comment implies.

The divisiveness and conflict come from the bigotry opposing it.

Unless the choice of site was mere coincidence, it comes also from the decision to use the WTC location as a location to make a statement about Islam. It may indeed have been done to cast Islam in a favorable light and intended to promote peace and harmony. But I don’t think it takes bigotry for a family that has lost someone to terrorists who claim to act in the name of Islam to feel uncomfortable with next seeing what appears to be a monument to Islam being built very close to the site of the atrocity.

I don’t think he’s being either honest or open.

I disagree with you. It does appear from his own statements that he was influenced by similarity to the long and bitter conflict between Jewish organizations and the Catholic Church years ago about those crosses and the Camelite convent at the Auschwitz site with the nuns carrying out their self-appointed task of praying for the Jews (and others). He may possibly be mistaken in his opinion that that families of 9/11 victims would feel similarly about the Community Center and the WTC site. (The same argument came up then too - many of those killed in Auschwitz were in fact Polish Catholics.) But I have no doubt that his opinion is honest, whether mistaken or not.

And what exactly do you mean by “open” that you claim he is not discussing it openly - was that too just to disagree?