Every once in a while, something happens that is so completely wrong, so inexplicably confused, that it makes you shake your head in utter disbelief. Today was one of those days. The Anti Defamation League (ADL), an organization that has been in the forefront of the battle for religious tolerance for decades, announced that it opposed the building of a mosque near the former World Trade Center site. I find this almost impossible to believe.
The New York Times reports:
The nation’s leading Jewish civil rights group has come out against the planned mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero, saying more information is needed about funding for the project and the location is ”counterproductive to the healing process.”
The Anti-Defamation League said it rejects any opposition to the center based on bigotry and acknowledged that the group behind the plan, the Cordoba Initiative, has the legal right to build at the site. But the ADL said ”some legitimate questions have been raised” about funding and possible ties with ”groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.”
”Ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right,” the ADL said in a statement. ”In our judgment, building an Islamic center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain — unnecessarily — and that is not right.”
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