Mosque on Park Place: Round Up

August 26, 2010 0 Comments

Surely, you’ve been unable to avoid all the frenzy surrounding the so-called “Ground Zero” Mosque to be built on Park Place in lower Manhattan. Politicians and pundits on all sides of the debate have weighed in, and in some instances, staked their political future on this position.

As President of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, and Director of the Religious Action Center, Rabbi David Saperstein, asserted, “The principle of religious freedom on which the United States was founded has demonstrated that our nation is strengthened by the faith of its citizens and the houses of worship in which they gather.” The full text of Rabbi Yoffie and Rabbi Saperstein’s statement is available.

In order to promote our community’s support for religious freedom, Reform Movement leadership met with community leaders in the New York area, and some joined in public events and statements on the subject. Essentially as in the op/ed Rabbi Saperstein wrote for the Huffington Post/Religion News Service we’ve argued:

“We Jews, as the victims of religious discrimination and persecution, know all too well the pain that comes from being told that our community and our houses of worship will be treated differently than others.“

Director of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs, Mark J. Pelavin, sat down to debate Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics and religious liberty commission about the Cordoba Initiative on Interfaith Voices, radio’s leading religion news magazine:

play show now:

To help keep you updated on the progress of this project as well as the dialogue surrounding the center’s development, check out these major news outlets’ coverage of the brouhaha:

USA Today’s coverage includes a significant amount of reporting from Cathy Lynn Grossman; her most recent piece explores survey data on what Americans think and know about Islam.

The Daily Beast has also kept an extensive page on the debate over the initiative, including Peter Beinhart’s piece about why the mosque controversy is a disgrace to America.

Of course, the New York Times has been covering this story since its origins as a “local issue” and their resources are thorough and broad based.