"Sure, I can understand how some people traumatized by 9/11 -- firefighters who survived it, or people whose loved ones didn't -- might not like the idea [of a mosque and community center two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks]. But I'd have thought that opinion leaders of all ideological stripes could reach consensus by applying a basic rule of thumb: Just ask, 'What would Osama bin Laden want?' and then do the opposite.
"Bin Laden would love to be able to say that in America you can build a church or synagogue anywhere you want, but not a mosque. That fits perfectly with his recruiting pitch -- that America has declared war on Islam. And bin Laden would thrill to the claim that a mosque near ground zero dishonors the victims of 9/11, because the unspoken premise is that the attacks really were, as he claims, a valid expression of Islam."
-- Robert Wright, 2010-07-20, The New York Times