Obama Says Backing of Right to Build Mosque Not an Endorsement
August 15, 2010, 12:02 AM EDT

By Julianna Goldman and Kate Andersen Brower

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said his support for the right of a Muslim group to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site isn’t necessarily an endorsement of the project.

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there,” Obama said yesterday in Panama City, Florida, during a trip with his family to the Gulf of Mexico. “I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding. That is what our country is about.”

Obama addressed the controversy over the center for the first time on Aug. 13 during an annual White House iftar dinner, marking the breaking of the daily fast in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. His remarks drew criticism from some Republicans and opponents of the plan to build the center on Park Place, two blocks from the target of the 2001 attacks.

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” Obama said at the dinner. “That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said Obama, in making his comments in Florida, “is not backing off in any way” from his statement at the iftar dinner.

Not Passing Judgment

“It is not his role as president to pass judgment on every local project,” Burton said in an e-mailed statement. “But it is his responsibility to stand up for the constitutional principle of religious freedom and equal treatment for all Americans.”

The Islamic center plan has drawn opposition from Republican lawmakers including Arizona Senator John McCain and New York Representative Peter King, as well as the Anti- Defamation League.

“President Obama is wrong,” said King in an e-mailed statement. “The right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from Ground Zero.”

“It’s offensive to families, to the citizens of New York City,” McCain said as he campaigned yesterday in Payson, Arizona. “I believe strongly that they shouldn’t build it there.”

Asked whether Obama should have weighed in, McCain said, “It’s his privilege.”

Backers in City

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn have supported the project. “I applaud President Obama’s clarion defense of the freedom of religion,” Bloomberg said in an Aug. 13 statement.

The Cordoba Initiative, the project’s sponsor, describes itself as devoted to ecumenical relationships with other faiths. New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously Aug. 3 to allow the demolition of a building on Park Place that would be replaced by a mosque.

“We must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan,” Obama said on Aug. 13. “I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.”

Obama’s support was welcomed by the Council on American- Islamic Relations, whose director Nihad Awad expressed the hope that Obama’s remarks “will serve as encouragement to those who are challenging the rising level of Islamophobia in our society.”

‘More Pain’

The Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based Jewish organization with a mission to fight anti-Semitism, said in a July 28 statement that another location should be found.

“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,” the statement, posted on the group’s website, said.

Debra Burlingame, whose brother was a pilot killed in the attacks, and is a spokeswoman for other Sept. 11 victims’ families, said building the center is a “deliberately provocative act that will precipitate more bloodshed in the name of Allah.”

“Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America’s heart was broken nine years ago, and where her true values were on display for all to see,” Burlingame said in an e-mailed statement.

Equal Treatment

In Florida yesterday, Obama told reporters that “my intention was simply to let people know what I thought, which was that in this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion.”

“It’s very important, as difficult as some of these issues are, that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about,” he said.

Fifty-three percent of registered New York City voters opposed the building of the Islamic center and mosque at the site and 34 percent supported its development, according to a Marist College poll conducted July 28 to Aug. 5.

Nationally, 68 percent of Americans said they opposed building the mosque near the World Trade Center site in an Aug. 6-10 poll conducted for CNN.

More than 2,700 people died at the World Trade Center when two hijacked commercial airliners slammed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. The attacks were planned by al-Qaeda, an Islamist terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden.

--With assistance from Henry Goldman in New York, Hans Nichols in Payson, Arizona, and Kelly Riddell, Roger Runningen and Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington. Editors: Joe Sobczyk, Paul Tighe

To contact the reporters on this story: Julianna Goldman in Panama City at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net; Kate Andersen Brower in Washington at kandersen7@bloomberg.net.

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