As framed by the liberal mainstream media, the heated nationwide debate on the proposed mosque at ground zero pits Muslims’ property and First Amendment rights to practice their religion against the raw sensitivities of 9/11 victims and their families.
In this view, opposing the mosque means giving feelings precedence over constitutional rights. But this tidy story line misses a key point: Before you exercise your property rights, you first have to own the property.
In August, the Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice’s lawsuit on behalf of former New York firefighter Tim Brown revealed that public utility Con Edison actually owns half of the property needed to erect the mosque.
“The Public Service Commission has to approve any sale before demolition or construction takes place,” ACLJ attorney Brett Joshpe told The Examiner.
Joshpe said that information obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request will be used to amend the lawsuit this week against New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which earlier this year unanimously cleared the way for the 13-story Islamic Center.
The lawsuit accuses the commission of bowing to political pressure and violating its own procedures and precedents. Since the original filing, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Con Edison, the New York City Department of Buildings, and the State Public Service Commission were added as defendants. None spoke up about the ownership issue when the mosque project was first proposed.
“We are adamantly against building this particular mosque at that particular location by those particular people, who have proved themselves to be untrustworthy,” said Brown, who worked in the mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and lost nearly 100 friends on 9/11.
“One of the problems is that we can’t get a straight answer out of any of them. Debra Burlingame [sister of hijacked pilot Charles “Chic” Burlingame] and I met with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and developer Sharif El-Gamal, who lied when he told us he owned both properties,” Brown told us.
“Nobody knows where the money to build the mosque is coming from. They couldn’t even get their own lies straight. We want to make sure it’s not the same source that funded the attacks on 9/11,” Brown said.
Ex-Marine Peter Parente, commander of the New Rochelle Veterans of Foreign Wars, was helping a friend prepare for the grand opening of the Manhattan Burlington Coat Factory scheduled for Sept. 12, 2001.
That’s where an 8-feet by 10-feet chunk of United Flight 175’s landing gear crashed through the roof of the five-story building on the disputed site. Parente passed firetrucks with blown-out windows and flattened tires to help hoist the half-ton piece of wreckage from the third-floor ceiling and drag it down three sets of escalators. He considers the location part of ground zero.
“Ground zero is a mile in every direction where they found body parts,” he said.
Like many New Yorkers, Parente lost a close friend on 9/11: former Marine Sgt. Maj. Michael Sean Curtin of NYPD Rescue 1, one of the first units to enter the Twin Towers. On March 11, 2002 — exactly six months later — Curtin’s remains were removed from what used to be the lobby. “He was a hero,” Parente said, choking up. “I’ll never get over it. I’ll take this to my grave.”
Pointing out that Muslims are already conducting daily prayers in the Burlington Coat Factory building even though there’s another mosque just a block away, Parente summed up his opposition: “We’re Americans and we believe in our freedoms, but building this mosque on sacred ground is not the right thing to do.”
It may not even be legal.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
