In mid-August, as the controversy over the Ground Zero mosque began to gain international attention, a leading Saudi journalist wrote two opinion articles opposing the project. Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, then manager of the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based Al-Arabiyya satellite television network, first produced a column for the August 16 edition of the international Arab daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat [The Middle East], of which he is the former editor-in-chief.
In that first column, Al-Rashid cautioned, “I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district… The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others… [T]he battle against the 11 September terrorists is a Muslim battle… and this battle still is ablaze in more than 20 Muslim countries. Some Muslims will consider that building a mosque on this site immortalizes and commemorates what was done by the terrorists who committed their crime in the name of Islam. I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a symbol or a worship place that tomorrow might become a place about which the terrorists and their Muslim followers boast.”
