The first specimen is from the foul-mouthed irrational contingent:

Then we have a bishop from  my favourite denomination:

Episcopal Bishop Supports Building of ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque

Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Diocese of New York,

I am writing to tell you that I wholeheartedly join other religious and civic leaders in calling on all parties involved in the dispute over the planned lower Manhattan Islamic community center and mosque to convert a situation that has sadly become ever more divisive into, as Archbishop Timothy Dolan recently stated, “an opportunity for a civil, rational, loving, respectful discussion.”  [just like the loving, respectful discussion you had to depose bishop Bob Duncan?]

The plan to build this center is, without doubt, an emotionally highly-charged issue. But as a nation with tolerance and religious freedom at its very foundation, we must not let our emotions lead us into the error of persecuting or condemning an entire religion for the sins of its most misguided adherents.

The worldwide Islamic community is no more inclined to violence that any other. [overlooking the obvious point that no other religion is presently inspiring violence quite as effectively as Islam]

And the celebrity dimwit:

Def Jam co-founder/Hip-Hop mogul Russell Simmons has thrown in his support for a controversial mosque being built near the site of the 9/11 terror attack in Manhattan in 2001.

Simmons has placed a series of religious symbols on the panes of his Liberty St. penthouse, which spells out the word “Co-Exist.”

Other messages in the windows of Simmons’ home include “It’s the Law” and “USA is Free.”

…..

“If your blaming Muslims for the attack on 9/11 then you need to change your mind,” Simmons said about the controversy surrounding the mosque. Did we blame Christians for the first world trade attack? [no, but that was probably because it was a Muslim who did it] It creates a cycle of negativity.”

There’s nothing like Hip-Hop for dispersing cycles of negativity.

There are a number of arguments that politically liberal Christians – and non-Christians – seem to enjoy making in defence of allowing the building to go ahead:

It’s not a mosque, it’s a cultural centre with a prayer room.

This is true up to a point; it is a cultural centre, a large Islamic cultural centre with a large – a very large – prayer room. The prayer room will be large enough to house up to 2000 people; I am uncertain whether a reluctance to call this a mosque is the blinkered response of people refusing to allow a cherished preconception to be demolished or whether calling a room designed to house 2000 praying Muslims a mosque inflicts semantic violence on the word. And I don’t particularly care: the question remains – should a large Islamic building be constructed on a site where 3000 people were murdered by individuals whose inspiration was Islam.

The Imam pushing the construction is a “moderate Muslim”

I confess I have difficulty understanding the meaning of “moderate Muslim”; the only reason the term is in use at all is because there are so many immoderate Muslims wanting to blow people up – when it isn’t convenient to behead them. There is no such thing as a “moderate Christian”; the nearest category I can think of would be a “nominal Christian”. From the perspective of Christians who take their faith seriously, a nominal Christian is someone who doesn’t; and I suspect the same is true of Muslims.

I would like to posit the existence of another category: the “stealth moderate Muslim”, the Muslim who, living in an environment hostile to his ideology, holds fast to it but pretends not to. Muslims in this category occasionally let their slips show, though. A few years ago on the Michael Coren show a “moderate Muslim”, a lawyer – an apparently personable and rational fellow – admitted when pushed that yes, indeed, the Koran does advocate the death sentence for those who abandon Islam for another religion. He didn’t look particularly comfortable about it but, since it is in the Koran, he couldn’t disagree. I think Imam Feisal is in this category. Although he condemns the 9/11 murders – what idiot wouldn’t – he nevertheless thinks that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened”, that sharia law is nothing other than natural law in another guise, that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation. He is a man who takes Islam seriously.

The building won’t even be at ground zero, it is two blocks away

The building that was standing in the spot where the mosque is to be built was destroyed by the events of 9/11. Why would it not be considered part of the devastation that constitutes ground zero?

To prevent the building of the mosque would be a curtailing of religious freedom

Religious freedom does not include the natural right to build a place of worship anywhere you want. Let us imagine – it might be a strain, I admit – that a group of demented Christians decided to blow up the Taric Islamic centre in Toronto killing a 1000 or so Muslims. After the dust settles, a Christian developer manages to buy the land where the mosque stood and decides to build a cathedral –in the interest of religious harmony and outreach to Muslims. Does anyone believe either that his motives would be sincere or that he would be allowed to do this in the name of “religious freedom”? He would not, and rightly so.

Further, there are 200 mosques in Manhattan: no-one is suggesting closing any of them; land some distance away from ground zero has been offered and turned down. Muslims are as free to worship as anyone.

The fact that Imam Feisal even wants to build his Islamic centre is a portent of ill intent.

Allowing the mosque to be built is the Christian thing to do

First, the decision is primarily a political one: although freedom of religion is guaranteed in the US, this freedom, like any other, is not without its limits and doesn’t necessarily encompass building a place of worship anywhere – particularly when it infringes on another’s freedom. Time will tell, but I strongly suspect that Obama’s implicit approval of the mosque is another nail in his political coffin.

Second, from a Christian perspective some seem to think that allowing the mosque to be built is the tolerant and loving thing to do – after all, perhaps this Christian hyper-tolerance will so shock Muslims it will tip them over the edge into Christianity. Others think it is the wimpy thing to do.

A Christian who takes his faith seriously cannot believe that Islam is true – if it is, then Jesus was merely a prophet and Christianity a lie. While Christians have to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s – and freedom of religion is Caesar’s in our democracy – Christian tolerance does not mean acquiescing to the promotion of false faiths – there is absolutely no Christian imperative demanding tolerance of a ground zero mosque.