Photographs show a 'censored' protest against a planned mosque in New York City.
Since the horrific events of 11 September 2001, a number of communities throughout the U.S. have expressed opposition to plans to build or expand mosque facilities in their towns. Perhaps nowhere has controversy over mosque-building issues been greater than in New York City, where plans to build three mosques - one of them just a few blocks from the 'Ground Zero' site of the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks - have prompted numerous protests in both word and deed.As the New York Daily News noted of the issue:More than half of New York voters oppose building a Muslim community center blocks away from Ground Zero, a Quinnipiac University poll found. A solid 52% of voters in the five boroughs don't want the Cordoba House in lower Manhattan, and just 31% are behind the center. The 13-story Cordoba House will include a mosque, fitness center, pool, classrooms, kitchens and a theater for lectures and performances, developers say. Although there have been critics, including some relatives of 9/11 victims, the Cordoba project has the support of virtually every lower Manhattan politician and Community Board 1. 'There's been a tremendous amount of bigotry associated with this,' said CB1 president Julie Menin. 'If we've learned any lesson from 9/11, it's to respect people's religious freedoms.' 'Our city's open to anybody, no matter what your religion is,' Mayor Bloomberg said. Still, some are voicing outrage at the idea of a mosque near the hallowed ground where Islamic terrorists waged war on America. By no means am I saying the folks trying to build this place are responsible for 9/11, but you still have to take a hard look at it and say how will it look to have this in your face?' said Patrick Bahnken, head of the union that represents paramedics. 'It is like salt in the wound - a constant reminder of what they did to us on 9/11.'The photographs above depict a June 2010 protest over the Cordoba House construction. Contrary to the verbiage accompanying some of the e-mailed versions of these images, neither the protest nor the news coverage of it was 'censored.' The protest was allowed to take place (otherwise there would be no pictures of it), and this and similar protests have been thoroughly covered in numerous New York newspapers as well as in others throughout the U.S., from the Washington Times to the Christian Science Monitor.
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