Is This The Turning Point Against The Ground Zero Mosque?

Hope springs eternal, but maybe there are signs that the site for the Ground Zero Mosque will be moved.

Bill Kristol sure thinks he has spotted The Beginning of the End of the Ground Zero Mosque:

A column (h/t, MEMRI) in the August 16, 2010 London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, director of Al-Arabiya TV and the paper's former editor, “A House of Worship or a Symbol of Destruction?” should mean the end of plans for a mosque near Ground Zero. Mr. Al-Rashid supports President Obama’s stand for the mosque in principle (as he supports Obama-like or even beyond-Obama-like policies with respect to the Middle East). He’s no neocon. But his practical case against building the mosque is irrefutable...


Here’s the crux of Mr. Al-Rashid’s argument:

"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, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery....[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, and which will become a shrine for Islam haters whose aim is to turn the public opinion against Islam.”

Feel free to read the whole thing here.

That point about how "there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district" challenges the statement of Sharif El-Gamal, the mosque developer, who explained why they turned down Governor Paterson's offer to find a new site: "While we have a tremendous amount of respect for our governor... this has always been about serving Lower Manhattan."

As that article notes, the governor is due to meet with them again later this week--which has been flatly denied by the other side:

"To the best of our knowledge, a meeting has not been scheduled," read the statement. We appreciate the Governor's interest as we continue to have conversations with many officials.

Who those other officials are is not clear, but Rich Lowry writes:

My twitter buddy @earldean71 tweeted this yesterday: “prediction: mosque/center will be built elsewhere in NYC in deal crafted by Cuomo/Schumer/Gillibrand.”

Maybe the politicians really can pull this off after all.

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