When the Landmarks Preservation Commission this week gave the green light for a 13-story mosque blocks away from Ground Zero, Mayor Bloomberg lauded the decision as a testament to New Yorkers’ “spirit of openness and acceptance.”
But, as is increasingly the case on such matters, Bloomberg seems largely to have been speaking for himself.
Recent poll results certainly suggest that New Yorkers aren’t feeling particularly accepting of the undertaking.
It’s hard to blame them.
According to a Siena Research Institute survey released yesterday, 56 percent of city residents — and 61 percent of respondents statewide — oppose construction of the mosque.
Statewide, more than half of self-identified men, women, college grads, conservatives, moderates and liberals are against it.
What explains this?
Majorities of New Yorkers from all walks of life aren’t infected with ill-will toward their Muslim neighbors.
Nor do they hold freedom of religion or property rights cheap — notwithstanding the clumsy efforts of some mosque opponents to use government power to kill the project.
It’s our feeling that they’re starting to wonder whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s insistence that he’s interested in promoting “tolerance” is entirely genuine — especially in light of his dodging over where the money for the mosque will come from.
Or his equivocation when asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Rauf told a foreign Arabic-language newspaper that he’ll be looking for cash in the Arab world — which is troubling, given that the radical Saudis are infamous for funding mosques in the West, including one in Manhattan founded by Rauf’s father.
Without complete openness on that front, New Yorkers would be reasonable in concluding that the effort to build so close to the site of the worst act of Islamist terror in US history is a provocation.
Which they are perfectly entitled to resent — Mike Bloomberg notwithstanding.