{"id":232,"date":"2010-08-16T12:20:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T12:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html"},"modified":"2010-08-16T12:20:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T12:20:00","slug":"the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html","title":{"rendered":"The Case for Breaking Hallowed Ground: Israel&#8217;s Muslim Cemetery, NYC&#8217;s Lower Manhattan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/15\/us\/politics\/15islamcenter.html?partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss\">President Obama throwing his constitutional law support behind the proposal to build an Islamic cultural center (community center, mosque, etc.) a few blocks from Ground Zero,<\/a> the debate seems&nbsp;to have just gotten even more heated. Given that some Americans &#8212; presumably including&nbsp;those staunchly opposed to this project &#8212; still think he&#8217;s a closet Muslim, perhaps he should have just sat this one out? Then again, opponents also got upset at Mayor Michael Bloomberg for supporting Park 51\/Cordoba House, and he&#8217;s about as relevant to the debate (<a href=\"http:\/\/newsweek.washingtonpost.com\/onfaith\/panelists\/asma_uddin\/2010\/08\/the_other_islam_controversy_in_nyc.html\">and not a closet Muslim &#8212; he refuses to give Muslim holidays to the NYC public school calendar<\/a>) as it gets.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, over in Israel,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/religion.blogs.cnn.com\/2010\/08\/14\/muslims-oppose-israeli-construction-at-islamic-cemetery\/?iref=obinsite\">CNN reports that a&nbsp;historic Muslim cemetery is being bulldozed to make way for a Museum of Tolerance <\/a>(seriously?), plus a parking lot and govermment building.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, religious land use issues. Where to draw the line at what a group can legally do, and what a group should morally do?<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">*<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>subscribe to Belief Beat<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/strong><\/a>and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>follow Belief Beat on Twitter.<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With President Obama throwing his constitutional law support behind the proposal to build an Islamic cultural center (community center, mosque, etc.) a few blocks from Ground Zero, the debate seems&nbsp;to have just gotten even more heated. Given that some Americans &#8212; presumably including&nbsp;those staunchly opposed to this project &#8212; still think he&#8217;s a closet Muslim,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Case for Breaking Hallowed Ground: Israel&#039;s Muslim Cemetery, NYC&#039;s Lower Manhattan - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Case for Breaking Hallowed Ground: Israel&#039;s Muslim Cemetery, NYC&#039;s Lower Manhattan - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With President Obama throwing his constitutional law support behind the proposal to build an Islamic cultural center (community center, mosque, etc.) a few blocks from Ground Zero, the debate seems&nbsp;to have just gotten even more heated. Given that some Americans &#8212; presumably including&nbsp;those staunchly opposed to this project &#8212; still think he&#8217;s a closet Muslim,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-16T12:20:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Case for Breaking Hallowed Ground: Israel's Muslim Cemetery, NYC's Lower Manhattan - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Case for Breaking Hallowed Ground: Israel's Muslim Cemetery, NYC's Lower Manhattan - Belief Beat","og_description":"With President Obama throwing his constitutional law support behind the proposal to build an Islamic cultural center (community center, mosque, etc.) a few blocks from Ground Zero, the debate seems&nbsp;to have just gotten even more heated. Given that some Americans &#8212; presumably including&nbsp;those staunchly opposed to this project &#8212; still think he&#8217;s a closet Muslim,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html","og_site_name":"Belief Beat","article_published_time":"2010-08-16T12:20:00+00:00","author":"Nicole Neroulias","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html","name":"The Case for Breaking Hallowed Ground: Israel's Muslim Cemetery, NYC's Lower Manhattan - Belief Beat","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-08-16T12:20:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-08-16T12:20:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/the-case-for-breaking-hallowed-ground-israels-muslim-cemetery-nycs-lower-manhattan.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Case for Breaking Hallowed Ground: Israel&#8217;s Muslim Cemetery, NYC&#8217;s Lower Manhattan"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/","name":"Belief Beat","description":"BeliefBeat - Nicole Neroulias","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b","name":"Nicole Neroulias","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","caption":"Nicole Neroulias"},"description":"Nicole Neroulias is a correspondent for Religion News Service, a secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics. 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She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}