Edit: See comments, I've changed my mind on this issue, but left my original writing here to show what my commenters are responding to.

This mosque debate keeps coming up, and shows no signs of going away, so I feel the need to express my opinion.

I'm somewhat distressed that my liberal friends who I usually see eye-to-eye with are almost all quite judgmental of the opinion that there could be any good reason to oppose this particular mosque on this particular site. There seems to be an overriding feeling that religious freedom demands that we not only allow this mosque to be built, but that we also give it our moral support.

My feeling at the moment is that there's not any good basis to actually deny the legal right of the mosque to be built at ground zero, but that I would criticize the imam's decision to move forward with the project at this location. I would join the voices that urge him to move it elsewhere. As Pope John Paul told the Catholic nuns who were going to move into a building near Auschwitz and build a cross there, "keep the idea, move the address."

If we agree that they have a legal right to proceed with the project (just as, by the way, their detractors have a legal right to protest outside it every day of its existence if they decide to) we can stop talking in terms of a religious freedom question and ask the more interesting question of whether it's a good idea that deserves our moral support.

The self-stated mission of the Cordoba Initiative is to improve Muslim-West relations. But this building hasn't even been built yet and already the project is worsening Muslim-West relations. To build bridges and cultivate trust you have to be sensitive to the other side. What if a Christian organization built a center like this in a Muslim country, but put a picture of Muhammad on the side? It would be an instant fail, even if their genuine intention was to improve relations.

I think the analogies are useful: an American cultural center at Hiroshima in 1954, or at Dresden? A German cultural center at Auschwitz in 1954, or on the beaches of Normandy? The analogies help because they take the "religious freedom" argument out of it. If we grant that the project is legal (thus satisfying religious freedom), it's becomes a question of whether the gesture is sensitive or not and whether we should give it moral support.

I don't think it's unreasonable to petition the imam to relocate this center. The US is almost 4 million square miles in area. New York City alone is 500 square miles. Why must this center be built on the 0.000025% of the country where Islamic extremists attacked us? Why would a center devoted to building east/west relations want to evoke that memory which is still quite fresh in people's minds? Why does the imam resist a land swap arrangement, which could be the perfect compromise -- allowing the center to be built without causing offense to >50% of Americans -- without any explanation but that the project will continue according to plan? I just find it hard to believe that someone who is already creating such division and mistrust is going to build east/west relations once the project is actually built.

Are there bigots who are opposing this just because they don't like Islam? Are there people who truly don't respect religious freedom? Probably. I haven't really read anything from people like that, but I'm sure they're out there. Don't let such people side-track the debate.

The point is that this project is achieving the opposite of its stated goal by uncompromisingly moving forward with a plan that is insensitive to the very Westerners it is trying to build trust with. What they're doing might be legal, but I think it's a bad idea and this is why I oppose it from a moral standpoint, though I don't deny that they have the right to build it.