Governor Deval Patrick, who this spring became the state's first sitting governor to visit a mosque, lent his support yesterday to an Islamic Center proposed near ground zero, stepping into the middle of a growing national furor over locating a Muslim house of worship so near the site of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.When asked about the controversy during a radio appearance, Patrick turned to the words of President George W. Bush, a Republican, to express the need to make a clear distinction between terrorists and practitioners of the Muslim faith.
"The sooner we separate the peaceful teaching of Islam from the behavior of terrorists, the better for all of us,'' Patrick said on WTKK-FM 96.9.
The issue has caused bitter divisions in New York and has provoked strong emotions in Massachusetts, where the two planes involved in the attacks took off. Some local families of victims of the attacks have embraced the proposal for a mosque in Lower Manhattan as a symbol of religious tolerance, while others consider it unthinkably insensitive.
"It's poor taste to put it where they're putting it,'' said C. Lee Hanson of Easton, Conn., whose son, Peter, daughter-in-law, Sue Kim, and 2-year-old granddaughter, Christine Lee, all of Groton, died on United Airlines Flight 175. "They should just build it a mile away. There would be no problems.''
The 15-story mosque and cultural center are poised for approval after the New York City Landmarks Commission refused Tuesday to block redevelopment of the site.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg supports the proposed mosque and urged the families of Sept. 11 victims to embrace it as a symbol of the nation's freedoms.
"We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting,'' Bloomberg said Tuesday. "We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms the terrorists attacked.''
The proposal has sparked indignation from national Republican leaders, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich and former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and became part of the New York governor's race when Republican candidate Rick Lazio pressed Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic contender, to investigate the project's funding.
The families of 9/11 victims have been divided. Some believe the mosque will serve as a tribute to the perpetrators of the attacks rather than its victims, whose own below-ground memorial has yet to be built.
"I think it's a tragedy for the United States,'' Hanson said. "It's another sign of weakness that we'd allow a victory mosque to be built next to what most of us is holy ground.''
Cindy McGinty -- whose husband, Michael McGinty of Foxborough, was killed while attending a meeting in the World Trade Center -- expressed weary resignation to the plan. She said she just hopes it is done tastefully and that officials keep an eye on the proponents of the mosque and their sources of money.
