Staten Island, NY – Things got heated at a community meeting on Staten Island where representatives from an Islamic group answered tough questions about their pending purchase of a former convent. When one man began shouting down another, the meeting’s organizers shut down the event, the Staten Island Advance reported.
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The Archdiocese of New York has struck a deal to sell an unused property in the Midland Beach section of the borough to the Muslim American Society, which intends to turn it into a mosque and community center.
The plan is a reflection of Staten Island’s growing Muslim population, but it has drummed up opposition and concerns from other residents of the neighborhood.
Part of the concern stems from a video posted on a conservative website that shows one member of the Muslim American Society, Mahdi Bray, apparently voicing support for Hezbollah and Hamas.
But the Muslim American Society says the video was shot long before Bray worked with the society. Also, he told the Staten Island Advance : “I categorically deny that I am a supporter of or that I am a terrorist supporter.”
A spokesman for the Archdiocese said that the agreement to sell the convent to the Muslim American Society is not final because it still needs to pass through various internal and civil stages.
In the meantime, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York wrote in his blog that Catholics should be civil and welcoming to newcomers “not only because of our own experience of sometimes being scorned in the past, but also because our faith teaches it.”
He acknowledged that Staten Island residents have the right to know what is going in their neighborhood.
“Yes, it is acceptable to ask questions about security, safety, the background and history of the groups hoping to build and buy,” Archbishop Dolan wrote in his blog. “What is not acceptable is to prejudge any group, or to let fear and bias trump the towering American (and for us Catholics, the religious) virtues of hospitality, welcome, and religious freedom.”
He maybe against terrorists but the problem is he does not consider Hezbolla and Hamas terrorist
“What is not acceptable is to prejudge any group,…”
Hmmm. I wonder why they are so judgmental.
I think that people better get used to the idea of more and more mosque and Islamic modos moving in next door to them all over the city. The number of muslims in our area is expanding rapidly (almost as fast as in the heimeshe community) and they have 100 percent legal entitlement to locate their mosques and schools just as we have to locate shuls and yeshivas. I understand some people will have a negative emotional reaction to the profiferation of islamic facilities but its too bad. They are legal and there is nothing to do to stop them (except perhaps for the rare case where the funding is coming from a known terrorist group in which case the U.S. Treasury office monitoring such funding would probably have stopped in already). In the several cases where groups have tried to stop the location of mosques based on alleged ties to terrorist groups, either Treasury or the courts have rejected such assertions in almost every case.
how many muslim countries allow churchs to be built
We arnt prejudging here, all terrorists are muslims and you would therefor have to say that a nice percentage of muslims either are or want to be terrorists. The islamists are slowly taking over america and their population is exploding. Give america ten years and they will have huge issues with all these community sleeper mousques all over the country. These people in staten island are right for fighting this. I’m not a semite or anti anything I’m just a realist and this will be a problem very very soon
I’d like to see the Jews as community minded as the Italians and protect their turf.
watch carefully the words the muslim use to denounce evil and terror inoticed it on the imam from the ground zero and from all the muslim they deny terror but not who and how, besides they r allowed to lie.
he spoke about it before now hes a changed man. hahaha
In the not so distant future we will wake up to the muslim loud speakers
It will be interesting to find what comes out of this.
I am still waiting for more than one or two Muslims to condemn terrorism.
Check out this photo of the head of that Turkish “charity” that sent the ships to Gaza. He is wearing a cute little talis while he meets with his Hamas buddy.
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Number #1 , you are right on the money!