President Obama jumped into the fray surrounding the controversial plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero over the weekend. In a White House speech on Friday Obama stressed that he was fine with a mosque being built near the site of the 9/11 attacks given that Muslims have the same right to freedom of religion as everyone else in America.

After some criticism from Republicans, on Saturday the president sought to clarify his point in an interview with CNN.

“My intention was to simply let people know what I thought,” the president told reporter Ed Henry while visiting Florida. “Which was that in this country, we treat everybody equally in accordance with the law. Regardless of race. Regardless of religion. I was not commenting on and will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country’s about and I think it’s very important that as difficult as some of these issues are, we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about.”

Many Republicans quickly accused the president of backtracking on his original comments. Long Island, New York Representative Peter King a leading opponent of the mosque said the president needed to be more clear on his position.

“The president is a gifted speaker and tremendous communicator,” King said, during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. “Obviously his words were carefully chosen on Friday, and the inference or the clear impression that everybody came away with was that he was supporting the mosque at Ground Zero, and he can parse it later on and sort of back away, but the fact is that was clearly the impression that he wanted to leave.”

New York City Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler, a defender of the mosque development, praised the president’s comments on Friday. He also challenged the argument that building a mosque where Al Qaeda carried out the deadly terrorist attacks is insensitive to the victims and their families.

“It is only insensitive if you regard Islam as the culprit as opposed to Al Qaeda as the culprit,” Nadler told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “Objecting to the mosque would be as objectionable if you wouldn’t object to a church or synagogue in the same place because that’s blaming all Islam and you can’t blame an entire religion.”

Representative King made the argument that “the attack was carried out in the name of Islam.”

Sarah Palin also weighed in on the debate, questioning the president’ position from her Twitter account.

”Mr. President should they or shouldn’t they build a Muslim mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people? Your position?” Palin wrote on her Twitter page.

New York Governor David Patterson has proposed a relocation of the mosque, something the developers of the project are considering.

Source via K!dult

Someone needs to slap Peter King. I know that’s not exactly a professional debate but he’s gone and accuse a faith and race rather than a small group of extremists who are really the cause of everything. It’s a difficult thing to talk about and debate on my behalf, mainly because I am not strong with words till AFTER an argument is over. But the only argument the dumb Republicans keep making are Muslims building a Mosque where an attack happened who just so happened to be of Islamic faith, even though they are labeled by everyone as “crazies”.

THEY do not represent ISLAM, it’s not a robot race, and the community who wish to build a Mosque around that area clearly state that it is also an open community for people of all beliefs who can come in to learn and enjoy. Why can’t any of those dumb rednecks get it through to them, conveniently those who are in support of leaders wanting to bomb a country “to make things easier” and be careless about how many lives they just killed, as long as there’s oil right?

And why is that bitch Sarah Palin still allowed on the politics scene? I’m surprised she knows what Muslims are considering she compared Alaska and Russia with “Furry Hats”.

I’m not one for politics, but it gets irritating when religion is put into debate for so and so. Because none of the politicians are religious – face facts, yet they’d use it to their advantage for just about anything to try and avoid money payouts or damaged pride. Bunch of crap.