Thomas: Islamic center a zero-sum game

After months of dithering by the White House about the "Ground Zero Mosque" in lower Manhattan, President Obama endorsed the project at a recent Iftar dinner. The president said, "as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances."

After a torrent of criticism, the president tried the next day to clarify what he meant. "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there," he said, "I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates to our founding. That's what our country's about."

Yes, America was founded on the principles of religious freedom, but practicing religion isn't the issue. Unlike Christians and Jews in most Muslim nations, Muslims in America are free to practice their faith. The issue is whether they use that freedom to ultimately undermine freedom for people of different faiths, or no faith. It isn't America's obligation to demonstrate our tolerance, as if by doing so those within Islam who wish to destroy us will ultimately transform into religious pluralists. It is their obligation to demonstrate their own tolerance in the face of much evidence of Islamic intolerance and violence by radicals.

No less an authority on the subject than the State Department's own "ambassador" to Islamic nations, Feisal Abdul Rauf, offers valuable insight. Rauf is the founder of Park51, the proposed Ground Zero cultural center, and a self-professed moderate who refuses to describe Hamas as a terrorist group, though the State Department does. The same Hamas whose co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar declared, "We have to build everywhere!" Yet Rauf is traveling to the Middle East at taxpayer expense, supposedly telling Muslims how tolerant America is when it comes to Islam.

In an interview posted on Hadielislam.com and translated into English by W

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