Dan, thanks for that update.

Isn’t it remarkable how we are Islamophobes if we have the temerity to suggest that Muslims are acting on anything other than the purest of motives — even if there is considerable evidence to the contrary — but Muslim “moderates” and their representatives are free, at the drop of a hat, to attribute the worst of motives to everyone else?

Here we have Hisham Elzanaty, the mysterious GZ mosque investor who has apparently contributed thousands of dollars to the Holy Land Foundation — which was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood to be an American piggy bank for Hamas during the Intifada. But we must, of course, take it on faith that he’s really a great guy looking to help Imam Rauf “build bridges” by erecting a monument that the American people oppose by lopsided margins. 

Donald Trump, by contrast, is a wealthy American real-estate developer and high-profile New Yorker who, if he is like most New Yorkers, is probably torn by this controversy but, unlike most New Yorkers, has the wherewithal — at least potentially — to moot the whole thing, which would be a public service. At a time of depressed real-estate markets, he offers not just to make Elzanaty whole but to build in a tidy 25 percent profit. If Elzanaty isn’t interested, that’s fine, but wouldn’t a polite “no thank you” do?

Apparently not. Elzanaty instead has a lawyer issue a statement that Trump is engaged in “a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight.” That’s possible, but isn’t it at least equally possible that Trump is just trying to do a good thing? I don’t know the guy, and he’s clearly someone who likes the limelight, but he’s also been known to give lots of money to real charities — as opposed to Hamas fronts. 

Are people who assume the worst in, and instinctively lash out at, everyone who doesn’t see things exactly they way they see things really the best bridge builders?