At the Standard’s blog, Bill Kristol highlights a remarkable column by Abdul Rahman al-Rashid, the left-leaning director of al-Arabiya TV and former editor of London’s Arab daily, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. Here’s the portion Bill excerpted, from MEMRI:

I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district. . . . The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery. . . . [T]he battle against the 11 September terrorists is a Muslim battle…and this battle still is ablaze in more than 20 Muslim countries. Some Muslims will consider that building a mosque on this site immortalizes and commemorates what was done by the terrorists who committed their crime in the name of Islam. I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a symbol or a worship place that tomorrow might become a place about which the terrorists and their Muslim followers boast, and which will become a shrine for Islam haters whose aim is to turn the public opinion against Islam.