In today’s Wall Street Journal, Irshad Manji, a visiting scholar at New York University, notes the contrast between Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s indifference toward the proposed mosque’s proximity to Ground Zero and his outrage over the Danish cartoons:

In a February 2006 press release, Imam Rauf announced that he was “appalled” by the drawings. He called it “willful fomentation” and “gratuitous” to republish them throughout Europe. In the following weeks, almost no U.S. newspaper printed the caricatures.
Three years later, it is the imam who the majority of Americans believe is engaging in “willful fomentation.” Yet his retinue has not publicly acknowledged that the feelings of these “appalled” Americans parallel how moderate Muslims such as Imam Rauf felt during the cartoon debacle.

Manji, however, thinks the project should proceed. Read the full op-ed here.