Thaindian News

New York, Mar 16 (ANI): Opponents of the proposed “Ground Zero Mosque” in Manhattan moved the court on Tuesday arguing that the location of the proposed plan should be rather preserved as a historic landmark to ‘teach America about what happened there’.

Fox News quoted New York City firefighter Tim Brown, a 9/11 survivor who was among those that brought the lawsuit to New York State Supreme Court, along with the American Center For Law and Justice, as saying that the mosque should not be built ‘on the graveyards of our friends’.

“Why did they insist on building this mosque on the graveyards of our friends? I’d like it to be an historical landmark to teach America about what happened here,” Brown said.

The lawsuit insists that the 152-year-old building should have been declared an official landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. It also claims that the project’s developers had entered an agreement with the administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to push the project through.

Brown’s lawyer, Jack Lester, charged there was “active participation” between the Bloomberg administration and project developers.

However, the allegations were rejected by a New York City Law Department spokesman saying: “As our court papers demonstrate, Landmarks Commission’s decision not to designate the building a landmark is irrefutably rational.”

Supporters of the project, known as Park51, said that opposition is the result of “pure bigotry,” adding: “Imagine, instead of building a community center with a mosque in it, they were building a grocery store. Do you think Timothy Brown would be in this case?”

“We only have a case today because they don’t want Muslim people building a few blocks away from Ground Zero,” attorney Adam Leitman Bailey said. (ANI)