"For a reality check, I talked with a wise New Yorker: Rabbi Brad Hirschfield… Hirschfield knows Abdul Rauf and considers him a genuine moderate. 'The rumor-mongering that he's some kind of agent for Islamists is utterly different from everything I know about him,' the rabbi said. 'With this [cultural center] project, he's proposing a spiritual response to a spiritual problem. This [9/11] was Islamic terror. He's trying to use the tradition to correct itself.'..."

Read more...

Doyle McManus from The Los Angeles Times