There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

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Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for “religious toleration” are arrogantly dishonest. They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City. Meanwhile, there are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia.

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If the people behind the Cordoba House were serious about religious toleration, they would be imploring the Saudis, as fellow Muslims, to immediately open up Mecca to all and immediately announce their intention to allow non-Muslim houses of worship in the Kingdom.

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No mosque.

No self deception.

No surrender.

The time to take a stand is now – at this site on this issue.

Meanwhile, Yahoo’s Upshot blog reports that anti-mosque protests are on the rise around America.

Like so much right-wing agitation, the campaign against the mosque in lower Manhattan — actually an interfaith community center known as the Cordoba House that will include a mosque — depends on fear and misinformation. Its political purpose is to demonize Islam and its adherents, no matter how peaceful and moderate, by pandering to prejudice and inflaming emotions left raw by the losses of 9/11.

The chief argument against the construction of Cordoba House, echoed by Palin’s tweet, is that Islamic prayer two blocks north of the World Trade Center site would offend the memory of the 3,000 innocents murdered there. While families of the deceased have been mobilized to oppose the project, thugs like Williams are whipping hysteria and hatred with genocidal language:

Consider it for what it is, a 13 story tall middle finger being flipped at the victims of 911 and America as a whole by animals. Ground Zero is the last place that any legitimate religion would ever plant a “cultural center” to advance inter-faith understanding…

The monument being built would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ god and a “cultural center” to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult…

It is a project of American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, essentially the same group of apologists (but under 2 different names) for terrorists and the animals who use it as a terrorist ideology. They cloak their evil with new age gibberish that suggests Islam is just misunderstood.

At the same time, supposedly more “responsible” figures like Lazio claim that building a mosque in downtown Manhattan raises “serious security issues,” although he is unable to articulate what those problems might be.

To clear the air clouded by all these noxious effusions, it’s important to understand some basic facts about the project — and about the Constitution that Palin, Williams and the rest of the Tea Party movement claim to defend.

The victims of 9/11 included numerous Muslims, as anyone browsing the memorial sites can see. Most of them were working New Yorkers who labored as cooks, waiters, cleaners and security guards in the World Trade Center — people whose suffering concerned the perpetrators of the attack no more than those of the thousands of other Muslims they have murdered in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere around the world. No religious faith has an exclusive claim on opposition to Islamist terrorism, and no religious group should be excluded or stigmatized in memorializing that opposition. The people who want to build Corboba House have every legal right to do so, and those rights are not subordinate to anyone’s religious prejudice.

The Cordoba Initiative, sponsor of Cordoba House, is an organization that rejects violent extremism and encourages civil dialogue between the Islamic world and the West. So far nobody has found any evidence that Corboba represents a nefarious conspiracy to establish a beach head for Islamism, despite much windy rhetoric devoted to that theme. Moreover, contrary to Lazio’s posturing, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has declared bluntly that he sees no security concerns in the construction of a mosque in that neighborhood. His calm, measured and appropriate response represents the realistic perspective of a law enforcement official who does more to fight terrorism every day than Williams, Lazio or Palin will accomplish in their combined lifetimes.

Finally, the constitutional guarantees of freedom, including freedom of worship, were not suspended by 9/11, despite the efforts of certain politicians and partisans. As Mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed out in defending the Cordoba House project, its opponents are undermining the liberties that define us and distinguish us from our enemies:

“I think our young men and women overseas are fighting for exactly this,” he said in reaction to Palin. “For the right of people to practice their religion and for government to not pick and choose which religions they support, which religions they don’t.” Scott Stringer, Manhattan’s brave borough president, who like Bloomberg happens to be Jewish, challenged her directly in his own tweet: “@SarahPalinUSA NYers support the #mosque in the name of tolerance and understanding. You should learn from the example we set here in #NYC.”

They’re right. New York is great because of its diversity, tolerance and devotion to American ideals — and because nobody here pays much attention to the likes of Sarah Palin, Mark Williams or even that sad opportunist Rick Lazio.

“This is not to be confrontational with the Muslims, it really isn’t,” he said of the 9/11 Christian Center. Asked about the center’s website, which calls Islam a “false religion” whose 1 billion adherents “are going to Hell,” Keller said it was not intended as confrontation but rather “telling the truth.”

And he insisted the money donated to him for the church project, the cost of which he pegs at $1 million, will be used for legitimate purposes — even though Keller has been involved in questionable fundraising schemes in the past. Our favorite is Gold for Souls, a project of Keller’s LivePrayer.com ministries, which advertises “personal responses to all email prayer requests.”

Gold for Souls is a service in which you send Keller your “old gold, jewelry, diamonds, and precious items” and … well, that’s about it. Keller, who dedicated his life to ministering after an insider trading conviction in 1989, makes his pitch on a promotional video for Gold for Souls:

Today we legally slaughter 4,000 innocent babies every 24 hours in this nation … We’ve made mainstream sexual perversions of every kind. Our government supports the enemies of israel. Pornography and gambling are now socially acceptable. We bow down and worship every false god and idol man has dreamed up in his deranged mind. …

Now you can be part of this great movement to turn this nation back to God and biblical truth! One way you can help is by donating your old gold and jewelry to Gold For Souls.com.

He continues: “Gold For Souls will not only get you a tax deductible donation receipt for the fair market value of your gold and jewelry, but it will pay you eternal dividends since the funds will be used to help lead this nation back to God and biblical truth and the souls of men to faith and Jesus Christ.”

Keller told Salon that the service has been “well-received” since it launched in February and has helped support the work of his St. Petersburg-based outfit. He also stressed that he was merely paid to host and produce an infamous 2009 Birther infomercial. The proceeds from the infomercial, in which viewers were asked to pay $30 to send faxes demanding Obama’s birth certificate, went to his partner in the project, conservative activist Gary Kreep. (Keller added, “It would be nice to see someone get a hold of that original birth certificate.”)

As for the 9/11 Christian Center, Keller is eager to get started, so he claims he will travel to New York from Florida once a week starting in September and preach at the Embassy Suites hotel in lower Manhattan, until he finds a permanent home — or, perhaps more likely, the project fizzles.

(Keller contacted Salon after a piece ran about him yesterday, writing in an e-mail, “I know Salon is nothing but a smear rag..but at least ahve [sic] the nads to call.” So we did.)

The Cordoba House project near the World Trade Center site has produced a large-scale freakout among prominent conservatives, including New York Rep. Peter King and gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, despite strong support for the project from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the local community board.

Joining them in opposing the community center is Keller, a fundamentalist Christian pastor who runs an Internet prayer service called LivePrayer. He calls the project “a spit in the face of the people of New York.” Keller is now proposing a $1 million project next door that he dubs  “the 9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero.”

It looks a lot like Keller is seizing an opportunity to reap easy cash from conservatives around the country who are horrified by what they read in Human Events about the proposed Muslim community center — just as Keller saw an opportunity when he tapped into the Birther movement with an informercial last year.

“Where was President Obama born? Why does he refuse to produce his official state of Hawai birth certificate? What is he hiding?” Keller asked in the Birthermercial, which was running in at least seven states in the South. “Don’t sit back, do nothing. Act now! Tell President Obama to prove where he was born.”

For a donation of $30, Keller’s group would send faxes to state attorneys general asking them to demand Obama produce his birth certificate. As a special thank you, those sending in money got a custom-made “Got a birth certificate?” bumper sticker.

The slapdash website of Keller’s Christian Center, which is sprinkled with quotes damning Muslims (one prayer on the site is titled “The False Religion of Islam and the Courage to Tell One Billion People They are Going to Hell”), features a large donate button at the top, encouraging visitors to “Take your stand against evil.” The donate link takes visitors straight to the donation section of the Web site of Keller’s LivePrayer outfit.

Here’s a highlight reel from the Birthermercial:

The local community board voted unanimously to approve the Cordoba House, so the best hope the anti-mosque forces have is to either scare the Muslims away with vicious intolerance or to hope that the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission decides to protect the century-old building at 45 Park Place. (If the commission votes to protect the building, the Cordoba House could still be built as long as the facade is protected.)

There is a hearing today on the landmark status of the building. So, of course, GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio is testifying about how the Cordoba House planners will not answer his many questions about their fundraising, which is all just code for TERRORISTS TERRORISTS TERRORISTS. (Someone has already been thrown out of the meeting.)

If you’re worried that future tourists to the WTC site will accidentally wander into the mosque and become radicalized Islamic terrorists (that is, I think, the fear here), one man has proposed a solution:

Bill Keller, a televangelist from Florida, announced Monday that he is building a $1 million Christian center in lower Manhattan in response to the Cordoba Initiative’s plans for a 13-story mosque and community center there.

“If they can put a mosque near Ground Zero, we should be able to put a Christian center near Ground Zero and give people a choice,” Keller told DNAinfo in a phone interview Tuesday morning. He called the Islamic center “a spit in the face of the people of New York.”

Here are some of the many wonderful things about this story:

• There is already a terribly famous Christian Chapel literally across the street from the WTC site — it is the oldest surviving church building in New York. The church itself is a couple blocks away on Wall Street.
• Keller will name his complex “The 9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero,” which is very tasteful.
• “Keller served several years in federal prison for insider trading.”

If we don’t give in to the most reactionary anti-Muslim forces in the nation, the terrorists who seek to convince Muslim youths that we’re a reactionary, anti-Muslim nation will have won.