It seems the Ground Zero mosque project has succeeded in dividing America like a shovel going through a pumpkin. Even the president has an opinion - well, kind of an opinion. And now the story has gone worldwide. Everybody is waiting to see what happens. We all know that if Islam can get away with a stunt like this in America it can get away with anything. People keep framing this as a religious freedom issue, but there's a difference between practising your religion, which everyone has the right to do, and rubbing your religion in people's faces as a triumphalist political statement, which is what's happening here. I'd be interested to know just how bad an insult has to be before it's no longer protected by the First Amendment. After all, the Second Amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms, but in practice you need a permit to walk about packing hardware, and not everybody can get one, despite the Second Amendment. Also, I can't help wondering if Mayor Bloomberg's unwavering support for this project is less about his commitment to religious freedom and more about his business interests in Dubai, where his company is attempting to establish itself as a major supplier of sharia financial services in the Middle East. Maybe somebody should ask him. Liberal commentators keep telling us this is not really a mosque at all - it's just a community centre and a prayer room, and it's not even at Ground Zero. A mosque is both a community centre and a prayer room, and the mosque part of this building will occupy the top two floors which means it will overlook the scene of conquest, which is why the site was chosen. When the governor of New York offered to help them find an alternative site they wouldn't even discuss it. Moving it somewhere else would negate the very purpose of building it, which is to rub 9/11 in America's face. If they can't build it there, there's no point in building it anywhere else. Nobody knows where the money is coming from, and nobody wants to say. The developer was waiting tables five years ago, and now he's spending millions in cash on a building in downtown Manhattan. He must have had some very generous tippers. As for the supposedly moderate imam behind it, he supports sharia, he supports the Iranian theocracy, he won't condemn terrorism, not even the exploitation of children as suicide bombers, and he blames America for 9/11. And now we hear he's even taking credit for Obama's speech in Cairo - you remember, where he sucked up to the Muslim world and called it statesmanship. If that's true, that's a hell of a lot of influence to have. I wonder if he had anything to do with the president's recent Ramadan speech where he praised Islam's role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. Yes, President Obama actually said those words, and with a straight face. No wonder so many Americans think he's a Muslim. That's the kind of thing only a Muslim could say, or a European politician. We all know how badly the president wants to be popular in the Muslim world, so I guess he felt he had to say something nice because his audience was full of Islamic activists who might otherwise have accused him of Islamophobia and racism and forced him to undergo cultural awareness and sensitivity training. And how embarrassing would that be for the first black president? But whoever provided him with that PC garbage ought to be fired on the spot, because it makes Obama sound as if he has no respect for the intelligence of the American people, which is as good as saying he wants to be a one term president. Everybody knows that Islam has done absolutely nothing for justice, progress, tolerance, or the dignity of human beings. Is he kidding? The worst thing you could do is expose any of those things to the influence of Islam, and to claim otherwise is simply a barefaced lie. Doesn't he realise that nobody is buying this crap any more? He must have seen the opinion polls. He must know that there are millions of people all over the free world who simply don't trust this religion any more because time and again they've seen its activists exploiting our freedoms to act in bad faith, exactly as they're doing at Ground Zero. They've seen that when it comes to Islam tolerance and respect only ever go one way. A religion of peace? No. What people see, and what they've seen for twenty years since the Rushdie affair is a religion of intolerance, of aggression, of phoney manufactured grievances and hysterical bullying, unreasonable and manipulative special pleading and privilege-seeking, gross misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism and violence. Anyone who speaks out against this religion can expect to be threatened with physical violence. Everything about it is confrontational. That's why it's unwelcome in the West, because it has made itself unwelcome. And that's what President Obama should have told those Islamic activists if he wants to call himself any kind of leader of the free world. And he should have also told them that this mosque is making their religion even more unwelcome, so building it has got to be just about the stupidest thing that any Muslim could want to do, unless they were acting in bad faith, and in this case they most certainly are. But that's no reason for idiots to go around abusing and assaulting people because they happen to be Muslim, as has happened a few times recently, because this issue is causing consternation among Muslims as well, some of whom, to their credit, have actually spoken out against it, and condemned it as unnecessarily provocative. And predictably, one woman who did so at a meeting in New York was afterwards threatened over the phone. Classy. Still, if nothing else good comes out of this mess, at least it's given PC liberals the chance to stand up for something for a change, which must be quite a bracing experience for some of them. And I'm sure they're all delighted to know that it looks as if this thing will go ahead, because obviously nothing can be done legally to stop it, and the people behind it clearly don't have the intelligence or the good grace to withdraw the plans, even though they know as well as everyone else that if the positions were reversed, and if this level of calculated insult was being directed at Islam, there is no way on earth that this project would be allowed to proceed, Constitution or no Constitution. Peace, and you know it's true.