How should Christians view Muslims? The Catholic Church said at the Second Vatican Council:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.

Of course, some are opposed to forgetting the hostilities of the past and seeking mutual understanding, such as Republican neocons Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, Ayn Randian Leonard Peikoff, the ADL, and Libertarian official Wayne Allyn Root.

They're all warmongers, as is everyone hyperventilating about the "mosque," and warmongers believe in hate. After all, it's one of the building blocks of war. Ron Paul has always held that social tolerance is necessary to a free society, and events as well as religion show him to be right. To read the bloodthirsty Peikoff or Root, for example, is to see the spirit of totalitarianism.

Justin Raimondo points out that it is not a mosque after all, but rather sort of an Islamic YMCA (not that there would be anything wrong with a mosque), and it is four huge New York blocks away from the murder site. The destruction of the World Trade Towers was an horrific act if war. But how many office buildings full of civilians has the US government incinerated from the air, in a hundred cities? Oh, but you say, that is the government, and so it is not mass murder but public policy. No, for the moral law applies to people in government just as surely as it does to their subjects.

But it is time to put aside the disputes of the past, and seek mutual understanding. If we want a civilized world, we must have liberty, property, social tolerance, and peace. It's no coincidence that the "mosque" opponents reject all four, no matter what vocabulary they use.