Excerpt:
In a recent editorial the New York Times found it "appalling" that, according to a poll it had commissioned, over two-thirds of New Yorkers were no better than all the bigoted and benighted Americans living in the hinterlands west of the Hudson in their lack of immunity "to suspicion and to a sadly wary misunderstanding of Muslim-Americans."
One example that shocked and saddened the Times is that when respondents were asked "whether they thought Muslim-Americans were 'more sympathetic to terrorists' than other citizens, 33% said yes, a discouraging figure."
I must say that I find that 33% figure surprising. I thought it would have been higher, since by now many New Yorkers are aware of the comments of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. He refuses to describe Hamas as a terrorist organization (nor can other "moderate" imams). He thinks that U.S. policies were an "accessory" to 9/11, "that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims," and that (from a letter he wrote to the New York Times in 1977) "Israel will, in our lifetimes, become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority."