LAST WEEK'S HATE:

The proposed center would establish a landmark in bustling New York City where Muslims from across the state and the country could participate in everything from art classes to halal bazaars, sports and educational programming. The 15-story center would include a mosque, a swimming pool, a 500-seat performing arts center and child care facilities.

"For us, it was a way to feature Islam in its full glory and its full diversity and its cultural production. The music, the art, the cuisine, and the history," said Khan, an award-winning speaker and women's activist. "It would become an iconic center in New York."

But Khan and Abdul Rauf's vision for the multifaceted center would never come to be. Instead, a coalition of conservative antagonists managed to turn an entirely imagined version of it into the centerpiece of an ideological war in the aftermath of Sept. 11. 

That began with the name itself: Cordoba House became the "Ground Zero Mosque," despite the fact it wasn't just a mosque and was not exactly located at Ground Zero, either.  

The "Ground Zero Mosque" took on a life on its own, inflaming a grieving city after 9/11 and inciting Islamophobic groups from across the country. Overnight, a local story about a community board meeting to discuss the proposed Islamic center became a fiercely debated international controversy. There was a 50% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes the year after it was proposed. 

Tweet   @brothersjudd