Excerpt:
Readers of my column know that I have written repeatedly that the "Ground Zero" mosque would never be built for reasons having nothing to do with politics. The main financiers and the imam have gotten into one legal problem after another and Allstate Insurance Company is now launching a major lawsuit for fraud against one of them. As we approach the tenth anniversary of September 11, it's clear that there isn't going to be a mosque next to the World Trade Center attack site.
From the start, it seemed to me that the whole project was designed as something of a scam by shady characters to get lots of money from the contributions of the Saudis and others. In other words, the controversial and triumphalist aspects of the mosque were a public relations' scheme designed to win millions of dollars from the Muslim-majority world's millionaires. When the money didn't materialize–the controversy didn't help matters–the whole thing fell apart.
Should the mosque have been built? I have no strong opinion on that issue (especially since I knew nothing would ever actually be built). My father was a builder and I spent a lot of time around construction sites learning the trade in my youth, also gettingto know about how to put together a development project and what it takes to get zoning permissions. This project could never have gotten off the ground without the fear of being called Islamophobic making politicians either tremble or see an opportunity to burnish their Politically Correct credentials. But the scheme was such a mess that even with these special privileges it could never actually fly.