Building a church in Mecca implies that there will be Christians there to fill it; it’s basically about the proscription against non-Muslims entering the city of Mecca.

Mecca has been the way it is for a very long time, just like Mount Athos. Some people involved in the European Parliament would very much like to force Mount Athos to permit women. It is totally unfair to argue that Orthodox can keep space according to their own rules but other religions can’t do the same.

Why would any non-Muslim want to go to restricted Muslim holy sites, anyway? Why do you care who they let in or not? There’s pretty much nothing to do in Mecca unless you happen to be a Muslim on pilgrimage, and parts of Medina are open to all.

A slightly better comparison might be “a mosque in New York for a church in Riyadh” instead (Riyadh being the capital of Saudi Arabia, open to non-Muslims and with Christians already present), but even that is a really terrible hypothetical trade-off. Let me put it this way: if Saudi Arabia were akin to the Orthodox Church, the Park Place Muslims would be Unitarian Universalists. How would you feel if an Orthodox priest was told to concelebrate with a pagan priestess in order to build an Episcopalian church somewhere else?!

Not all Muslims are the same, not by a long shot.

My point in the first posting is that the Muslim center and the church are subject to different height restrictions because there are different locations involved. It wasn’t that they were being enforced against the church and relaxed for the mosque, as the poster I was replying to seemed to think.

My point in the other posting is that Orthodox Christians have our own rules restricting sacred space to certain people, and that if we want to keep our sacred space according to our own rules, we should respect the right of a sovereign nation governed by a different religion to do the same with its own space.

For keeping postings straight, it helps if you click “Reply” under the posting you’re replying to, instead of breaking the thread by replying at the bottom.

Building a church or a mosque is one thing; allowing women to visit Mt. Athos is something entirely different. In the latter, you are dealing with Orthodox Christian doctrine that has traditionally forbidden women from entering monasteries at Mt. Athos.

On the other hand, building a church or a mosque does not involve any doctrine, dogma, or tradition, but is something that can easily be accomplished at will.

See the difference now?

the city was the one who walked out of talks with the Church 2 years ago, puting restrictions of the design (no dome, for instance) and size. Haven’t heard of any restrictions on the high rise mosque.

That’s because the church is located very close to where the memorial for the Ground Zero area is planned, and the Port Authority doesn’t want the church to be taller than the memorial.

The Muslim center is not subject to the same restrictions because it’s much further away from the actual memorial site (4-5 blocks) and will have several tall buildings separating it from the memorial. So for the Muslim center, there’s not a question of the building’s height detracting from the appearance of the memorial, and therefore no question of the building’s height. (The Muslim center site is two blocks from the *opposite* corner of the WTC site from the memorial site, hence it’s “two blocks from Ground Zero”.)

Furthermore, the entity imposing restrictions on the church is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The Port Authority has no jurisdiction over the Muslim center or its proposed site, and therefore can’t tell the Muslim center to do jack squat.

What if the Saudi government came up with a proposal that they would build a Christian church in Mecca, if Saudi women are allowed to visit Mount Athos?

At least the GOA has spoken: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/17/ground-zero-church-archdiocese-says-officials-forgot/

Again, I ask regarding the Ground Zero Mosque: where is the Phanar on this? Where is the Holy Eparchial Synod of the GOA on this? Why the stunning silence all this time?

The current situation is biased in favor of Muslims building mosques in all Christian nations, while Christians are forbidden to build churches in Mecca and even in some predominantly Islamic countries.

It’s time for the United States — and other predominantly Christian nations — to “wake up and smell the coffee.!”

If they need a name for tolerance, they can use Palermo: it was open too, so much that it had Arabic as an official language and its ruler, like Roger II, were the “bapized sultan.” But in Palermo, the Christians were among the ruling class.

Btw, Rush Limbaugh did a rather detailed segment on St. Nicholas, pointing out that it took a mosque for Democrats to recognize property rights, and the right to build a mosque where they wouldn’t allow a Wal-mart. He also pointed out that St. Nicholas is the only Church destroyed at ground zero, and that the city was the one who walked out of talks with the Church 2 years ago, puting restrictions of the design (no dome, for instance) and size. Haven’t heard of any restrictions on the high rise mosque.

Raheel Raza did an excellent job of presenting the moderate muslim view on O’Reilly the other night (Bill was speechless), and on how bleeding hearts like Bloomberg are undermining the moderate Muslim community.