L.A. Times Delivers A Pro -Muslim Spin On The Ground Zero Mosque

Patterico's Pontifications - The L.A. Times today publishes an article by Borzou Daragahi about how Muslims across the world disapprove of opposition to the Ground Zero mosque:

The heated debate across America over construction of the so-called ground zero mosque is reverberating across the globe, with the potential of creating a worldwide black eye for the United States.

Many Muslims abroad are miffed by the stateside debate, largely conducted by non-Muslims, that has grown so loud as to become a topic of discussion on talk shows and newspapers from Bali to Bahrain, from Baghdad to Berlin. The proposed Cordoba House has become a symbol of America’s fraught relations with the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.

I don’t understand why anyone would discern hostile intentions from the builders. After all, t’s not like the project’s “moderate” imam Feisal Rauf is happy about the controversy, right?

“The fact we are getting this kind of attention is a sign of success,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf reportedly said Sunday with respect to the project, addressing a gathering at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.

“It is my hope that people will understand more,” Rauf said without elaborating, according to the AP.

Oh.

While the paper does report that quote in a separate article, portraying it as benign, the quote does not make it into this article.

That wouldn’t be good propaganda.

Amid a flurry of Arab complaints about the U.S. — we need to do something about Israel; we need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan; etc. — the article does include the perspective of some Muslims that the mosque is a bad idea. See if you can figure out what aspect of that admission they leave out.

“Building a mosque there will increase hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West,” said Gamal Awad, a professor at Cairo’s Al Azhar University. “It will further connect Islam with a horrible event.”

Al Aznar, eh? They’re the folks who declared the mosque a Zionist conspiracy — a little tidbit that the L.A. Times doesn’t tell you about.

That wouldn’t be good propaganda.

Are we seriously to believe that Borzou Daragahi, or his special correspondents — Amro Hassan in Cairo, Ranya Kadri in Amman, Jordan, Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran, or Meris Lutz in Beirut — elicited no anti-Semitic comments about the mosque being a Zionist conspiracy?

Or should we conclude, rather, that somewhere along the chain, such comments were deemed “unhelpful” to the agenda of the story?