It’s truly an unfortunate coincidence and couldn’t come at a worse time. In just a week and a half America and the world will mark the 9^th Anniversary of the Attacks of September 11^th 2001, and Muslims in America and the World will be marking the end of Ramadan. This would be an awkward coincidence at the best of times and has many Muslims spooked at the possibility that traditional celebrations marking the end of a month of fasting might be seen as a celebration of the 9-11 attacks. Being on edge makes sense simply because so many around the globe are asking what Time Magazine asks this week in its provocative cover story “Is America Islamaphobic?” And what continues to drive the issue is the increasingly ugly argument over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”. And even though this is not strictly a Catholic Fight, Catholics are involved, enlisted and cited as examples for both sides. In a Papal message issued to mark the end of Ramadan, His Holiness obliquely touched on key tensions, some of which are on the boil throughout the United States. Religious Freedom and Tolerance are big issues for the Church and other religious leaders and the confrontation with truly radical Islam is a tricky one, whether it is provoked by the violence in Somalia, the Libyan Call for the Islamification of Europe, or simply the continuing comparisons made between the Mosque in lower Manhattan and the controversial Carmelite Convent in Auschwitz which necessitated the intervention of John Paul II in 1993. One example of the use of the story to define the Mosque controversy is captured almost entirely in The Wall Street Journal story’s headline: “WTC Mosque Meet the Auschwitz Nuns”. And for every time the Auschwitz example is used to demonstrate the wisdom of ‘discretion is the better part of valour’ then the irrational anti-Catholicism of the turn of the 20^th century is offered as evidence of the need to fight anti-religious bigotry. As Commonweal notes, “Wrong then, Wrong now”. This is most vivid in a remarkable blog note that resurrects the history of the building of Knights of Columbus Founder Father McGivney’s Church in New Haven in 1879 and the accompanying bigotry at the time. The stark similarities to the language used today is breathtaking: Catholics were the Muslims of that era, at least as far as the New York Times was concerned. This is a complicated issue with loaded words like ‘hallowed ground’ being tossed around and you need a clear head to try and sort out what’s just and permissible from what’s wrong and understandable. You know just how tricky the territory is when noted anti-religious campaigner and virulent foe of radical Islamism, Christopher Hitchens feels compelled to come to the defence of the principal of the Religious Freedom of the Muslims who want to build the Mosque.