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8. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Mohler represents a leading voice for conservative Christianity in America. While supportive of the right to build a mosque, he wonders about whether it is prudent to build near the Ground Zero site.
• "Publicly, there is an absence of adequate information, and there are serious public questions of consequences that have been raised that Mayor Bloomberg and other New York officials and now the President of the United States are going to have to answer ... All those things being said, I think this group has a right to build a mosque. The question is [where to build it]."
• "The question of whether or not building a mosque is separate from building this mosque in this place."
• "I will contend for that right the same way I would contend for the fact that any church ought to be able to construct a facility to meet in public on any land, anywhere."
• "There are serious questions about the name [of] the organization and the sponsors, and there is an on-the-record series of statements made by the man who is the head of this movement that I think would raise serious questions in the minds of Americans about the purpose of this facility."
• "The city of New York is going to have demonstrate publicly that it has done adequate due diligence to know exactly what it is approving and to take responsibility for the statement that makes to the culture at large. What we're looking at here is a project [that] doesn't make sense on its face. You are talking about a group that has no obvious source of funding, that has chosen a name that, throughout the Muslim world, represents conquest, and you are talking about a group here that, at least in terms of its leader, has made very serious statements of a sort that would raise questions in anyone of fair-minded opinion as to what the actual purpose of this organization and facility would be."