Harry Reidler’s Aug. 27 letter certainly poses an important question: “Ask where is ‘reformist Islam.’”

I just want to point out that The Jewish Standard did give us a partial answer to this question. Just the week before, the Aug. 20 edition contained an article by Josh Lipowsky entitled “New York Islamic center could ‘encourage more attacks’; former Islamic terrorist urges moderation.” In this article, he gave us the views of Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an inspiring Islamic reformer.

It would be great if other newspapers and media would follow this lead and give voice to moderate Muslims. I have heard of only one other: Dr. Zudhi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. These are the people we want to listen to and support.

I found the opinions of those quoted in “‘The wrong place’: Locals speak out against Cordoba House” (Aug. 20) to be embarrassing and disgraceful. First, let’s set the record straight. It’s not a mosque, it’s a community center, like a JCC or a YMCA. Second, there was another “ground zero” at the Pentagon. There’s a mosque in the Pentagon and it’s been there for decades, but no one seems to mind that mosque. This controversy is a cooked-up political issue. That three prominent members of our local Jewish community have been weak enough to step into this un-American political quagmire is deeply disappointing.

It seems to many of us that the issue of the constitutionality of the mosque near Ground Zero is being demagogued — especially by leftists. The real issue is one of propriety, not of property rights, about being a good neighbor and not being a “Shachen Ra.”

One hallmark of the High Holidays season is the concept of teshuvah, or repentance: the act of acknowledging our flaws and transgressions, of owning up to our errors and dedicating ourselves to self-correction.

Your Aug. 20 editorial “Of mosques and Muslims” is a masterwork of the journalist’s art.

It is an informative, balanced, clear, and concise presentation of the several facets of the matter, superbly well-written to make the reader think — and readjust focus to the true problem, thus, hopefully, producing a true solution.

Kudos.

In his Aug. 6 column “Haredim: The real existential threat to Israel,” Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer has bravely told the truth about the demographic threat to Israel. It’s not the Arabs, as is constantly repeated, but the Jews. Soon a majority of Israeli Jews will be uneducated, unemployed, and unproductive. As more and more of Israeli Jews turn away from the modern world and from the diaspora, the world’s Jews will turn away from Israel. And astonishingly, no one seems concerned. Where are all those fervent Zionists, jumping to defend the Jewish state against any imagined attack? Without dramatic action, Israel will become just another third-world country — backward and corrupt.

Rabbis Steven Sirbu, Jordan Millstein, and others compare opposition to the location of the Muslim community and prayer center in lower Manhattan to the experience not long ago of American Jews, whose synagogues were blocked and who were excluded from many neighborhoods. Is that an apt comparison? Did Jews murder 3,000 Americans, destroy the World Trade Center, and declare “Death to America” in the name of Judaism? Many in your article call on Jews to defend Muslims from the protests over the “Ground Zero mosque.” I sympathize with that, but why haven’t American Muslims similarly defended Jews from Islamic anti-Semitism, violence, and intimidation, which are spreading on college campuses throughout North America. As disclosed by Memri.org, horrific anti-Semitic rants are emanating from Islamic religious and political leaders every day, matching the worst tirades from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. While quick to demonstrate outrage over real and imagined expressions of “Islamophobia,” American Muslims are doing relatively nothing to prevent the buildup to the next Holocaust in the name of their religion. The imam of the proposed “Ground Zero mosque” cannot even bring himself to call Hamas a terrorist organization and brazenly declares that he will seek financing from Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Your editorialist and Shaheen Khateeb, a member of the Dar-Ul-Islah mosque, unwittingly offer an explanation for this phenomenon. Your editorialist writes, “One way to avert the threat of radicalization is to encourage the development of moderate Islam and those who speak for it.” If we need to encourage the development of moderate Islam, isn’t that an assertion that it does not now exist? Shaheen Khateeb similarly says, “if there is going to be a reformist movement in Islam, it is going to emerge from places like the [Ground Zero Mosque].” Note that big “if.” Isn’t Ms. Khateeb likewise asserting that a “reformist movement” in Islam is needed and that it does not now exist?

The obvious question is if Islam is a religion of peace, and if terrorists are perverting its teachings, then why do your editorialist, Ms. Khateeb, and so many others aver that it is in need of reform and moderation? Equally important, why hasn’t Islam already developed a reformist movement on its own? Though Jews suffered horribly from centuries of Christian and Muslim prejudice and second-class citizenship, they did not resort to suicide-murder. Christians today also suffer from murder, abuse, and discrimination in the Muslim world, far exceeding the prejudice encountered by Muslims in the West. Yet, no one fears that Christians in the Muslim world will become radicalized. Americans should not have to fear that this disagreement over the Ground Zero mosque will result in the radicalization of their American Muslim neighbors. If that worry is legitimate, as many in your article seem to assert, it says more about American Muslims than it does about their neighbors.

My initial response to the Cordoba cultural center was accompanied by fear and anger. But with caution at my side, I asked reason to inform me. Just as I am opposed to family members making statements at the sentencing of a criminal guilty of hurting or murdering their loved one, I object to bringing in sentiment to justify the creation of exceptions to a constitutional guarantee. The rule of law is supposed to insulate justice from prejudice of all kinds. Zoning issues aside or other laws compatible with this guarantee, there is no good reason I have heard that should scuttle the cultural center at its present site. Frankly, what better place to educate the uneducated at a location not far from where political Islamists destroyed thousands of lives, including the countless survivors and responders? Declaring one or many guilty by their association with Islam is not only unfair; it is a product of irrational fear. Am I to be judged because of the Baruch Goldsteins in the world? To require any Muslim to assume guilt for 9/11 is repugnant and xenophobic. Jeremiah’s counsel is relevant. Instead of the sins of the fathers visited on the heads of their children, Jeremiah prophesied that “every one shall die for his own sins: whosoever eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be blunted.”