Dow Jones Reprints This copy is for your personal non commercial use only To order presentation ready copies for distribution to your colleagues clients or customers use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www djreprints com See a sample reprint in PDF format NEW YORK Order a reprint of this article now AUGUST 3 2010 6 24 P M ET Bloomberg on Mosque Vote Here is the full text of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg s speech following a vote that clears most major hurdles for the construction of a planned mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero We have come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted We ve come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that more than 250 years later would greet millions of immigrants in the harbor and we come here to state as strongly as ever this is the freest City in the world That s what makes New York special and different and strong Michael Bloomberg Our doors are open to everyone everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules New York City was built by immigrants and it is sustained by immigrants by people from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than two hundred different languages and professing every faith And whether your parents were born here or you came yesterday you are a New Yorker We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors That s life and it s part of living in such a diverse and dense city But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9 11 Q A With Mosque Founder No one should be asked to leave their neighborhood This is our neighborhood and we ve been part of it for 27 years Our opponents are not from this neighborhood Read the full interview with Daisy Khan one of the organizers of the planned Islamic center near Ground Zero More Mosque Organizers Pledge 9 11 Memorial Opinion WTC Mosque Meet the Auschwitz Nuns Opinion Open Letter on the Ground Zero Mosque Metropolis How Mosque Debate Plays in N Y Elections All Metropolis posts on the Ground Zero mosque On that day 3 000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn t want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths to speak our own minds to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives Of all our precious freedoms the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish And it is a freedom that even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance was hard won over many years In the mid 1650s the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue and they were turned down In 1657 when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings a group of non Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion It was perhaps the first formal political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam In the 1700s even as religious freedom took hold in America Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion and priests could be arrested Largely as a result the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780 s St Peter s on Barclay Street which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center This morning the City s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned The decision was status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building But with or without landmark designation there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building The simple fact is this building is private property and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right and if it were tried the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U S Constitution Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion That may happen in other countries but we should never allow it to happen here This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City in our hearts But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in Lower Manhattan Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9 11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans We would betray our values and play into our enemies hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else In fact to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists and we should not stand for that For that reason I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime as important a test and it is critically important that we get it right On September 11 2001 thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive In rushing into those burning buildings not one of them asked What God do you pray to What beliefs do you hold The attack was an act of war and our first responders defended not only our City but also our country and our Constitution We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked Of course it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the