I founded the multi-faith Cordoba Initiative to fight the misunderstandings that broaden the divide between Islam and the West — each perceived as harmful by the other. Millions of American Muslims, who see no contradiction between being American and being Muslim, are working hard to bridge this gap.

2010 has been an unbelievable year! Can we say that we are happy that it is finally over? Only if that means that the wacky anti-Muslim Islamophobia that reached unprecedented and at times demented levels will recede. However, it doesn’t appear as though that will be happening any time soon.

Experts wagered it came from the aimless fear and the anger people feel in times of economic crisis, exploited by certain politicians looking to give their party an advantage in the midterms and turned toward American Muslims.

The Daily Mail picks up on a story that has already done the rounds in the right-wing media in the US (the paper has in fact lifted it directly from the New York Post).

Evidence is no match against the belief in false rumors concerning the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, a new study finds.

PAMELA GELLER’S apartment, in the fashion of the blogosphere, doubles as her office. It is a modern full-floor unit in a high-rise on the East Side of Manhattan that could belong to a socialite or the editor of a lifestyle magazine. There is ample light and a tasteful lack of clutter.

The developer of the planned Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero hopes to finance the bulk of the $140 million project using instruments developed to allow many Muslim investors to comply with religious prohibitions on interest.

Leaders of local and national groups gathered at the site of the planned center, two blocks from ground zero, and declared not only that the planners had a constitutional right to build it, but also that they would help the project move forward in the face of heated opposition.

Comparing the planners of the Muslim community center and mosque to be built two blocks from ground zero to Rosa Parks, leaders of numerous American Muslim organizations declared their strong support for the project on Monday, and said it should not move.

Burning books is a lousy idea. Heinrich Heine, the German poet, foresaw the worst early in the 19th century: “Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people.” Less than a decade separated the Nazi book burning of 1933 from the crematoria of the Final Solution.