Downtown Islamic Center?

Maybe we can start building Jewish temples and Christian churches in the centers of Muslim communities in various cities in The Middle East and see what their reaction is.

"Fire at Tennessee Mosque Building Site Ruled Arson"
They don't have such convenient scapegoats.

who is financing it?

what i mean to say is, is it being financed by the local islamic community, or is it being financed by a foreign islamic community, possibly even an anti-american, foreign islamic community? for me, the major factor is the intention of the builders. if its a place for peace and worship, great! if the intention is to be negative, then not great! follow the money and the answers will be revealed.

Soce- there are churches and synagogues throughout the Middle East. Most countries here have a Christian minority and a very small Jewish populations. Yes, there are tensions between the Christian and Muslim communities, but they all still managed to live with each other for centuries and the popularity of religion, some generations feel a religious unity, others feel national unity.

The churches in Saudi Arabia issue is even simpler. There are very few, if any Saudi Christians. My friend told me there are several hundred Saudi Jews living in the Southern area, near the border with Yemen and the Saudi government leaves them alone. The religious minority the Saudis like to pick on are the Shiia in the East. The controversy over building churches in Saudi Arabia has more to do with foreign workers than religion. The Saudis are very xenophobic, they want to keep their Bedouin roots as pure as possible. However, in order to become a modern state, they had to import a lot of labor from outside to build their cities. But they don't want these workers to stay and build a life there, they want them to get the job done and get out. So they keep them as uncomfortable as possible, which includes prohibiting building houses of worship. In the grander scheme, I think maybe we should focus on the slave-like conditions these workers suffer through before whether or not they can build a church or temple in Riyadh.

As for the people funding it, the Cordoba Initiative has stated it will be open about its sources of funding and has invited the US Treasury to review its list of donors. Say what you like about the "War on Terror", we were able to successfully shut down a lot of terrorist funding disguised as charities. The Saudi who's the largest minority holder of News Corp, and who Fox News unofficially labelled a terrorist. The guy owns one of the major record labels here with some of the smuttiest Lebanese pop stars. He would probably not be welcomed by Al Qaeda or any other Islamist group. He's Muslim in name only, his real religion is making money.

The imam is a moderate interested in interfaith dialogue. The arguments against him are all really flimsy. A. He said 9/11 was the culmination of decades of poor foreign policy. It was. Not really a debate. B. He doesn't want to publicly denounce Hamas and Hezbollah. It's sad that these two groups are the only real opposition to Israeli occupation left. However condemning them outright is considered siding with Israel. He really can't win in this situation so he avoids giving a straight answer. C. Comments on Sharia law. In this case he's talking like a religious leader. A rabbi would encourage his congregation to follow the Talmud. Churches stress the importance of incorporating the teachings of the Bible into everyday life. He's not making arguments against teaching evolution and punishing homosexuals by quoting the Qu'ran. He's not promoting Sharia over the US Constitution.