What Would Our Founding Fathers Say About the 'Ground Zero Mosque'?

This is particularly, I insist, about New York not the United States. In the beginning there were as many as 30 languages heard in cosmopolitan New Amsterdam. A law under Governor Peter Stuyvesant, former Governor of Dutch Curacao, the first Jewish community immigrated here from northern Brazil, stated that all recognized religions would meet in a structure so constructed. Ironically a Reverend Doughty, from the burned village of Maspeth in now the borough of Queens, had so many attendees at his services behind the Wall and the protection of the fort, that the Dutch administrators decided they too would need a church of Dutch language or lose its people to the English preacher. The Quakers were a thorn in the Dutch side, would not doff their hats to authority and laid prostrate in protest of it, often had their early "meetings" out of doors and when retreating from rainfall to a barn, mistakenly arrested the husband of preacher, a woman, and sent him off to prison for over a year over the "structure" law. It resulted in the so-called "Queens Remonstrance" a very important document in the history of New York, which demanded and sought approval for the "freedom" of religious practice, not dictated by fancy architects perhaps in their own personal salvation of some sort. I find it odd that it appears more of the story appears brought back now in time.

Some historians (Woodward) think the first "president" of the US was a John Scott, who led a group of 200 Long Islanders to New Amsterdam to present a petition for their religious freedom under the new Prince of Orange. Stuyvesant tore the petition up in public without reading it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost