“Ground Zero mosque” (Park51)
Pamela Geller / “Stop Islamization of America” campaign
A planned interfaith Islamic community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site was recast by activists as a triumphalist “Ground Zero mosque,” fueling a national anti-Muslim campaign.
What happened
A ~13-story Islamic community center (Cordoba House / Park51) — with a prayer space, pool, auditorium, and 9/11 memorial — was planned about a tenth of a mile from the WTC site and approved 29–1 by the local community board. Bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, founders of “Stop Islamization of America,” branded it the “Ground Zero mosque” and a “victory mosque,” launching protests that became a national controversy.
“To build a 15-storey mega-mosque on the hallowed ground of Ground Zero is deeply offensive… It’s part of the Islamic Supremacist agenda.”
Under each definition
Treating a community center as a threat because its users are Muslim is anti-Muslim racism — collective guilt for 9/11.
The campaign targeted a mosque/prayer space precisely as an expression of Muslimness.
The “Islamic supremacism” framing denigrates Islam itself as inherently hostile.
Casting ordinary Muslims as complicit in terrorism is hostility toward people, which the secular lens also condemns.
Who called it Islamophobic
The developers, civil-liberties advocates, and interfaith groups, who said the campaign was an anti-Muslim smear conflating all Muslims with the 9/11 attackers.
The defense
Geller and Spencer framed their opposition as resisting “Islamic supremacism” and defending 9/11 victims’ memory, saying they never claimed the center could not legally be built.
Outcome
The project had legal approval but was never built as planned. The controversy is cited as a landmark in mainstreaming US anti-Muslim politics; SIOA was later designated an anti-Muslim hate group by the SPLC.
In their words
This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident.
I never held myself or my faith accountable for the horrific events of 9/11.
The verdicts above are how each framework would most likely treat this case — illustrative guidance, not official rulings. The frameworks diverge most on speech and ideas: the OIC “defamation of religion” lens and the secular/free-speech position often reach opposite conclusions on the same act. See the Definition tab for each framework’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.