Those guys building a mosque on Staten Island are 'totally not terrorists'

Recently a Roman Catholic Church sold a former convent in the Midland Beach section of Staten Island. They sold it to a group called the Muslim American Society, and the organization planned on building a mosque there.

This being Staten Island and all, it didn't take long for the xenophobia to set in. Some locals grumbled, bloggers warned of the apocalypse, and the local paper ran a thorough report.

But this story won't go away any time soon. Especially after a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York came out to "defend" the Muslim organization.

“I’ve not heard anything that says this is a terrorist organization,” Joe Zwilling told the Staten Island Advance. “So I would hate to even use a word like that when that word only serves to inflame people’s emotions.”

But you just used it.

Remember when Mike Piazza held a press conference to deny that he was gay. Well, it didn't help. The best way to give some wack jobs a reason to spin conspiracy theories is to acknowledge their argument, lending it a faint glow of validity or credibility.