Muslims Threaten NYC Bar Owner After He Laughs Off Demand to Move Bar

[Spiraling Leopard]

http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/muslims-threaten-nyc-bar-owner/

The lovely-looking restaurant and bar The Breslin begins lunch service tomorrow, and co-owner Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) is planning on serving alcohol despite objections from the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque across the street. Earlier this month the mosque’s leaders called a meeting with Friedman at The Ace Hotel, where The Breslin is located, and asked, “Can you move the bar?” Friedman’s response makes us want to hurry over to The Breslin right now for a dram of Laphroaig to show our support (and drown out the voices):

    I laughed. And the guy said, “Oh, you think that’s funny?” And I said, “Yeah, that is funny, that is really funny, because we’re not going to move the bar just because you discovered we’re serving booze.” Can you name one restaurant in New York that doesn’t serve booze? I said, “This is the United States of America and we’ll do whatever the [censored] we want.” He said the mosque had suggested it couldn’t control the behavior of “a few bad eggs”; i.e., we could get a brick through our window.

Friedman notified police of the threat, but just to show he’s not a hard-hearted man, that it’s not all dollars and cents, he agreed to put a curtain over the windows so devout Muslims wouldn’t be corrupted by the sight of infidel inebriation. But the curtain hasn’t arrived yet, so over the weekend he actually taped paper over the windows to hide a gay wedding. A volunteer at the mosque says city law forbids serving liquor within 200 feet of a place of worship and that “not more than 200 feet is between the mosque and the bar.”

But Ace Hotel developer Andrew Zobler tells The Observer, “The law is clear that in order for that to apply it has to be an exclusively dedicated house of worship, and at their space they have both residences and a restaurant, so basically, because of those uses the law allowed there to be a bar within 200 feet. Everyone was aware of that when the liquor license was granted.” And Friedman adds, “They can threaten, but they can’t really stop us.” Yeah, heh, what are these devout, pissed-off Muslims gonna do? ~end

More from Meredith Bryan’s Observer story:

After the recent FergusStock, a festival during which famed British chef Fergus Henderson cooked whole pigs for a rapt crowd of New York chefs and foodies, Mr. Friedman said the mosque’s leaders called a meeting with the hotel. “They said, ‘Can you move the bar?’” he said. “And I laughed. And the guy said, ‘Oh, you think that’s funny?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that is funny, that is really funny, because we’re not going to move the bar just because you discovered we’re serving booze.’ Can you name one restaurant in New York that doesn’t serve booze?”

Mr. Friedman and his partner, Spotted Pig chef April Bloomfield, did agree to nix plans for a dive bar in a townhouse next door, but as for the restaurant, “I said, ‘This is the United States of America and we’ll do whatever the [censored] we want.’”

Even the little concessions – papering and curtains on the window, not opening a dive bar – will be considered victories as sharia creeps some more.undefined

The Breslin, 20 West 29th Street; (212) 679-2222 – Go have a drink, just be careful leaving the bar, the neighboring mosque can’t control its “bad eggs.”

Note: The mosque is Ar-Rehman Foundation Inc. or Masjid Ar-Rehman and it was a “Flyer Distribution Points for the ICNA NY Dawah Workshop.” ICNA, as readers will know, is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and is the American arm of the radical Islamic group Jamaat e-Islami.