So now Republican leaders want a war against Muslims.

First it was al Qaeda. Then it was the Taliban. Then Saddam Hussein.

Now it is Muslims - including Muslim American citizens.

Republican leaders and Congressional candidates, along with Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, have made the proposed Manhattan Islamic center a campaign issue. And top Democrats, whose leadership and outrage is sorely needed at this moment, are cowering. Among them: the president, the Senate majority leader, former party chair Howard Dean, and New York's governor, all trying to straddle the issue, supporting freedom of religion in general but not a specific act, construction of a community center and mosque two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center.

Certainly not every critic of the project is anti-Muslim. Some believe building an Islamic center at that site is insensitive to victims' families.

But the center would be located in a dense area of Manhattan, with the typical Manhattan variety of uses, including a "gentlemen's club." (Doesn't the club's proximity to Ground Zero upset anybody? And what about the souvenir vendors right at the edge of Ground Zero? Doesn't it desecrate the site to sell souvenirs to that day?)

To move the center is to give in to bigotry. Islam did not attack us on 9/11. A handful of fanatics did. To blame an entire, diverse faith for the terrible deeds of a few is to turn our back on one of this country's most important principles.

And we should not kid ourselves: The anti-mosque attacks are part of a growing, orchestrated, anti-Muslim movement - originating in part, according to several media, with rightwing bloggers. Among them: Pam Geller, who has also spread the tale that President Obama is the "love child" of Malcolm X.

Geller, says a Washington Post report, "frequently warns that Muslims are trying to impose repressive sharia law on the United States" and "refers to the president's holiday message to Muslims as 'Obama Ramadamadingdong.'"

Geller "has become one of the chief organizers of opposition to the mosque," says the Post, "as well as efforts to build other Muslim prayer centers around the country." She and other conservative writers are organizing a September 11 rally against the center.

We can not let radical bloggers and complicit politicians fool us - or evade responsibility for their words and the actions they inspire.

Where, for example, do Gingrich, Palin, and the Republicans candidates stand on the proposed mosques in Tennessee and California, which have been under attack?

Where is their voice of outrage about the Gainesville, Florida, group that plans to observe the ninth anniversary of 9/11 by burning Korans?

The New York Daily News reported last week that "a growing number of New York construction workers are vowing not to work" on the proposed Islamic center. And they're conducting a nationwide campaign, urging "people who sell glass, steel, lumber, insurance" to refuse to have anything to do with the project.

The Rochester conservative blog Mustard Street is applauding. A few days earlier, it had suggested this: "Surely there are patriotic members of construction unions in New York - all of them, I'd bet - who'd be willing to make sure the thing is never finished, or collapses if it is, before it's ever occupied."

(Well, at least Mustard Street added that time qualifier. And at least the construction workers haven't gone that far.)

Earlier this month, the National Council of Churches issued a strong statement in support of the project. The Council noted this nation's history of cultural and religious persecution: European settlers' treatment of native Americans, white Americans' embrace of slavery and the belief "that blacks were inferior to whites," our treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The alternative to supporting the project, the Council said, "is to engage in a bigotry that will scar our generation in the same way as bigotry scarred our forebears."

Maybe the politicians exploiting this issue, and exploiting 9/11, need to take that to heart.