Russell Simmons, the founder of hip-hop label Def Jam, appears to be a bit confused as to who was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

While weighing-in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy on CNN (he supports the mosque), Simmons said we shouldn’t blame Muslims for the 9/11 attacks because we didn’t blame Christians for the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993.

If you are blaming Muslims, then you need to change your mind. If you are blaming Muslims for the attack or 9/11, then you need to change your mind. Did we blame Christians at the first World Trade attack? We didn’t. And I think it’s insane and, um, it’s wrong-headed. And it creates a negative cycle of negativity.

For the record, we don’t blame Christians for the first World Trade Center attack because Christians weren’t responsible for the first World Trade Center attack. The 1993 bombing was funded by Al Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, and carried out by six Muslim terrorists.

Maybe Simmons is thinking about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Okay, fair enough. We all make mistakes. But that example makes about as much sense as the one Simmons actually gave. Timothy McVeigh was an admitted agnostic who didn’t believe in hell and said, “Science is my religion”. We wouldn’t blame Christians for that attack either because, again, Christians weren’t responsible for the attack.

But all of this is beside the point. Whether one blames all Muslims for the September 11th attacks is irrelevant when it comes to the question of whether a mosque should be built at Ground Zero. I don’t blame all Germans for the Holocaust either, but I’d find a German nationalist souvenir shop to be inappropriate at Auschwitz or Dachau.

No one of any relevance is calling for the banning of Islam or violent backlash against Muslims. They’re simply asking that some emotional sensitivity be observed and the mosque moved a bit further away. It’s a completely reasonable position and one that doesn’t require a universal hatred of Muslims to take.

Update: I’m assuming Simmons isn’t a conspiracy theorist, at least not on this particular issue. One would assume that if he believed in a conspiracy theory involving the 1993 attack, he’d also believe in one involving the 9/11 attacks. But he seems to accept that the latter was perpetrated by Islamic terrorists.