Rep. Peter King told me today that defenders of a controversial mosque proposed near Ground Zero are applying a “bit of a double standard,” recalling, by way of contrast, the worldwide protest sparked by a Roman Catholic convent near the Auschwitz death camp.

While allowing that the mosque cannot legally be blocked from construction unless some link between its funding and a terrorist organization is uncovered, the outspoken Long Island congressman said the mere fact that the facility can be built doesn’t mean it should.

“…Under the freedom of religion in this country, you cannot stop a mosque, a church, a temple from being built,” King told me this afternoon during an interview that will air this evening at 8 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. on “Capital Tonight.”

“But also, there is a bit of a double standard there. I remember when Catholic nuns wanted to build a convent near Auschwitz and there was a worldwide opposition to that.”

“I’m not saying that the legal position is the same in Poland as it is in New York,” the congressman added. “But I’m saying the moral outrage that was shown over that, and that was 50 years after the Holocaust and there still was a feeling of outrage that you would have something of another religion constructed on what was considered sacred ground. ”

“I think, less than 10 years after 9-11, I can understand the feelings that people who feel that this mosque is sort of in their face. But again, legally, I don’t see any way it could be stopped.”

King was referring to a convent of 14 Camelite nuns in a two-story building just outside the barbed wire perimeter of the death camp, where some 1.5 million Jews perished during the Holocaust. The building was once used by the Nazis to store Zyklon B.

The convent sparked outrage, particularly among Jews, even though the nuns’ stated purpose was to pray for all the Nazis’ victims. But the upset was hardly limited to the Jewish community, which is, let’s face it, a powerful political force.

This batlte raged on for several years, with several unheeded argeements to get the nuns to relocate. In 1993, Pope John Paul II got involved and told the nuns to move. They did.

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