The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement Friday against the building of a mosque near the World Trade Center memorial site. And on Monday, the American Jewish Committee entered the fray as well, saying the Cordoba Initiative's $100 million cultural center on Park Place "has “has a right to be built.” But the organization urged the founders of the center to "urgently address concerns about funding and support for terrorism."

(JTA) -- The United States has dropped deportation proceedings against the son of a Hamas founder who served as a spy for Israel's Shin Bet security service.

Mosab Hassan Yousef will be granted asylum in the United States following a routine background check, an immigration judge ruled Wednesday during a deportation hearing in San Diego, Calif. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security attorney said during the short hearing that the government was dropping its objections to the asylum request.

Yousef, 32, a convert to Christianity, has lived in the United States since 2007.