"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." - Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister Tayyip ErdoganAs you may know, a massive 13 story mosque and Islamic center is scheduled to go up at Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center was brought down in the name of Islam.
The Left has taken up the ground Zero Mosque as their latest cause, claiming that its opponents are bigots,that the site will be a source of interfaith healing, that it is a blow against moderate Muslims, ( theAtlantic's insipid Jeffrey Goldberg went as far as to say that if they could,al-Qaeda would bomb the Cordoba House) and that there is no rational reason to prevent the huge mosque from being built.
Are they right?
As much as I empathize with the 9/11 families, the victims of jihad, hurt feelings and pain alone are not a rational reason for the Cordoba House not to be built.
But there a number of perfectly good reasons why this monstrosity should never see the light of day.
First, there is the prospective 'management', their background, their beliefs and their orientation.
The proposed Imam of the Cordoba House is one Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is also the Imam of Masjid al-Farah, a New York City mosque. He is also the leader of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), a New-York based nonprofit run by Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, since 2005. ASMA is the group behind the Cordaba House.
Rauf's background is, as they say, of interest. He is not the moderate Muslim he pretends to be.
Rauf’s father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf was an Egyptian contemporary of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and a Muslim Brotherhood member who fled Egypt for Kuwait in 1948, where Feisal Abdul Rauf was born.
Upon coming to the US the late Dr. Rauf founded the Islamic Cultural Center (ICC) in New York, where his son, Feisal Abdul Rauf is a permanent trustee. The Center was built with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya.
The ICC has a history of employing radical clerics. One of them, Imam Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha had a long history of fiery Islamist preaching. After 9/11, Gameaha blamed the Jews, saying that “only the Jews” could have perpetrated the 9/11 attacks; that if Americans only knew the truth, “they would have done to Jews what Hitler did”; and that Jews “disseminate corruption in the land” and spread “heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs.” Gemeaha’s successor at the ICC, Omar Saleem Abu-Namous, has said on many occasions that there is no “conclusive evidence” proving that Muslims were responsible for 9/11.
Rauf himself is an Islamist apologist who freely practices taquiya,dissembling to advance Islam, on gullible westerners. In a 60 Minutesinterview that aired on September 30, 2001, He blamed th e9/11 attacks on the US saying 9/11 was caused by US policies, not Islamist terrorism. "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened, but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened... in fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”
In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Rauf expanded on this theme, saying it was Christians who started mass attacks on civilians.
"The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets."
I'm sure the millions who died during the Islamic conquests of India, Southern Europe, Spain, Asia and the Middle East would disagree with Rauf. After all, Mohammed's first act of brigandage as recounted in the hadiths was to massacre and enslave the Jews of Medina who had taken him in as a refugee after he fled Mecca...simply because he was angry that they refused to follow him and he wanted their wealth.
Rauf has other questionable beliefs as well. He has endorsed Britain's setting up of mandatory sharia courts. In March 2009, Rauf said that “Islamic law and American democratic principles have many things in common.” Anyone familiar with both our Constitution and the dictates of the Qu'ran and sharia law understands easily that the differences are so profound as to make them incompatible.
One key difference is how women are treated. In a 2009 piece he penned for the Huffington Post, Rauf actually stated: “The Prophet Muhammad has been known as the first feminist. … Gender equality is an intrinsic part of Islamic belief.”
Gender equality an intrinsic part of Islamic belief? Mohammed, the first feminist?
Qu'ran IV/34: Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other.. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them.
Hadith TIRMZI She is forbidden to spend any money without the permission of her husband, and it includes giving food to the needy or feast to friends. ( P. 265)
Sahih Al Bukhari, Al hee’ al , saying 6969,6970,6971: Muhammad said: “If a man fabricated the acceptance of a woman to marry her by bringing two false witnesses to confirm the marriage, then if the judge confirmed that marriage, although the man and the two witnesses knew that the woman did not accept the marriage herself, the marriage is to be considered legal and valid”
Bukhari (6:301) - "[Muhammad] said, 'Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?' They replied in the affirmative. He said, 'This is the deficiency in her intelligence.'"
Taqiyah in full measure.
One of Rauf's calling cards as a 'moderate Muslim'in the US has been his book, published in the West as What’s Right with Islam. Overseas, as theNational Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy found out, the book's original non-English version was published with a very different text under the title A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11.
Dawa, of course, is Islamic proselytizing and indoctrination. Both the overseas edition and the subsequent American What's Right with Islamwere funded and produced by the Islamic Society Of North America ( ISNA) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought(IIIT), names that should be familiar to my readers. Both of those organizations are Saudi-funded fronts of the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood. ISNA was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism case, and the IIIT's name should ring a few bells to people familiar with Islamist terrorism here in America. The IIIT also has an important connection to President Obama's new Brotherhood friendly ambassador to the anti-Semitic and Islamist Organization of Islamic Conference(OIC), and the co-founder and president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Awani, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Sami al-Arian terrorism case.
It's significant that Imam Rauf, like a great many Muslim leaders in America has refused to condemn Hamas or Hezbollah unequivocally.
There's a great deal more,but let's continue with the second reason not to build the Ground Zero Mosque - what it's likely to become, especially given it's proposed management.
The map above comes courtesy of terrorism expert Stephen Emerson, and clicking on it shows the relationship between mosques and incidents of Islamist terrorism in America. It illustrates something that has turned out to be true almost every time we have an instance of home grown Islamist terrorism. It is simply a fact that behind almost all of them you'll find a Saudi-funded wahabi mosque and a radical imam.
While all Muslims are obviously not terrorists and all mosques are not Islamist terrorist supporters, the connection is undeniable.
Given Feisal Abdul Rauf's questionable background, beliefs, his history of hiring radical imams and his ties to various Muslim Brotherhood fronts, does anyone seriously doubt what's going to be happening at this mosque - right in the midst of the target rich environment of New York City?
Then there's the questionable sources of financing.
The proposed site of the Ground Zero Mosque was the site of a Burlington Coat Factory that was severely damaged in the 9/11 atacks and that Imam Rauf bought at literally a fire-sale price for $4.58 million in cash. Rauf claims that the money was raised by New York City's Muslims. In fact, according to ASMA's own records, he received a great deal of financing from the Muslim world, over half a million from Qatar alone.
And while he's been telling gullible Westerners that the money to construct the Cordoba Houe will originate here, as he admitted in the London Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, a large chunk of the estimated $100 million construction cost will also come from Islamic countries.
"Imam Abdul Rauf . . . told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Islamic center will be financed through contributions from Muslims in the US, as well as by donations from Arab and Islamic countries," the newspaper reported.
Another clue to where the funding will ultimately come from is Sharif El-Gamal, the "developer" from Soho Properties, who was a waiter at the Sarafina Restaurant in New York City just a short time ago and later an apartment rental agent who worked part time on commission only…yet somehow managed to save up $5 million.
El-Gamal’s partner, Nour Mousa, just happens to be the nephew of the Arab League leader Amr Moussa. When the Mob does this, they call it ‘conduit financing.’
Imam Rauf also has an interesting connection to the Xenel Corporation, a Saudi firm that funds ASMA, Imam Rauf's group as well as the proposed Cordoba House. Xemel "provides development, manufacturing, investment, trading and services throughout a wide range of areas of interest" according to the company's website.
Xenel also has ties to al-Qaeda. Xenel's former CEO Abdullah Alireza sits on the executive board of Dar al-Maal al-Islami (DMI), a bank based in Switzerland that was named by the State Department as a source of al-Qaeda financing. In fact former al Qaeda operative Ahmed al-Fadl, a finance manager for al Qaeda, testified that al Qaeda accounts in Khartoum, Sudan were held at Faisal Islamic Bank, a DMI subsidiary.
Xenel actually lost a huge contract in 2002 to build a new convention center for the city of Orlando, Florida once these ties to Islamist terrorism came to light.
Nor is this all in the past. The company's current CEO Kahlid Alireza was a prominent name on the "Golden Chain" list of financial backers of al-Qaeda seized in a March 2002 raid by Bosnian police at the offices of the Muslim 'charity' the Benevolence International Foundation in Sarajevo. Al Qaeda defector Jamal al-Fadl vouched for its authenticity and the FBI also pronounced the 'Golden Chain" list as genuine.
Another probable source of funding for Rauf is the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), established by the member nations of the Islamist Organization of Islamic Conference ( OIC) for exactly the purpose of advancing Islam and sharia and funding projects like the Ground Zero Mosque. It previously financed the aforementioned Islamic Cultural Center (ICC) started by Rauf's Muslim Brotherhood affiliated father in New York to the tune of $1.3 million where Rauf is still a trustee.
Does anyone really doubt that some if not most of the money to build the Ground Zero Mosque is going to come from some of the same people that helped finance 9/11? Are we really prepared to allow this to happen?
Contrary to the tales Rauf has been spinning to the media , there's no pressing need for a huge mosque at this site. Lower Manhattan isn't exactly home to a large Muslim community. Manhattan's existing storefront mosques are more than adequate for the local Muslims, mainly Pakistani and Arab Muslims who work in the area but who actually live in places like Brooklyn, Queens or New Jersey. So why a huge mosque at Ground Zero rather than an area where there are more Muslims?
To understand the answer, it's vital to see the symbolism of this through the Muslim frame of reference.
The very name Cordoba House invokes Islamist triumph, invoking the capitol of Islam's Spanish conquests at the height of Islam's power. The new mosque will be designed to rise up from the ashes of 9/11 and tower over Ground Zero.
The feet of Muslims will be trodding over the bones and ashes of the people who died on 9/11, and again, those who are aware of Arab and Muslim culture understand full well what a gross insult this is in that world.
Islamists understand this symbolism quite well.
What is being planned here is not a 'symbol of healing' or 'tolerance'. It is to be a symbol of dominance and victory of Islam over the infidel, as well as a demonstration of the kind of contempt many Muslims have always had for the kuffars, non-believers. Muslims historically build mosques at the sites of their victories and conquests. New York acceding to it is literally the equivalent of allowing the Klu Klux Klan to place a white power cultural center on the site of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama - where the Klan's bomb murdered 4 young girls back in 1963. Or allowing the bloody conversion by the Ottomans of St. Sophia's cathedral in Constantinople into a mosque.
Jeffrey Goldberg has it wrong. Al-Qaeda wouldn't bomb the proposed Cordova House. They would see it as a monument to their pulling off the most deadly attack in history ever mounted on American soil. And a training ground for the future.
And to their credit,there are American Muslims who see this for what it is and understand that it is a threat to their freedom too.
