Ground Zero Mosque?, Feisal Abdul Rauf - Liaison or Threat?

Mosque Near Ground Zero Could Be Halted by Landmark Ruling
5/21/10 at 10:35 AM

"Apparently, the building two blocks from ground zero, which a Muslim organization hopes to turn into a mosque and community center, has been awaiting a ruling by the Landmarks Preservation Commission since 1989. Construction can't begin until the LPC votes, which it'll finally get around to doing soon. Opponents of the mosque (because the hijackers were also Muslim!) are hoping that a landmark designation would prevent the mosque from being built. As Post columnist Steve Cuozzo writes, this is "a favorite ploy of every knee-jerk, anti-progress faction in town: to seek retributive, retroactive landmarking of a building nobody cared about — until a landlord proposed replacing it with something the NIMBY crowd doesn't like."

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/05/mosqu...ork+Magazine%29


So are the families being the "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard) knee-jerk reactionaries?

But the organisation behind the mosque has said they picked the spot precisely because of its location near Ground Zero.

Building a mosque 'where a piece of the wreckage fell.... sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric leading the project, told the New York Times last year.

'We want to push back against the extremists,' Feisal, 61, added.
Director of the mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs Fatima Shama told the New York Times: 'We as New York Muslims have as much of a commitment to rebuilding New York as anybody.'

The FBI has also given Feisal its seal of approval after he helped them reach out to the Muslim population in the wake of the attacks.

'We've had positive interactions with him in the past,' a spokesman was quoted as saying.

Since the attacks, Ground Zero has become a shrine to the victims, with millions of visitors paying their respects every year.

Pamela Geller, executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America activist group, is organising the June 6 rally in protest against the development, which will be called Cordoba House.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...round-Zero.html


[B]Or is the Imam disrespecting American losses and attempting to force Islam into mainstream America?[/B]

Wikipedia: Speaking at his New York mosque in 2004, Imam Feisal stated 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." He also said that there could be little progress in Western-Islamic relations until the U.S. acknowledged backing Middle East dictators and gave an "American Culpa" speech to the Muslim world.

[B]What say you?[/B]

Jillian

I would not print what I have to say about this one other than to point out that the koran allows, no, actually encourages muslims to lie to gentiles. It only prohibits them from lieing to other muslims.

Slàinte,   

 Patch    

I posted this because it doesn't seem to be getting much media attention. As one article said, if the Japanese decided to erect a cultural center in Pearl Harbor on the 10th year anniversary, do you think it would have ever been considered? No.

I feel it's just insensitive at the very least. Even giving Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf the benefit of the doubt regarding his motives (that they are pure and truly want to bridge the cultural gap between Islam and America), when faced with this pushback any true "ambassador of good will" would be honorable and ax the plan out of respect. Going a step further, a true ambassador would initiate talks with the families to compromise or agree on an alternate place to build it.

The goal of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and other Muslims? To bring Sharia Law to America. And if you think it can't happen-or that I'm being a Tea Party nut...it's already happening in the UK. What's that old saying--keep your friends close and your enemies closer? I believe we are seeing it in action with this Muslim ideology.

With the record Muslims have around the world of women's rights abuses, it scares the sh&%t out of me. Where is N.O.W. now?

Here are 2 BBC articles:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7232661.stm "Sharia Law in UK in Unavoidable"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7234870.stm "Q&A: Sharia Law Explained"

And on UKTelegraph article: "Sharia Courts Operating in Britain"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/295...in-Britain.html

Should this nudge become a push and shove in America, I would propose we argue that Christians have a right to have Christian courts and all this to-do about Supreme Court justices can be solved....we just won't need one.

Just sayin'.


Jillian

NOW is probably busy bowing to obama at this time.

The idea that this mosque is a tribute to 9/11 is bull pooh on the part of islam. It is to honor the terrorists who created the carnage there.

I suspect if the feds have a say in it it will be built or at least there will be an attempt to do so.

As for Sharia law, There are many here who will not tolerate it and they will not have to stand alone. By many, I suspect around 95%.

Were we not so busy with the remaining primaries and the Nov. elections that would be a priority focus of the Tea Party. After the elections other things will move to the top of the list.

My friends in the UK are furious re: the situation in there. One family has decided to immigrate to the US and another to Canada. The family that wants to come to the US has employment here but is fighting the process. It seems strange that someone with skills that are in demand and have money must fight to get here and illegal aliens that mow lawns and the like come here to live off our system and can not be deported.

I will have my assistants (provided since I got home) forward your links to all on my mailing lists and include them with all replies.

This is another matter to contact your representative and senators about. Now is a good time because they are scared witless at the prospect of being defeated.

Slàinte,   

 Patch    

Oh my God. You are just being deliberately ignorant.

Islam did not fly those planes into the WTC on 9/11.

It was a terrorist organization called al-Quaeda, run by Osama bin Laden, that did. The hijackers were Muslim, but that most likely had little, if anything, to do with it.

There are extremists in any organized religion, such as the fringe Christian wackos who murder abortion doctors "in the name of God". More often than not, they're extremists who happen to belong to a certain religion or faith.

Islam created those who flew the planes into the towers.

Islam has only recently begun to speak out about radicalism in their faith.

Though one is too many, we are not close to having 3,000 abortion doctors killed.

I recently took the time to discuss Islam and it's goals with a professional man of that faith who immigrated to the US with his family and it was a very enlightening discussion. He still loosely practices his faith but he picks and chooses from the Koran those things that he feels are appropriate. #1 is that his religion's goal is to see an Islamic ruled world had he is "instructed" to convert the world's non believers. Those of us who are non believers and will not convert are infidels. He embraces our Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom. He also believes that if he openly leaves the Islamic faith, he and his family could be in danger as those who denounce Islam are also infidels. His wife and daughters enjoy all of the freedoms of America. No member of his family, male or female believes in Sharia law.

You made the statement re: those who would harm abortion doctors as follows: "More often than not, they're extremists who happen to belong to a certain religion or faith." Which faith would that be? It certainly is not mine as we pray for their forgiveness and eternal salvation!

Jillian is correct in that the Japanese would never have been allowed to do something similar at Pearl Harbor and a Mosque should not be allowed near the site of the attack on the towers. There are plenty of other places that they could build in NYC. I would not be opposed if they were "given" the land in the city, but NOT there.

Slàinte,    

Patch    

I wasn't saying that specifically about the extremists who murder abortion doctors. I was using them as a reference point for extremism in general.

Maybe Northern Ireland would've been a better example. There were extremists in both the largely Protestant Loyalist majority and the mostly Catholic Nationalist minority. But they were extremist Loyalists who just happened to be Protestant and extremist Nationalists who happened to be Catholic. In both cases, religion was only fractionally involved.

What I'm trying to say is don't lump the 9/11 terrorists in with Islam as a whole.

The difference is: both the Protestant and Catholic radicals in Northern Ireland have to violate the teachings and actions of Christ and his Apostles to justify their actions with anything from Christianity while the Islamic Extremist can point to specific instructions and actions from/by their Prophet justifying theirs.

OPINION: Right Goes Nuts Over Ground Zero Mosque
Even though the Imam is a moderate who works with FBIBy Kevin Spak| Posted 1 hour, 49 minutes ago| Share (Newser) – Remember Tea Party honcho Mark Williams' “monkey god” outburst? Well he's not the only right-winger spewing flames over the proposed Muslim community center being built a few blocks from Ground Zero. The imam behind the center says it's designed to “bridge and heal a divide” and says fighting radicalism is his personal mission. “But in the nightmares of right-wingers, the project has transformed into something more like a shrine to the 9/11 terrorists,” writes Zachary Roth of Talking Points Memo.

Some of the oh-so-rational responses have included:

•Today's Washington Times editorial, which called the center “an attempt to hijack the memory of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.”
•An Investor's Business Daily editorial declaring it a “monumental sign of weakness.”
•Radio host Michael Berry's charming declaration that, “If you do build a mosque, I hope somebody blows it up … and I mean that.”
•A comment, cited anonymously in WorldNetDaily's article on the matter, that it "is not different than allowing the Nazis to establish their headquarters and propaganda office in NYC in 1938.”

http://www.newser.com/story/90422/right-go..._campaign=story

Now for some other "oh-so-rational responses":

Nonie Darwish
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Darwish excerpts:

"I always blamed Israel for my father's death, because that's what I was taught. I never looked at why Israel killed my father. They killed my father because the fedayeen were killing Israelis. They killed my father because when I was growing up, we had to recite poetry pledging jihad against Israel. We would have tears in our eyes, pledging that we wanted to die. I speak to people who think there was no terrorism against Israel before the '67 war. How can they deny it? My father died in it."

"After 9/11 very few Americans of Arab and Muslim origin spoke out and from my experience it took us a long time to get noticed by Western media. Western media still regards Muslim organizations such as CAIR as representative of moderate Muslims in America. This is not the case. Muslim groups in the U.S. try to silence us and intimidate American campuses who invite us to speak. I often tell Muslim students that Arab Americans who are speaking out against terrorism are not the problem, it’s the terrorists who are giving Islam a bad name. And what the West must do is ask the politically incorrect questions and we Americans of Arab and Muslim origin owe them honest answers."

Darwish believes Islam is an authoritarian ideology that is attempting to impose on the world the norms of seventh-century culture of the Arabian Peninsula. She writes that Islam is a "sinister force" that must be resisted and contained. She remarks that it is hard to "comprehend that an entire religion and its culture believes God orders the killing of unbelievers." She claims that Islam and Sharia of forming a retrograde ideology that adds greatly to the world's stock of misery.

She claims the Qur'an is a text that is "violent, incendiary, and disrespectful" and says that barbarities such as brutalization of women, the persecution of homosexuals, honor killings, the beheading of apostates and the stoning of adulterers come directly out of the Qur'an.

Nonie Darwish (born 1949) is an Egyptian-American human rights activist, and founder of Arabs For Israel, and is Director of Former Muslims United. She is the author of two books: Now They Call Me Infidel; Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror and Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.

For the full article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonie_Darwish

Jillian

That is a very insightful article.

Though the present administration does not believe it is at war with Islam, Islam is CERTAIN that they are at war with America!

Slàinte,  

Patch    

A friend actually told me about her....

Jillian

Your quote mimics someone who, God forbid doesn't want to offend Islam. No. Islam itself didn't fly those planes into the WTC on 911. But it was done by Muslims. Yes there are Christian extremist who threaten abortion instutions but to make that compairson is ignorant. Muslem extremist far out number any Christian extremist in the realm we are discussing, ie. suicide bombers, al-Quaeda and other groups. You sound like you are trying to make Christian extremist sound like they are just as prevalent and as dangerious as al-Quaeda as our President aka "the GREAT ONE" seems to think and wants everyone to believe.

Not to be argumentative, but Islam is the religion and Muslim is the race. In my mind they can not be separated. As I have stated often, not all are radicals but very few have the courage to speak out against the radicals because of fear of reprisal. If your religion causes you to have such fear, something is terribly wrong!!

Slàinte,    

Patch    

This is a very sobering video commentary on the Ground Zero mosque and the goals of Islam.

http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2010/06/of-...ections-on.html


Jillian

If you read the Koran, it tells you this! It is not something subject to interpretation either. If everyone read the Koran, they would look at the religion differently!

Slàinte,    

Patch