View Full Version : NYC Ground Zero Mosque
olhamada
05-14-2010, 18:13
Have you guys seen this? I'm freaking infuriated that they would even think about allowing something like this! How wrong and insensitive. How do we put a stop to this?
AND THE OPENING DATE IS 9/11/11!!!! What an insult!!! 10 years to the day.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/mosque_madness_at_ground_zero_OQ34EB0MWS0lXuAnQau5 uL
I am really fed up with the liberal bleeding hearts in the country.
:mad:
A Mosque at Ground Zero Equals Victory
May 19, 2010 - by Wafa Sultan
A new mosque is now being planned in New York near "Ground Zero," two blocks from where the World Trade Center used to be. This mosque is headed by an Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the Cordoba Initiative, who proposes to convert the now-shuttered Burlington Coat Factory on Park Place into an Islamic Cultural Center which would contain a mosque.
It is crucial to study the supremacist ideology of Islam and to recognize, for example, that the building of a mosque especially at Ground Zero is viewed by Muslims as a decisive victory over the infidels in Islam's march to establish its ultimate goal: the submission of all others to Islam and to Sharia Law.
On a daily bases, in so many parts of the world, deadly attacks are perpetrated by Jihadists either against non Muslims or, frequently, against Muslims -- especially Muslim women. The terror type of Jihad, however, is only one way for Islamists to accomplish their mission of making the "Kafir," or infidels, submit to Sharia Law. Another method is, as the author Robert Spencer calls it, an insidious, creeping "Stealth Jihad."
While Mr. Shahzad is the impatient Jihadist who attempts to destroy the West through terror, there is also the second type of Jihadist, who is much more patient, and who employs the "Stealth Jihad." The Stealth Jihadis are subtle in their approach and take their time to accomplish the same objective of submitting us all under Islam and under Sharia Law.
Recently, two separate episodes highlight this gloomy reality. The first is the attempted bombing of Times Square by the Pakistani terrorist, Faisal Shahzad, called by Leon de Winter "The Foreclosure Terrorist" from an anchor at CNN who said, "It can be confirmed that his house has been foreclosed in recent years. I mean, one would have to imagine, that brought a lot of pressure and a lot of heartache on that family."
To someone who grew up in a Muslim country, as I did, this can only be seen as ludicrous. Perhaps there should be a formal Fatwa, or religious edict called the "Foreclosure Jihad." No doubt, those at Al Azhar University in Cairo - the epicenter of Islamic jurisprudence -- might like this idea: It is an effective way to conceal the true narrative of Islam.
According to the Center of the study of Political Islam (www.politicalislam.com), over the last 1400 years, Muslims have murdered roughly 270 million kafirs [non-Muslims]; 60 million Christians, 80 million Hindus, 10 million Buddhists and around 120 million African slaves. Until today, as far as we know, there has not been any official acknowledgement or official apology by any official Islamic organization for these atrocities. This calamity is not a modern day phenomenon. It has been taking place since Islam's inception 1400 years ago.
This is what Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a few years ago, said at the Chautauqua Institution in New York:
"Seven centuries before the Declaration of Independence was written Shari'a Law was intended to protect life, religion, property, family and mental well being. This is why I assert that America is in fact a Shari'a compliant state".
The Imam avoids mentioning that Islamic Sharia allows, among other ruthless practices, to beat women to discipline them, and that Sharia also still sanctions slavery. Is that not a bit different from American set of laws? Does the Imam recommend that the US implement the previous two practices into our system to be a more "Sharia compliant state"?
The Imam also said, in Sydney, Australia, that "The US and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end."
The declaration of war on the West -- as Bin Laden declared initially -- was not, bear in mind, based on this "harm" allegedly done to Muslins, but on Hadith, [reports on the sayings and activities of Mohammaed and his companiois] of Mohammed in Al-Buchary:
"I have been ordered to fight and kill all mankind until they say no God except Allah and Mohammed is the prophet of Allah."
This Hadith declares war on non-Muslims -- to subjugate them under Islam irrespective of their deeds. If terrorism is caused by the "harm by the West to Muslims," why then do Sunni Muslims burn Shi'ite mosques in countries like Pakistan and Iraq? Why is it that Islamists have been throwing acid on the faces of women in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria and Iran? Are these brutalities also committed because the West harms Muslims?
Further, we all know that while Muslims can build mosques and practice their religion freely in the West, non-Muslims are forbidden to do the same in Islamic countries. How harmful to them is that?
This Imam also stated:
"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."
As for women, the Imam says that, with regard to the role of women, and the education of women in most Muslim countries, that women are very active and involved, and that misogyny exists primarily in the tribal countries of the Arabian Peninsula.
This is a shameful and deceitful portrayal. The status of women in the Muslim countries is a misfortune that the world has overlooked for centuries, and for which it is now paying a high price for having ignored.
"A God Who Hates," the book I wrote last year, is dedicated to the memory of my niece Mayyada, who cut her life short by committing suicide to escape the hellish marriage imposed upon her under Islamic Sharia Law. There are currently millions of women who experience similar unimaginable suffering, all sanctioned under the tacit approval of Sharia. Their accounts are untold stories of unthinkable oppression and misery.
Now we have a Muslim Imam, who aspires to implement Sharia in the West, and who is a slick and eloquent speaker disguised as a "moderate" Muslim. He uses Taqiyya, the Islamic concept which calls for Muslims to lie to the enemy and deceive him based on Quran 3:28, to fool non-Muslims and those who are gullible or ignorant, and who play right into his hands.
While Feisal Rauf opposes Faisal Shahzas's terror strategy, both share the same objective of subjugating the West under Islam and under Sharia Law - both Faisals are two sides of the same coin.
As for the majority of our U.S. population, they are basically being kept in the dark as words like "Islamic terror" and "Jihad" are not anymore considered by the establishment to be acceptable.To inform the public of the perils of the Jihadists' doctrine is politically incorrect.
So here is their formula: Muslims try to kill or subvert non-Muslims through treason, while the infidels avoid naming the doctrine and the theology from which Muslims' worldview emanates. By these means, non-Muslims permit radical Muslims to carry their agenda into the advanced stage of coercing us to capitulate.
The so called "progressives" and proponents of interfaith dialogue in the media, in academia, and in our government cannot accept that in Islam's supremacist ideology, there is no moral relativism. They cannot accept that when it comes to Islam, multiculturalism is a one-way street that serves Islam -- and the interests of Islam alone. There is no inclusion of other "ways," or cultures supported in the Quran. Even to allow or accommodate other viewpoints can cost a Muslim his or her life.
Under freedom of expression, Muslims, like any other group, have the right to criticize others. But where is the line drawn between freedom of expression and an act of sedition? Where is the acknowledgment that Islam teaches that Sharia Law supersedes all other laws - including the U.S. Constitution?
Here in the U.S., we are not learning a single lesson from the Islamization of Europe: as of now, we are moving in the same direction by the same "Stealth" tactics being used all over Europe -- infiltration into the highest levels of government; indoctrination of the public through misinformation; double standards provided by media outlets; intimidation, and threats, both veiled and public.
Thomas Mann, a German writer once said: "Tolerance is a crime when applied to evil." At the time, Mr. Mann was referring to the rise of Nazism in Germany. His statement is a wake-up call to us today, it speaks the truth. We must have the courage and commitment to act against these encroachments if freedom is to survive.
Dr. Wafa Sultan is a Syrian-certified psychiatrist and author of the book, "A God Who Hates."
http://www.hudsonny.org/2010/05/mosque-at-ground-zero-equals-victory.php
Now that's the issue is in the NY Post, the game changes; even the current administration in DC can read that wall…it won't step into this coming Shit Storm. Trust me, (my family runs the 98 IBEW in Philly) I cannot image the unions caving in on this. (they did clean up the “pile”) It’s a point of the cultural pride within the ranks as to who was there, when, and for how long. And, let’s not forget, absolutely nothing moves in NYC without union approval.
In one scenario, I can see the project costing billions and imploding. In another, I can see endless delays. I can see shit loads of rag heads reinforcing concrete; and I see lots of construction accidents, defamations of books, someone will no doubt use the Koran in a port potty, it will become a classic video and the rags heads will bring out the artillery, and then, it’s all over.
Some things will be interesting to watch: The NY times position and how long it takes them to weigh in on the issue.
Bloomberg….??????
Koch, Done and with an FU
I think the liberal members of community board 1 of Tribeca, are about to become persona no grata
BMA.
incarcerated
05-19-2010, 23:30
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hv4dsp3nV_8HUeoz-TwXphISI0zg
France to build new mega-mosque
By Carole Landry (AFP) – 3 hours ago
MARSEILLE, France — French Muslims celebrate a milestone on Thursday when building work begins on a mega-mosque in Marseille, the nation's biggest, and a potent symbol of Islam's place in modern France.
A day after the French government approved a bill banning the full Islamic veil, Muslim leaders will join politicians for a ceremony to lay the cornerstone at a dusty construction site in northern Marseille.
France's second city is home to 250,000 Muslims, many of whom flock to makeshift prayer houses in basements, rented rooms and dingy garages to worship.
With a minaret soaring 25 metres (82 feet) high, the Grand Mosque will hold up to 7,000 people in its prayer room and the complex will also boast a Koranic school, library, restaurant and tea room when it opens in 2012....
Robert Spencer and Debra Burlingame, sister of one of the 9/11 pilots, discuss the proposed Ground Zero monster mosque and expose Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf:
> http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=XdqGkUqG2G
greenberetTFS
05-22-2010, 14:41
Robert Spencer and Debra Burlingame, sister of one of the 9/11 pilots, discuss the proposed Ground Zero monster mosque and expose Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf:
> http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=XdqGkUqG2G
WTF,If this thing makes it,it would be a disgrace to America and to the people who died there............:(:(:(
Big Teddy :munchin
Got this in an email the other day from, ACT For America! It is a petition opposing the building of the mosque!!!
Hope this maybe rattles the chains of those who would seek to pervert the honor of Ground Zero.:mad:
Just click the link below, and under the picture of the burning Twin Towers, is the petition.
http://www.actforamerica.org/
Holly
greenberetTFS
05-23-2010, 09:56
Got this in an email the other day from, ACT For America! It is a petition opposing the building of the mosque!!!
Hope this maybe rattles the chains of those who would seek to pervert the honor of Ground Zero.:mad:
Just click the link below, and under the picture of the burning Twin Towers, is the petition.
[url]http://www.actforamerica.org/[/u
Holly
Thanks for the e-mail address............;)
Big Teddy :munchin
It appears the founder of the Ground Zero Mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is part of the group who funded the Gaza Flotilla :mad:
The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli commandos at sea this week.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization...
Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/imam_unmosqued_0XbZMwCvHAVdRZEKgx29AK
I can't say that I disagree with Pat Condell > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjS0Novt3X4 :munchin
Beat me to it T-Rock.
A mosque at Ground Zero is just so freaking wrong on so many levels. :mad:
GZ2 - The Sequel - millions to build and $10 worth of gasoline to turn it into a charcoal pit for a pig roast. I hope I'm on the guest list.
And so it goes...;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Big Boss
06-08-2010, 04:02
GZ2 - The Sequel - millions to build and $10 worth of gasoline to turn it into a charcoal pit for a pig roast. I hope I'm on the guest list.
And so it goes...;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
I'll go undercover as your seeing eye dog.
GZ2 - The Sequel - millions to build and $10 worth of gasoline to turn it into a charcoal pit for a pig roast. I hope I'm on the guest list.
I'll bring the beer.
The Two Faces of the Ground Zero Mosque
While the Cordoba Initiative appears to Americans as a sign of good faith and a new beginning with the Islamic world, to Muslims it represents conquest, dominance — even suicidal jihad against the infidel.
June 22, 2010 - by Raymond Ibrahim
Depending on whether Islamists address Americans or fellow Muslims, the same exact words they use often relay diametrically opposed meanings. One example: when Americans hear Muslims evoke “justice,” the former envision Western-style justice, whereas Muslims naturally have Sharia law justice in mind.
Islamists obviously use this to their advantage: when addressing the West, Osama bin Laden bemoans the “justice of our causes, particularly Palestine”; yet, when addressing Muslims, his notion of justice far transcends territorial disputes and becomes unintelligible from a Western perspective: “Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them. The West perceives fighting, enmity, and hatred all for the sake of the religion [i.e., Islam] as unjust, hostile, and evil. But who’s understanding is right — our notions of justice and righteousness, or theirs?” (Al Qaeda Reader, p. 43).
Of course, that Osama bin Laden — slayer of 3,000 Americans and avowed enemy to the rest — exhibits two faces, one to Americans another to Muslims, is not surprising. Yet the reader may well be surprised to discover that the controversial Cordoba Initiative, which plans on manifesting itself as the largest American mosque, situated atop Ground Zero — that is, atop the carnage caused by none other than bin Laden — also has two faces, conveying one thing to Americans, quite another to Muslims.
The very name of the initiative itself, “Cordoba,” offers different connotations to different people: In the West, the Andalusian city of Cordoba is regularly touted as the model of medieval Muslim progressiveness and tolerance for Christians and Jews. To many Americans, then, the choice to name the mosque “Cordoba” is suggestive of rapprochement and interfaith dialogue; atop the rubble of 9/11, it implies “healing” — a new beginning between Muslims and Americans. The Cordoba Initiative’s mission statement certainly suggests as much:
Cordoba Initiative aims to achieve a tipping point in Muslim-West relations within the next decade, bringing back the atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago.
Oddly enough, the so-called “tolerant” era of Cordoba supposedly occurred during the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) — well over a thousand years ago. “Eight hundred years ago,” i.e., around 1200, the fanatical Almohids — ideological predecessors of al-Qaeda — were ravaging Cordoba, where “Christians and Jews were given the choice of conversion, exile, or death.” A Freudian slip on the part of the Cordoba Initiative?
In fact, the true history of Cordoba, not to mention the whole of Andalusia, is far less inspiring than what Western academics portray: the Christian city was conquered by Muslims around 711, its inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of Cordoba — the namesake of the Ground Zero mosque — was built atop, and partly from the materials of, a Christian church. Modern day Muslims are well aware of all this. Such is the true — and ominous — legacy of Cordoba.
More pointedly, throughout Islam’s history, whenever a region was conquered, one of the first signs of consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the sacred sites of the vanquished: the pagan Ka‘ba temple in Arabia was converted into Islam’s holiest site, the mosque of Mecca; the al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, was built atop Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem; the Umayyad Mosque was built atop the Church of St. John the Baptist; and the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople.
(In 2006, when the Pope visited the Hagia Sophia in Turkey, there was a risk that the “Islamic world [would go] into paroxysms of fury” if there was “any perception that the pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims” — this even as Muslims today seek to build a mosque on the rubble of the Twin Towers.)
Such double standards lead us back to the issue of double meanings. As for the literal wording of the mosque project, “Cordoba House,” it too offers opposing paradigms of thought: to Westerners, the English word “house” suggests shelter, intimacy — coziness, even; in classical Arabic, however, the word for house, dar, can also mean “region,” and is regularly used in a divisive sense, as in Dar al-Harb, i.e., “infidel region of war.” Thus, to Muslim ears, while “Cordoba” offers allusions of conquest and domination, dar is further suggestive of division and separation (from infidels, a la the doctrine of al-Wala’ wa al-Bara’, for instance).
Words aside, even the mosque’s scheduled opening date — 9/11/2011 — has two aspects: to Americans, opening the mosque on 9/11 is to proclaim a new beginning with the Muslim world on the ten-year anniversary of the worst terror strikes on American soil; however, it just so happens that Koranic verse 9:111 is one of the loftiest calls for suicidal jihad and is probably the reason al-Qaeda originally chose that date to strike. So while Americans may think the mosque’s planned 9/11 opening is meant to commemorate that date, it may well be a cryptic evocation for all out war. A “new beginning,” indeed, but of a very different sort, namely, the propagation of more Islamists and jihadists — mosques are, after all, epicenters of radicalization — on, of all places, soil sacred to America.
Some final thoughts on the history of Cordoba and the ominous parallels it bodes for America: though many Christian regions were conquered by Islam prior to Cordoba, its conquest signified the first time a truly “Western” region was conquered by the sword of Islam. It was also used as a base to launch further attacks into the heart of Europe (until decisively beaten at the Battle of Tours), just as, perhaps, the largest mosque in America will be used as a base to subvert the rest of the United States. And the sacking of the original Cordoba was facilitated by an insider traitor — a warning to the U.S., which seems to have no end of traitors and willing lackeys.
Such, then, is the dual significance of the Cordoba Initiative: What appears to many Americans as a gesture of peace and interfaith dialogue, is to Muslims reminiscent of Islamist conquest and consolidation; mosques, which Americans assume are Muslim counterparts to Christian churches — that is, places where altruistic Muslims congregate and pray for world peace and harmony — are symbols of domination and centers of radicalization; the numbers of the opening date, 9/11/11, appear to Americans as commemorative of a new beginning, whereas the Koranic significance of those numbers is suicidal jihad. Of course, the two faces of the Cordoba House should not be surprising considering that the man behind the initiative, Feisal Abdul Rauf, also has two faces.
Going along with the historic analogy, there is one bit of good news: As opposed to the vast majority of onetime Western/Christian nations annexed by Islam, Spain did ultimately manage to overthrow the Islamic yoke. Though only after some 700 years of occupation.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-two-faces-of-the-ground-zero-mosque/?singlepage=true
ETA:
Sura 9:111 "Surely Allah has bought of the believers their persons and their property for this, that they shall have the garden; they fight in Allah's way, so they slay and are slain; a promise which is binding on Him in the Taurat and the Injeel and the Quran; and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? Rejoice therefore in the pledge which you have made; and that is the mighty achievement"
WTH :eek:
"All the law that a Muslim needs is in the Qur'an and the Hadith, sayings of the Prophet Muhammad"
~Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf~
Just after 9/11, people would ask me, why do so many movements with political agendas take a religious name? Why are they called the Muslim Brotherhood, or Hizbullah, which means Party of God, or Hamas, which is an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement? I tell them that the Muslim approach to law and justice begins with religious language because secular movements have failed to deliver what Muslims want – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If that sounds suspiciously like the Declaration of Independence, that's because – contrary to what many people in the West believe – Islamic law and American democratic principles have many things in common.
http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=25141&lan=en&sid=1&sp=0
ETA Video - "Sharia Law And US Constitution is The Same" > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT8s1a1E4nk
* An average American Muslim explains Sharia, the Muslims Constitution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qxjocm5fCc
Thomas Paine
07-21-2010, 08:02
WTH :eek:
Yeah, T-Rock, you're tracking.
We're going to need to refer people who aren't, back to this...
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25528&highlight=sharia+constitution
mark46th
07-21-2010, 08:34
I think the mosque should be allowed to be built.
Right after Islam destoys the Dome of the Rock and allows the Israeli's to build the Third Temple on the site. Also, the muslims have to allow the pope to build a cathedral in Mecca at the site of the Masjid-al-Haram...
Thomas Paine
07-29-2010, 12:45
No Mosque at Ground Zero
by Newt Gingrich
07/28/2010
One of our biggest mistakes in the aftermath of 9/11 was naming our response to the attacks “the war on terror” instead of accurately identifying radical Islamists (and the underlying ideology of radical Islamism) as the target of our campaign. This mistake has led to endless confusion about the nature of the ideological and material threat facing the civilized world and the scale of the response that is appropriate.
Radical Islamism is more than simply a religious belief. It is a comprehensive political, economic, and religious movement that seeks to impose sharia—Islamic law—upon all aspects of global society.
Many Muslims see sharia as simply a reference point for their personal code of conduct. They recognize the distinction between their personal beliefs and the laws that govern all people of all faiths.
For the radical Islamist, however, this distinction does not exist. Radical Islamists see politics and religion as inseparable in a way it is difficult for Americans to understand. Radical Islamists assert sharia’s supremacy over the freely legislated laws and values of the countries they live in and see it as their sacred duty to achieve this totalitarian supremacy in practice.
Some radical Islamists use terrorism as a tactic to impose sharia but others use non-violent methods—a cultural, political, and legal jihad that seeks the same totalitarian goal even while claiming to repudiate violence. Thus, the term “war on terrorism” is far too narrow a framework in which to think about the war in which we are engaged against the radical Islamists.
Sharia and Western Civilization
Sharia law is used in many Muslim countries to justify shocking acts of barbarity including stoning, the execution of homosexuals, and the subjugation of women. Sharia does not permit freedom of conscience; it prohibits Muslims from renouncing their Islamic faith or converting to another religion. Sharia does not support religious liberty; it treats non-Muslims as inferior and does not accord them the same protections as Muslims. In these and other instances, sharia is explicitly at odds with core American and Western values. It is an explicit repudiation of freedom of conscience and religious liberty as well as the premise that citizens are equal under the law.
Thus, the radical Islamist effort to impose sharia worldwide is a direct threat to all those who believe in the freedoms maintained by our constitutional system.
Creeping Sharia in the United States
In some ways, it speaks of the goodness of America that we have had such difficulty coming to grips with the challenge of radical Islamists. It is our very commitment to religious liberty that makes us uncomfortable with defining our enemies in a way that appears linked with religious belief.
However, America’s commitment to religious liberty has given radical Islamists a potent rhetorical weapon in their pursuit of sharia supremacy. In a deliberately dishonest campaign exploiting our belief in religious liberty, radical Islamists are actively engaged in a public relations campaign to try and browbeat and guilt Americans (and other Western countries) to accept the imposition of sharia in certain communities, no matter how deeply sharia law is in conflict with the protections afforded by the civil law and the democratic values undergirding our constitutional system.
The problem of creeping sharia is most visibly on display in France and in the United Kingdom, where there are Muslim enclaves in which the police have surrendered authority and sharia reigns. However, worrisome cases are starting to emerge in the United States that show sharia is coming here. Andy McCarthy’s writings, including his new book The Grand Jihad, have been invaluable in tracking instances in which the American government and major public institutions have been unwilling to assert the protections of American law and American values over sharia’s religious code. Some examples include:
In June 2009, a New Jersey state judge rejected an allegation that a Muslim man who punished his wife with pain for hours and then raped her repeatedly was guilty of criminal sexual assault, citing his religious beliefs as proof that he did not believe he was acting in a criminal matter. “This court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.” Thankfully, this ruling was reversed in an appellate court.
In May 2008, a disabled student at a public college being assisted by a dog was threatened by Muslim members of the student body, who were reluctant to touch the animal by the prescription of sharia. The school, St. Cloud State, chose not to engage the Muslim community, but simply gave the student credit without actually fulfilling the class hours so as to avoid conflict.
In a similar instance in November 2009, a high school senior in Owatonna, Minn., was suspended in order to protect him from the threat of violence by radical Islamists when he wrote an essay about the special privileges afforded his Somali Muslim counterparts in the school environment.
In order to accommodate sharia’s prohibition of interest payments in financial transactions, the state of Minnesota buys homes from realtors and re-sells them to Muslims at an up-front price. It is simply not the function of government to use tax money to create financial transactions that correspond to a religious code. Moreover, it is a strategy to create a precedent for legal recognition of sharia within U.S. law.
Amazingly, there are strong allegations that the United States now owns the largest provider of sharia financing in the world: AIG.
Last month, police in Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Muslim population, arrested Christian missionaries for handing out copies of the Gospel of St. John on charges of “disturbing the peace.” They were doing so on a public street outside an Arab festival in a way that is completely permissible by law, but, of course, forbidden by sharia’s rules on proselytizing. This is a clear case of freedom of speech and the exercise of religious freedom being sacrificed in deference to sharia’s intolerance against the preaching of religions other than Islam.
Shockingly, sharia honor killings—in which Muslim women are murdered by their husbands, brothers or other male family members for dishonoring their family—are also on the rise in America but do not receive national attention because they are considered “domestic disturbances.” (A recent article in Marie Claire Magazine highlights recent cases and the efforts to bring national attention to this horrifying trend.)
Cases like this will become all the more common as radical Islamists grow more and more aggressive in the United States.
It is in this context that the controversy over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero must be seen.
Thomas Paine
07-29-2010, 12:46
Exposing Radical Islamist Hypocrisy at Ground Zero
There are many reasons to doubt the stated intentions of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Ground Zero mosque. After 9/11 he did not hesitate to condemn the United States as an “accessory” to the attacks but more recently refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization. This is unsurprising considering he has well-established ties to U.S. branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has also refused to reveal the sources of funding for the mosque project, which is projected to cost $100 million.
More importantly, he is an apologist for sharia supremacy. In a recent op-ed, Rauf actually compared sharia law with the Declaration of Independence. This isn’t mere dishonesty; it is an Orwellian attempt to cause moral confusion about the nature of radical Islamism.
The true intentions of Rauf are also revealed by the name initially proposed for the Ground Zero mosque—“Cordoba House”—which is named for a city in Spain where a conquering Muslim army replaced a church with a mosque. This name is a very direct historical indication that the Ground Zero mosque is all about conquest and thus an assertion of Islamist triumphalism which we should not tolerate.
They say they’re interfaith, but they didn’t propose the building of a mosque, church and synagogue. Instead they proposed a 13-story mosque and community center that will extol the glories of Islamic tolerance for people of other faiths, all while overlooking the site where radical Islamists killed almost 3,000 people in a shocking act of hatred.
Building this structure on the edge of the battlefield created by radical Islamists is not a celebration of religious pluralism and mutual tolerance; it is a political statement of shocking arrogance and hypocrisy.
We need to have the moral courage to denounce it. It is simply grotesque to erect a mosque at the site of the most visible and powerful symbol of the horrible consequences of radical Islamist ideology. Well-meaning Muslims, with common human sensitivity to the victims’ families, realize they have plenty of other places to gather and worship. But for radical Islamists, the mosque would become an icon of triumph, encouraging them in their challenge to our civilization.
Apologists for radical Islamist hypocrisy are trying to argue that we have to allow the construction of this mosque in order to prove America’s commitment to religious liberty. They say this despite the fact that there are already over 100 mosques in New York City.
In fact, they’re partially correct—this is a test of our commitment to religious liberty. It is a test to see if we have the resolve to face down an ideology that aims to destroy religious liberty in America, and every other freedom we hold dear.
Your friend,
Newt
P.S. At 2 p.m. on Thursday, I will be delivering a major national security address that builds on these themes.
You can watch it live here:
www.torenewamerica.com/rick-perry-an-outsiders-view-of-washington
Mr. Gingrich is the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of "To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine", "Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works" and "Winning the Future".
My ability to express my righteous indignation over the building of this mosque is gone; because it leads to a most colorful vocabulary! :mad:
Knowing some guys in the FDNY and NYPD, and knowing how those guys are...leads me to one conclusion. This chapter to the heinousness of 9/11 will NEVER happen! Oh sure, the damned thing will be started BUT it will NEVER be finished...EVER!
(some of you know my background...that day wasn't just an attack on America, it was a personal attack for me as well...I lost many friends that day and thought I had lost my husband, until he was able to come home the next day)
If our government is unwilling to do anything about this crap, then Americans need to step up to the plate and finally do something about it!!!
DJ Urbanovsky
07-30-2010, 10:30
"To many Americans, then, the choice to name the mosque “Cordoba” is suggestive of rapprochement and interfaith dialogue; atop the rubble of 9/11, it implies “healing” — a new beginning between Muslims and Americans. The Cordoba Initiative’s mission statement certainly suggests as much:
Cordoba Initiative aims to achieve a tipping point in Muslim-West relations within the next decade, bringing back the atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago."
Interfaith tolerance and respect? Really? I would have spit coffee all over my monitor with laughter if I weren't so disgusted.
It's amazing to me what some people think they can rook you into believing.
It's also amazing to me the things that we tolerate.
Atop the rubble of the buildings that people of the Islamic faith blew up, people of the Islamic faith are going to build what? A pillar of the Islamic faith? Under the auspices of promoting healing? I guess they're really not too bright if they think that's going to foster any kind of healing.
"WE blew your shit up. Now YOU have to heal." How is THAT supposed to work?
bubblehead
07-30-2010, 13:13
Atop the rubble of the buildings that people of the Islamic faith blew up...
The motives behind building the Mosque are questionable, however, the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks were Islamic Terrorists.
In the US, we also have Right-Wing Christian Terrorists. Had the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks been Right-Wing Christian Terrorists, would you feel the same anger even though they were American and Christian?
Islamic Terrorists are the enemy not all followers of Islam.
Atop the rubble of the buildings that people of the Islamic faith blew up...
What tenets of their faith were violated in the act of killing the Kafir?
Had the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks been Right-Wing Christian Terrorists, would you feel the same anger even though they were American and Christian?
For me, an astounding YES!
Islamic Terrorists are the enemy not all followers of Islam.
See, that’s the problem, it’s not the Muslim, it’s the radical ideology of Islamic law that Islam produces through its holy books and the example of its prophet.
Christianity doesn't have any theological legal imperative ( like Sharia) commanding Christians to go out and do violence on Christianities behalf, whereas Islam does. Islam is unique in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system (SHARIA) that mandates warfare against unbelievers - where:
o1.2 The following are not subject to retaliation:
(2) a Muslim for killing a non-Muslim
(3) ….for killing an apostate…
(pgs. 580-590 / Reliance of the Traveller)
And,
o4:17 There is no indemnity for killing a non-Muslim...
(pgs 588-595)
o8.1 When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed.
o8.2 In such a case, it is obligatory for the caliph (A: or his representative) to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does, it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed
(A: though if there is no Caliph (def: o25), no permission is required.
(Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Pages 30-45, 588-595, 595-610).
Islam refers to the non-believer/pagan/christian/atheist as Kafir and promotes a polarized ideology of us vs them because the...
Kafir are evil:
O ye who believe! spend of that wherewith We have provided you ere a day come when there will be no trafficking, nor friendship, nor intercession. The disbelievers, they are the wrong-doers. (Sura 2: 254)
And We prescribed for them therein: The life for the life, and the eye for the eye, and the nose for the nose, and the ear for the ear, and the tooth for the tooth, and for wounds retaliation. But whoso forgoeth it (in the way of charity) it shall be expiation for him. Whoso judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are wrong-doers. (Sura 5:45)
The similitude of those who were charged with the (obligations of the) Mosaic Law, but who subsequently failed in those (obligations), is that of a donkey which carries huge tomes (but understands them not). Evil is the similitude of people who falsify the Signs of God: and God guides not people who do wrong. (Sura 62:5)
Allah has promised, to those among you who believe and work righteous deeds, that He will, of a surety, grant them in the land, inheritance (of power), as He granted it to those before them; that He will establish in authority their religion - the one which He has chosen for them; and that He will change (their state), after the fear in which they (lived), to one of security and peace: 'They will worship Me (alone) and not associate aught with Me. 'If any do reject Faith after this, they are rebellious and wicked. (Sura 24:55)
No plea had they, when Our terror came unto them, save that they said: Lo! We were wrong-doers.(Sura 7:5)
O Children of Adam! Let not Satan seduce you as he caused your (first) parents to go forth from the Garden and tore off from them their robe (of innocence) that he might manifest their shame to them. Lo! he seeth you, he and his tribe, from whence ye see him not. Lo! We have made the devils protecting friends for those who believe not. (Sura 7:27)
Kafir are like animals:
If it had been Our will, We should have elevated him with Our signs; but he inclined to the earth, and followed his own vain desires. His similitude is that of a dog: if you attack him, he lolls out his tongue, or if you leave him alone, he (still) lolls out his tongue. That is the similitude of those who reject Our signs; So relate the story; perchance they may reflect. (Sura 7:176)
Shall I tell thee of a worse (case) than theirs for retribution with Allah? (Worse is the case of him) whom Allah hath cursed, him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols. Such are in worse plight and further astray from the plain road. (Sura 5:60)
When in their insolence they transgressed (all) prohibitions, We said to them: "Be ye apes, despised and rejected." (Sura 7:166)
Or thinkest thou that most of them listen or understand? They are only like cattle; - nay, they are worse astray in Path. (Sura 25: 44)
Kafir are Unclean:
O ye who believe! Truly the Pagans are unclean; so let them not, after this year of theirs, approach the Sacred Mosque. And if ye fear poverty, soon will Allah enrich you, if He wills, out of His bounty, for Allah is All-knowing, All-wise. (Sura 9:28)
Kafir are unintelligent:
O Prophet! Exhort the believers to fight. If there be of you twenty steadfast they shall overcome two hundred, and if there be of you a hundred (steadfast) they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they (the disbelievers) are a folk without intelligence. (Sura 8:65)
Kafir are the worst of creatures:
For the vilest beasts in God's sight, are the deaf, the dumb, who understand not. (Sura 8:22)
For the worst of beasts in the sight of God are those who reject Him: They will not believe. (Sura 8: 55)
Verily those who believe not, among those who have received the scriptures, and among the idolaters, [shall be cast] into the fire of hell, to remain therein [for ever]. These are the worst of creatures. (Sura 98:6)
Therefore, the Kafir can be Hated:
They who dispute the signs of Allah [kafirs] without authority having reached them are greatly hated by Allah and the believers. So Allah seals up every arrogant, disdainful heart. and despised by Allah. (Sura 40:35)
The Kafir can be mocked:
On that day the faithful will mock the kafirs, while they sit on bridal couches and watch them. Should not the kafirs be paid back for what they did? (Sura 83:34)
The Kafir can be punished:
Say to the kafirs: My Lord does not care for you or your prayers. You have rejected the truth, so sooner or later, a punishment will come. (Sura 25:77)
The Kafir can be beheaded:
When you encounter the kafirs on the battlefield, cut off their heads until you have thor-oughly defeated them and then take the prisoners and tie them up firmly. (Sura 47:4)
The Kafir can be confused:
Some among them listen to you [Mohammed], but We have cast veils over their [kafirs] hearts and a heaviness to their ears so that they cannot understand our signs [the Koran]. (Sura 6:25)
The Kafir can be plotted against:
They plot and scheme against you [Mohammed], and I plot and scheme against them. Therefore, deal calmly with the kafirs and leave them alone for a while. (Sura 86:15)
The Kafir can be terrorized:
Then your Lord spoke to His angels and said, "I will be with you. Give strength to the believers. I will send terror into the kafirs' hearts, cut off their heads and even the tips of their fin-gers!" (Sura 8:12)
The Kafir can be annihilated:
So the kafirs were annihilated. All praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. (Sura 6:45)
The Kafir can be killed:
If they do not keep away from you or offer you peace or withdraw their hostilities, then seize them and kill them wherever they are. We give you complete authority over them. (Sura 4:91)
The Kafir can be crucified:
The only reward for those who war against Allah and His messengers and strive to com-mitt mischief on the earth is that they will be slain or crucified, have their alternate hands and feet cut off, or be banished from the land. This will be their disgrace in this world, and a great torment shall be theirs in the next except those who repent before you overpower them. Know that Allah is forgiving and merciful. (Sura 5:33)
War should be made on the Kafir:
Make war on those who have received the Scriptures [Jews and Christians] but do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day. They do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden. The Christians and Jews do not follow the religion of truth until they submit and pay the poll tax [jizya], and they are humiliated. (Sura 9:29)
A Muslim should not be friends with the Kafir:
Believers should not take kafirs as friends in preference to other believers. Those who do this will have none of Allah's protection and will only have themselves as guards. Allah warns you to fear Him for all will return to Him. (Sura 3:28)
A Kafir can be cursed:
They [kafirs] will be cursed, and wherever they are found, they will be seized and mur-dered. It was Allah's same practice with those who came before them, and you will find no change in Allah's ways. (Sura 33:60-61)
Source > http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/c.../muslim/quran/
> http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/c...muslim/hadith/
The motives behind building the Mosque are questionable, however, the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks were Islamic Terrorists.
In the US, we also have Right-Wing Christian Terrorists. Had the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks been Right-Wing Christian Terrorists, would you feel the same anger even though they were American and Christian?
Islamic Terrorists are the enemy not all followers of Islam.
Bubblehead, really? You sort of negated your point with that point. If not all islamic terrorists are not followers of islam, then what are they? Christians? Buddhists? Franciscan monks? Atheists? Satanists?
T-Rock, great post! I agree with you 100%!
At this point, I am really tired of the contrast/comparison of muslims to Christians! This is like comparing apples to oranges. If a fellow Christian went out and perpetrated the crimes and horror that muslims have against Christians...I would want his/her butt punished to the fullest and would speak out against them. Of course, in any religion/ideology besides islam, you can speak out like that without losing your head!
The motives behind building the Mosque are questionable, ...
Questionable? How would you feel if a museum about the Japanese Military was being built at...say...Pearl Harbor?
The Reaper
07-30-2010, 18:21
Bubblehead, really? You sort of negated your point with that point. If not all islamic terrorists are not followers of islam, then what are they? Christians? Buddhists? Franciscan monks? Atheists? Satanists
Enablers and support personnel, mostly.
At best, ambivalent.
TR
At this point, I am really tired of the contrast/comparison of muslims to Christians! This is like comparing apples to oranges.
Same here, and I‘m tired of those who fail to recognize the difference between the ideology (Islam) vs. the individual human (the average Muslim) vs. those who’ve succumbed to Islam’s radical ideology (devout practitioners/true believers) - what I would really like to know from dhimmis who apologize for the blemishes of Islam is this - How exactly has Islam been hijacked by a tiny majority of terrorists ? :confused:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkGQmCZjJ0k
The legal system of Islam condoned by Islamic scholars pretty much say otherwise to most arguments made by apologists…just read “The Reliance of the Traveller”, a manual of Islamic Law exercised by a very LARGE portion of the worlds practicing Muslims, sanctioned by Al-Azhar University.
Complacency and appeasement on the part of the apologist can only serve Islam. These professional advocates of Islam accuse those who sound the alarm as racist, bigots and hate mongers, only to seduce the uninformed into a slumbering acquiescence.
No matter what the apologist labels it: "Islamic Fundamentalism", "Islamic Extremism", "Totalitarian Islam", "Islamofascism", "Political Islam", "Militant Islam", "Bin Ladenism", "Islamonazism", "Radical Islam", "Islamism", etc.…, the enemy calls it Islam, and it IS codified by Sharia Law…
I’ve only known Islam’s violent bloody era that began with the suicide bombings against American and French peacekeeping forces in Beirut in 1983, and the murder of Robert Stethem, but after reading a little history, I’ll have to agree with Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams…
“…he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God.”
http://www.andrewbostom.org/loj//content/view/18/27/
o9.0
(O: Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion.
o9.1 Jihad is a communal obligation (def: c3.2). When enough people perform it to successfully accomplish it, it is no longer obligatory upon others.
(The Reliance of the Traveler. Pgs 599-609)
http://www.amazon.com/Reliance-Traveller-Classic-Islamic-Al-Salik/dp/0915957728
Islam’s ideology must be confronted if it’s ever going to change….
IMO, the hallmark of a dangerous cult is a penalty for leaving….Islam imposes the ultimate penalty - Death.
c2.5 The unlawful (haram) is what the Law giver strictly forbids. Someone who commits an unlawful act deserves punishment...
(3) and unbelief (kufr), sins which put one beyond the pale of Islam (as discussed at o8.7) and neccessitate stating the Testification of faith (Shahada)...
o8.2 In such a case, it is obligatory for the caliph (A: or his representative) to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does, it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed
(Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Pages 30-45, 588-595, 595-610).
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/28837
Islam's status as a religion should be changed to that of a cult, until it reforms itself….just my $00.02
http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2009/04/demoting-islams-religion-status.html
I personally don't believe the intentions of the creators of the mosque are hostile. I think the people who have hostile intentions will be operating with stealth and avoiding publicity. As that mosque is going to be watched closely by the security services, any untoward plans will surely be snuffed out. So I don't think this will be like the Finsbury Park mosque in England.
To me what is problematic is the symbolism. Destroying a place of worship and building a mosque over it is quite common. It is important to defeat these symbols, and make it clear that we have not been fooled and we have not forgotten.
I was pretty shocked when I heard about it, the religion of peace lecturing the rest of the world about tolerance.
Where might the funding for the Ground Zero Mosque be coming from? Groups linked to Al Qaeda? :confused:
What is the Xenel Corporation? They appear to fund Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan. It also appears they are a Saudi owned conglomerate that is mentioned on the “Golden Chain” list, you know, with groups like the al Bakri group who funded AQ :mad:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Chain
In 2002, the Orlando Sentinel published an article about Xenel’s ties to funding terrorism which derailed a $100 million contract to build the city of Orlando a new state-of the-art convention center because of Xenel’s ties to less than desirable individuals, businesses, and organizations located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - the Alireza family and the bin Laden family.
> http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2002/10/21/story1.html
Follow the money…
Read the rest here:
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/675
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/07/terror-finded-ground-zero-mosque-imam-raufs-bin-laden-link.html
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2010/07/bin-laden-family-funding-ground-zero.html
Questionable? How would you feel if a museum about the Japanese Military was being built at...say...Pearl Harbor?
In a way, the U.S. built it for them. The Pearl Harbor vets that could be found near the memorials of Pearl Harbor have spoken about visiting Japanese who are fascinated by the Arizona memorial. In those visiting Japanese view, it's their history of Japanese victory of the attack on Pearl. It's their memorial of Japanese heroes of that attack.
I wonder what companies and contractors will be demolishing the present building, and building that Mosque.
How would you feel if a museum about the Japanese Military was being built at...say...Pearl Harbor?
There is one - I've been there and have taken my sons to see it - we built it with an impetus from the Japanese military and it's at Ford Island - the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri represent the Alpha and the Omega of our involvement with the Japanese military in WW2 - here's a few pictures to put it in perspective. ;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Utah Bob
08-03-2010, 16:43
If a fellow Christian went out and perpetrated the crimes and horror that muslims have against Christians...I would want his/her butt punished to the fullest and would speak out against them.
Actually, in another time and another place, Christians have.
In those visiting Japanese view, it's their history of Japanese victory of the attack on Pearl. It's their memorial of Japanese heroes of that attack.
I wonder how anyone could know this, or pragmatically why the Japanese who are often polite to the point of saying no with a yes, would suddenly in moment of extreme western candor reveal their actual inner thoughts to an American veteran, they just met at Pearl Harbor, while visiting Hawaii?
On the other hand, I don't know what's more troubling the fact Nanking is omitted from their history textbooks, or that American kids don't read ours?
Ahhhhh.....building a Mosque on or adjacent to Ground Zero i.e. what was symbolic of the Great Satan in the West. 7 times a day insult will be added to injury for NY'ers as the pray call bellows and the Muslims will praise Allah for the initial blow to the Great Satan.
In time it will likely run a close second to Mecca in holiness.
There is one - I've been there and have taken my sons to see it - we built it with an impetus from the Japanese military and it's at Ford Island - the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri represent the Alpha and the Omega of our involvement with the Japanese military in WW2 - here's a few pictures to put it in perspective. ;)
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Thanks for the pictures, Richard, at least the museum isn't within a block or two of such a hallowed area.
My perspective hasn't changed. The proposal to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero is disgusting and wrong.
At least Ford Island doesn't have to listen to any Japanese "call to prayer" 5 times per day.
I wonder if this is how a DA feels when a murderer walks on a technicality...:mad:
NEW YORK AUGUST 3, 2010, 6:24 P.M. ET
Bloomberg on Mosque Vote
Here is the full text of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's speech following a vote that clears most major hurdles for the construction of a planned mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero:
Michael Bloomberg
"We have come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We've come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that, more than 250 years later, would greet millions of immigrants in the harbor, and we come here to state as strongly as ever – this is the freest City in the world. That's what makes New York special and different and strong.
"Our doors are open to everyone – everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it is sustained by immigrants – by people from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than two hundred different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here, or you came yesterday, you are a New Yorker.
"We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life and it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.
"On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn't want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives.
"Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue – and they were turned down.
"In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies – and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.
"In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion – and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780's – St. Peter's on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.
"This morning, the City's Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.
"The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.
"The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said 'no' to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.
"Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies' hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.
"For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime – as important a test – and it is critically important that we get it right.
"On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked 'What God do you pray to?' 'What beliefs do you hold?'
"The attack was an act of war – and our first responders defended not only our City but also our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights – and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.
"Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation – and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. By doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our City even closer together and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any way consistent with Islam. Muslims are as much a part of our City and our country as the people of any faith and they are as welcome to worship in Lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for the better part of a year, as is their right.
"The local community board in Lower Manhattan voted overwhelming to support the proposal and if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire City.
"Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure – and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God's love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us today can attest."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703545604575407673221908474.html?m od=googlenews_wsj#printMode
Peregrino
08-03-2010, 18:42
$100,000,000.00 buys a lot of "tolerance".
$100,000,000.00 buys a lot of "tolerance".
Yes it does, especially from political whores and profiteers. But buyers remorse will sit in sooner or later and when it does it will be a very rude awakening.
TOMAHAWK9521
08-03-2010, 22:06
I really wanted to visit the Arizona during my one trip to Hawaii back in '95 but was denied because Slick Willy shut down our national parks. Dammit! :mad:
As for the mosque disgrace, looks like I'll have to hot-foot it over to Ground Zero before the desecration begins.
Here's a silly idea: IOT build this mosque, the WTC must be rebuilt before any work on the mosque can begin. Let's see how tolerant the muslim world is with that decision.
mark46th
08-03-2010, 22:16
That mosque is akin to a dog pissing on a tree to mark it's turf. Islam is marking America and laughing about it, right in our faces....
:munchin
As you know, we are front and center in this challenge. We represent Tim Brown, a decorated NYC firefighter - a first responder who survived the 9-11 attacks but watched 100 friends perish. At the same time, we are representing thousands of you who have signed on to our Committee to Stop the Ground Zero Mosque.
The actions taken by the city clearly represent a blatant disregard for the city's own procedures, while ignoring the fact that this is a historic and hallowed site that should not be destroyed to build an Islamic mosque.
It has been clear from the beginning that the city has engaged in a rush to push this project through - ignoring proper procedure and ignoring a growing number of New Yorkers and Americans who don't believe this site is the place to build a mosque. We're poised to file legal action on behalf of our client to challenge this flawed decision and put a stop to this project.
> http://www.aclj.org/TrialNotebook/Read.aspx?ID=982
The petition > https://www.aclj.org/Petition/Default.aspx?sc=3612&ac=1
Thomas Paine
08-04-2010, 03:13
OPINION
AUGUST 4, 2010
Liberal Piety and the Memory of 9/11
The enlightened class can't understand why the public is uneasy about the Ground Zero mosque.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
Americans may have lacked for much in the course of their history, but never instruction in social values. The question today is whether Americans of any era have ever confronted the bombardment of hectoring and sermonizing now directed at those whose views are deemed insufficiently enlightened—an offense regularly followed by accusations that the offenders have violated the most sacred principles of our democracy.
It doesn't take a lot to become the target of such a charge. There is no mistaking the beliefs on display in these accusations, most recently in regard to the mosque about to be erected 600 feet from Ground Zero. Which is that without the civilizing dictates of their superiors in government, ordinary Americans are lost to reason and decency. They are the kind of people who—as a recent presidential candidate put it—cling to their guns and their religion.
There is no better exemplar of that faith than New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, though in this he is hardly alone. Compared with the Obama White House, Mr. Bloomberg is a piker in the preachments and zealotry department. Still, no voice brings home more unforgettably the attitudes that speak for today's enlightened and progressive class.
When a car bomb was discovered in Times Square in May, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested every possible motivation but the obvious and correct one: Islamist terror.
Immediately after the suspect in the attempted car bombing near Times Square was revealed to be Faisal Shahzad, of Pakistani origin, Mayor Bloomberg addressed the public. In admonishing tones—a Bloomberg trademark invariably suggestive of a school principal who knows exactly what to expect of the incorrigibles it is his unhappy fate to oversee—the mayor delivered a warning. There would be no toleration of "any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers."
That there has been a conspicuous lack of any such behavior on the part of New Yorkers or Americans elsewhere from the 9/11 attacks to the present seems not to have impressed Mr. Bloomberg. Nor has it caused any moderation in the unvarying note of indignation the mayor brings to these warnings. It's reasonable to raise a proper caution. It's quite something else to do it as though addressing a suspect rabble.
It's hard to know the sort of rabble the mayor had in mind when he told a television interviewer, prior to Shahzad's identification, that it "could be anything," someone mentally disturbed, or "somebody with a political agenda who doesn't like the health-care bill." Nowhere in the range of colorful possibilities the mayor raised was there any mention of the most likely explanation—another terrorist attempt by a soldier of radical Islam, the one that occurred to virtually every American who had heard the reports.
The citizens were, of course, right. Those leaders bent on dissuading them from their grasp of the probable cause of this near disaster were left with their red herrings hanging—but remembered. Mr. Bloomberg's "someone who doesn't like the health-care bill" would be inscribed in the golden book of howlers these events have yielded, along with Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano's brisk assurance there was no evidence this was anything but "a one-off."
The notion that it is for the greater good that the people be led to suspect virtually any cause but the one they had the most reason to fear reflects a contempt for the citizenry that's of longstanding, but never so blatant as today. It is in the interest of higher values, Americans understand—higher, that is, than theirs—that they are now expected to accept official efforts to becloud reality.
Such values were the rationale for the official will to ignore the highly suspicious behavior of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who went on to murder 13 Americans at Fort Hood. A silence maintained despite all his commanders and colleagues knew about his raging hostility to the U.S. military and his strident advocacy on behalf of political Islam.
Those who knew—and they were many—chose silence out of fear of seeming insensitive to a Muslim. As one who had said nothing in the interest of this higher good later explained, Maj. Hasan was, after all, one of the few top-ranking Muslim officers the army had.
In the plan for an Islamic center and mosque some 15 stories high to be built near Ground Zero, the full force of politically correct piety is on display along with the usual unyielding assault on all dissenters. The project has aroused intense opposition from New Yorkers and Americans across the country. It has also elicited remarkable streams of oratory from New York's political leaders, including Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
"What are we all about if not religious freedom?" a fiery Mr. Cuomo asked early in this drama. Mr. Cuomo, running for governor, has since had less to say.
The same cannot be said for Mr. Bloomberg, who has gone on to deliver regular meditations on the need to support the mosque, and on the iniquity of its opponents. In the course of a speech at Dartmouth on July 16 he raised the matter unasked, and held forth on his contempt for those who opposed the project and even wanted to investigate the funding: "I just think it's the most outrageous thing anybody could suggest." Ground Zero is a "very appropriate place'' for a mosque, the mayor announced, because it "tells the world" that in America, we have freedom of religion for everybody.
Here was an idea we have been hearing more and more of lately—the need to show the world America's devotion to democracy and justice, also cited by the administration as a reason to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City. Who is it, we can only wonder, that requires these proofs? What occasions these regular brayings on the need to show the world the United States is a free nation?
It's unlikely that the preachments now directed at opponents of the project by Mayor Bloomberg and others will persuade that opposition. Those fighting the building recognize full well the deliberate obtuseness of Mr. Bloomberg's exhortations, and those of Mr. Cuomo and others: the resort to pious battle cries, the claim that antagonists of the plan stand against religious freedom. They note, especially, the refusal to confront the obvious question posed by this proposed center towering over the ruins of 9/11.
It is a question most ordinary Americans, as usual, have no trouble defining. Namely, how is it that the planners, who have presented this effort as a grand design for the advancement of healing and interfaith understanding, have refused all consideration of the impact such a center will have near Ground Zero? Why have they insisted, despite intense resistance, on making the center an assertive presence in this place of haunted memory? It is an insistence that calls to mind the Flying Imams, whose ostentatious prayers—apparently designed to call attention to themselves on a U.S. Airways flight to Phoenix in November 2006—ended in a lawsuit. The imams sued. The airlines paid.
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser—devout Muslim, physician, former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy—says there is every reason to investigate the center's funding under the circumstances. Of the mosque so near the site of the 9/11 attacks, he notes "It will certainly be seen as a victory for political Islam."
The center may be built where planned. But it will not go easy or without consequence to the politicians intent on jamming the project down the public throat, in the name of principle. Liberal piety may have met its match in the raw memory of 9/11, and in citizens who have come to know pure demagoguery when they hear it. They have had, of late, plenty of practice.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
LINK:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703545604575407160266158170.html
$100,000,000.00 buys a lot of "tolerance".The cost will be substantially higher than $100mil....
Stay safe.
If a fellow Christian went out and perpetrated the crimes and horror that muslims have against Christians...I would want his/her butt punished to the fullest and would speak out against them.
Actually, in another time and another place, Christians have.
History can be a rather disquieting voice if one takes the time to listen to it. Religious conflict with Christianity hasn't just been with Islam - take early Christianity vs Mithraism*, for example.
An angry crowd had burst into a building that many other Romans venerated as a sacred place of worship; wielding axes, the invaders hacked gaping holes in wall paintings, smashed sculptured images, and covered the floors with piles of garbage. Now, having desecrated the building, they began to wreck it, leaving it in rubble behind them.
The incident was neither unique nor even rare in late 4th Century Rome because violence in such places was becoming common at that time - but what might surprise many here today was that the angry mob consisted of followers of the Prince of Peace. They were early Christians, and savagery of the kind they had displayed seemed to them necessary because this temple on Rome’s Aventine Hill posed a real threat to their faith. The building had been a Mithraeum – the Latin name for a place where devotees worshiped the god Mithras. Mithraism was only one of several religions that rivaled early Christianity in the centuries when Rome’s old gods were losing ground, but it was the most powerful of the rivals and the early Christians felt that they had good cause to loathe it. Dating from around the 15th Century BCE, Mithraism emerged in ancient Persia (present day Iran). Mihr (the Persian form of Mithras) was the word not only for the sun but also for a friend; and that seems to be how this pagan god was originally worshiped – as both supreme sun god and god of love. There was, however, a slow shift in emphasis from a belief in the spiritual power of the god to a reliance on his physical power. By the beginning of thee 3rd Century BCE, the militaristic rulers in western outposts of what had been the Persian empire were venerating Mithras as a divine warrior, no longer a loving sun god but the unconquerable god of soldiers and friend of power. The kings of Pontus in Asia Minor even assumed the name Mithridates (the god’s ‘chosen ones’), claiming that Mithras had cast his divine light upon them.
It is thought that it was troops of one such chosen Mithridate who brought this form of Mithraism into Europe sometime early in the 1st Century BCE. By the start of the 2nd Century CE the faith was spreading all through the Roman empire, and it had a special appeal for a number of social groups and peoples. Soldiers, sailors, merchants, slaves – men uprooted from their homes and kin – found comfort in a belief that offered them the protection of a god of power, whose sanctuaries were often located in caves to symbolize his closeness to the earth, yet whose mysterious rites also identified him with the known elements of fire and water. The sun-worshiping Celts of Gaul and Britain latched on readily to worship of this new sun god. Warlike barbarians and proud Romans alike flocked to a god who promised, above all else, victory in battle. Accordingly, caves and temples were dedicated to his worship everywhere along the guarded outposts of the Roman Empire. Near the end of the 2nd Century CE, several Roman emperors actively encouraged the worship of Mithras - but this was not merely a matter of religious conviction for Rome’s emperors as they quickly realized that it was in their interest as it preached discipline, loyalty, bravery, and self-sacrifice – the very qualities that made and kept the imperial Roman army so effective a military force for so long.
Backed by imperial approval, the faith became so widespread that a number of historians believe that – without the rise of Christianity – it would have become the Western world’s religion. So it is hardly surprising that the early Christians felt they had no choice but to fight it with every weapon at their command.
Yet there were some striking similarities between the beliefs and rituals of the rival faiths. Like Christians, the Mithraists believed that their savior had descended from heaven to Earth; had shared a last supper with 12 followers; had redeemed mankind from sin by shedding blood; and had risen from the dead. They even baptized their converts to wash away past sins. So there was a strong conviction among believers in Christianity that Mithras was the Antichrist, a demon who had visited Earth before Christ to discredit him at his coming.
For refusing to venerate the emperor as a god, early Christians were treated as second-rate citizens within the Roman empire, persecuted at the whim of hostile mobs and emperors. Then, quite suddenly, the tables were turned when Constantine accepted Christianity and it became the official religion of the empire in the 4th Century CE. Thereafter, the altars of the pagan god were destroyed and all traces of the rival religion obliterated.
What we know about Mithraism today comes from archaeological findings and casual references in ancient writings, such as those of the Persians who worshiped Mithras in one form or another until the rise of Islam some 12 centuries ago. Archaeologists have also discovered that after the Aventine Hill Mithraeum was destroyed, the Christians built a basilica upon the site (Santa Prisca http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Prisca - and yet another was the Basilica San Clemente http://www.basilicasanclemente.com/). Sound familiar? Anybody ever attended a service at another former Mithraeum - the Pantheon?
Has anyone ever wondered how Christmas came about? That one is another Christianity vs Mithraism fight for theological dominance as recorded in History...and which the Christians won...for the time being.
However - converting an existing structure to a Mosque so near the site of the former WTC is in extremely poor taste IMO, and, much like the Carmelite convent located at KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, shows how little sound judgment and cultural sensitivity to such matters can be found amongst most any culture.
And so it goes...;)
Richard :munchin
* Jane Polley, ed. Quest for the Past, pp.172-174.
Bob and Sir Richard,
with all due respect I was speaking of the hear and now when I made that comment regarding a fellow Christian. If Christians were burning down mosques, murdering muslims in coldblood, stealing from them, taxing them, treating them like slaves...I would speak out against it. However, as we know, that is not the case in the here and now. When a Christian murders an abortion doctor (I am anti-abortion), that man is a POS and should be tried and punished!
I am fully aware of a lot of the atrocities committed by Christians. It saddens me that we have such a history but I am not afraid to speak out against it and condemn it.
Have a super day!
Saoirse
I've found it is always so much easier to justify otherwise intolerable behavior in myself when I've been convinced it is either morally or socially acceptable to hate someone enough to do so. I've become harder to convince than I was in the past.
And so it goes...
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Some say that the residents of individual states, communities, and municipalities should determine what goes on in their localities. Yet for many, that sensibility seems to go out the door without any qualifier, explanation, or acknowledgment when certain buttons get pushed.
IMO, this glaring intellectual inconsistency, as understandable as it may be, will have profound (albeit unintended) political consequences down the line.
My $0.02.
Some say that the residents of individual states, communities, and municipalities should determine what goes on in their localities. Yet for many, that sensibility seems to go out the door without any qualifier, explanation, or acknowledgment when certain buttons get pushed.
I'm no political whiz, but could the construction (or prohibition) of the mosque at Ground Zero be solved democratically i.e. as a bill in the upcoming elections in November? I think then we will see what the people really think. I shudder to think about the implications if the people of NYC allowed it to built though...
I'm no political whiz, but could the construction (or prohibition) of the mosque at Ground Zero be solved democratically i.e. as a bill in the upcoming elections in November? I think then we will see what the people really think.
I would defer to the lawyers here, but my guess is it would get voted down in a heartbeat, but then be overturned in higher court as a clear violation of constitutional rights of freedom of religion, and applicable personal property laws. We would have to change our laws first?
Church Destroyed at Ground Zero Is Still at Square One
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: March 18, 2009
The tiny St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church is once again at the forefront of the myriad disputes that plague the rebuilding effort at ground zero.
The fate of the church, a narrow whitewashed building that was crushed in the attack on the World Trade Center, was supposed to have been settled eight months ago, with a tentative agreement in which the church would swap its land for a grander church building on a larger parcel nearby, with a $20 million subsidy from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. This would have allowed work to begin at the south end of the site.
But the two sides never came to final terms. After months of negotiations, the Port Authority, which is overseeing reconstruction at ground zero, ended its talks with the church on Monday, saying that the church had sought increasingly costly concessions.
Complaints, of course, abound on both sides.
The authority now says that St. Nicholas is free to rebuild the church on its own parcel at 155 Cedar Street, just east of West Street. The authority will, in turn, use eminent domain to get control of the land beneath that parcel so it can move ahead with building foundation walls and a bomb-screening center for trucks, buses and cars entering the area.
“We made an extraordinarily generous offer to resolve this issue and spent eight months trying to finalize that offer, and the church wanted even more on top of that,” said Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority. “They have now given us no choice but to move on to ensure the site is not delayed. The church continues to have the right to rebuild at their original site, and we will pay fair market value for the underground space beneath that building.”
Last July, the Port Authority and the Greek Orthodox Church announced a tentative plan to rebuild the church just east of its original site, at Liberty and Greenwich Streets. The authority agreed to provide the church with land for a 24,000-square-foot house of worship, far larger than the original, and $20 million. Since the church would be built in a park over the bomb-screening center, the authority also agreed to pay up to $40 million for a blast-proof platform and foundation.
In recent negotiations, the authority cut the size of the church slightly and told church officials that its dome could not rise higher than the trade center memorial. The church, in turn, wanted the right to review plans for both the garage with the bomb-screening center and the park, something the authority was unwilling to provide. More important, authority officials said, the church wanted the $20 million up front, rather than in stages. Officials said they feared that the church, which has raised about $2 million for its new building, would come back to the authority for more.
The termination of negotiations is a major setback for the little church, a parish of 70 families that is nearly 90 years old. St. Nicholas officials had hoped to build an impressive structure, with a traditional Greek Orthodox dome, and a nondenominational center for visitors to ground zero. That will not be possible on the church’s original 1,200-square-foot lot, although church officials say they hope for reconciliation.
“We consider the rebuilding of the St. Nicholas Church a sacred obligation to the victims of 9/11, to the city of New York, to the people of America and in fact to the international community,” said Stavros H. Papagermanos, a spokesman for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. “We will continue to discuss in good faith and we believe that all parties involved are well-intended, and ultimately we will overcome any obstacles that have arisen.”
One person who was involved in the negotiations on behalf of the church, and who insisted on anonymity so as not to inflame the situation, criticized the Port Authority, saying it had made constantly shifting demands on St. Nicholas. Still, he said, the remaining issues were relatively small.
But it does not appear that the Port Authority is posturing. And while the Bloomberg administration expressed regrets about the impasse, officials said it was far more important to proceed apace with building a memorial, a transit center and other projects at ground zero.St. Nicholas, a four-story church, became a symbol of resilience after it was destroyed, with George E. Pataki, then the governor, and Archbishop Demetrios, primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, vowing that it would rise again.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/nyregion/19church.html?_r=1
I wonder how anyone could know this, or pragmatically why the Japanese who are often polite to the point of saying no with a yes, would suddenly in moment of extreme western candor reveal their actual inner thoughts to an American veteran, they just met at Pearl Harbor, while visiting Hawaii?
I suppose it would be fairly easy for an American, veteran or not, who speaks and reads Japanese. I suppose it would be as easy for a Japanese to feel they were safe to say anything they choose in their own language as they might believe, as you seem to, that Americans are too ignorant to understand them. Probably why a Japanese in Osaka smilingly insulted me while he handed me the bowl of noodles I'd ordered in English.
Say your in Italy talking on the train, you aren't meeting and greeting but the locals are listening to you talking to your friends. More than a few Europeans speak English.
By the way, my understanding is the Japanese were very polite to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and bowed as they left his office December 7th.
A surprising perspective...but something to think about whether one agrees with Mr Friedman or not.
Richard :munchin
Broadway and the Mosque
Thomas Friedman, NYT, 3 Aug 2010
There are several reasons why I don’t object to a mosque being built near the World Trade Center site, but the key reason is my affection for Broadway show tunes.
Let me explain. A couple weeks ago, President Obama and his wife held “A Broadway Celebration: In Performance at the White House,” a concert in the East Room by some of Broadway’s biggest names, singing some of Broadway’s most famous hits. Because my wife is on the board of the public TV station that organized the evening, WETA, I got to attend, but all I could think of was: I wish the whole country were here.
It wasn’t just the great performances of Audra McDonald, Nathan Lane, Idina Menzel, Elaine Stritch, Karen Olivo, Tonya Pinkins, Brian d’Arcy James, Marvin Hamlisch and Chad Kimball, or the spirited gyrations of the students from the Joy of Motion Dance Center and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts performing “You Can’t Stop the Beat” — it was the whole big, rich stew. African-American singers and Hispanic-American dancers belting out the words of Jewish and Irish immigrant composers, accompanied by white musicians whose great-great-grandparents came over on the Mayflower for all I know — all performing for America’s first black president whose middle name is Hussein.
The show was so full of life, no one could begrudge Elaine Stritch, 84, for getting a little carried away and saying to Mr. Obama, seated in the front row: “I’d love to get drunk with the president.”
Feeling the pulsating energy of this performance was such a vivid reminder of America’s most important competitive advantage: the sheer creative energy that comes when you mix all our diverse people and cultures together. We live in an age when the most valuable asset any economy can have is the ability to be creative — to spark and imagine new ideas, be they Broadway tunes, great books, iPads or new cancer drugs. And where does creativity come from?
I like the way Newsweek described it in a recent essay on creativity: “To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).”
And where does divergent thinking come from? It comes from being exposed to divergent ideas and cultures and people and intellectual disciplines. As Marc Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, once put it to me: “One thing we know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other. Intuitively, you know this is true. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist, scientist and inventor, and each specialty nourished the other. He was a great lateral thinker. But if you spend your whole life in one silo, you will never have either the knowledge or mental agility to do the synthesis, connect the dots, which is usually where the next great breakthrough is found.”
Which brings me back to the Muslim community center/mosque, known as Park51. It is proposed to be built two blocks north of where the twin towers stood and would include a prayer space, a 500-seat performing arts center, a swimming pool and a restaurant. The Times reported that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim leader behind the project, who has led services in TriBeCa since 1983, said he wants the center to help “bridge and heal a divide” among Muslims and other religious groups. “We have condemned the actions of 9/11,” he said.
I greatly respect the feelings of those who lost loved ones on 9/11 — which was perpetrated in the name of Islam — and who oppose this project. Personally, if I had $100 million to build a mosque that promotes interfaith tolerance, I would not build it in Manhattan. I’d build it in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. That is where 9/11 came from, and those are the countries that espouse the most puritanical version of Sunni Islam — a version that shows little tolerance not only for other religions but for other strands of Islam, particularly Shiite, Sufi and Ahmadiyya Islam. You can study Islam at virtually any American university, but you can’t even build a one-room church in Saudi Arabia.
That resistance to diversity, though, is not something we want to emulate, which is why I’m glad the mosque was approved on Tuesday. Countries that choke themselves off from exposure to different cultures, faiths and ideas will never invent the next Google or a cancer cure, let alone export a musical or body of literature that would bring enjoyment to children everywhere.
When we tell the world, “Yes, we are a country that will even tolerate a mosque near the site of 9/11,” we send such a powerful message of inclusion and openness. It is shocking to other nations. But you never know who out there is hearing that message and saying: “What a remarkable country! I want to live in that melting pot, even if I have to build a boat from milk cartons to get there.” As long as that happens, Silicon Valley will be Silicon Valley, Hollywood will be Hollywood, Broadway will be Broadway, and America, if we ever get our politics and schools fixed, will be O.K.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/opinion/04friedman.html?src=me&ref=general
I'm no political whiz, but could the construction (or prohibition) of the mosque at Ground Zero be solved democratically i.e. as a bill in the upcoming elections in November? I think then we will see what the people really think. I shudder to think about the implications if the people of NYC allowed it to built though...What would such a bill say? Do you have some sort of zoning regulation or building code in mind?
Once such legislation/regulations pass, what would be next? What if, a few years from now, a majority of Americans start calling for laws that forbid statutes and monuments that pay tribute to the CSA and those who fought for it?
(FWIW, in my experience, a good way to derail a project is to push the issue of parking requirements.)
What would such a bill say? Do you have some sort of zoning regulation or building code in mind?
Once such legislation/regulations pass, what would be next? What if, a few years from now, a majority of Americans start calling for laws that forbid statutes and monuments that pay tribute to the CSA and those who fought for it?
(FWIW, in my experience, a good way to derail a project is to push the issue of parking requirements.)
Oh those of us who live or have lived in NY know what an issue that is. No doubt they have planned for that with undergound parking. Here is one to think about....the noise pollution. How long with the "call to prayer" be played over loudspeakers and how often until the local populace gets fed up with the disruption to their lives. You are not even suppose to honking your car horn in the city.
But putting that aside, I do not see this Tower of Terror being built. You have the unions to contend, you have the FDNY/NYPD/Port Authority who lost brothers/sisters on 9/11, hell, you even have the mob to deal with. If they make any progress on building, it won't last. And I hope it doesn't!!! I hope with every board that gets nailed up, it gets burned down! With any concrete that gets poured, it gets vandalized.
Tristanada
08-05-2010, 09:54
This is unbelievable. I'm a huge advocate of letting people practice any religion that they want to but to put a religious gathering place so close to a sacred spot is no short of a disgrace to the freedom that gives us that opportunity. The people approving this should be ashamed to call themselves american. I normally only read these threads but this one grinds my gears.
T - it is not that we do not want to hear from you - BUT - you do need to go to the following link and follow the directions provided before doing anything else on this BB.
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3452
Welcome to PS.Com.
Richard
Here is one to think about....the noise pollution. How long with the "call to prayer" be played over loudspeakers and how often until the local populace gets fed up with the disruption to their lives.
There are Mosques around here and one does not hear any calls to prayer from them on any day of the week. Other than the normal traffic sounds, it's only the fire station testing its disaster warning siren daily at 1200 or the local Catholic church playing its bells to announce certain calls to worship several times a day - and then there are the periodic teens in their cars with their stereo systems cranked up until a police officer hears them and either warns or cites them for violating the noise ordnances.
...but to put a religious gathering place so close to a sacred spot is no short of a disgrace to the freedom that gives us that opportunity...
I was always under the impression the area around the WTC was a financial district which - to me - sounds like a poor place for ANY religion to want to place a structure...except maybe for money worshippers.
Would cost us tax payers a lot of $$ to remove all those religious gathering places which are so close to sacred spots in this country - especially all those which actually sit on such sites. ;)
And I hope it doesn't!!! I hope with every board that gets nailed up, it gets burned down! With any concrete that gets poured, it gets vandalized.
Now that's the ol' Christian and American thing to do - nothing like a return to those goode olde dayes of yore. I'm guessing there's a conflict with some between the 1st Commandment and the 1st Amendment.
Once such legislation/regulations pass, what would be next? What if, a few years from now, a majority of Americans start calling for laws that forbid statutes and monuments that pay tribute to the CSA and those who fought for it?
Never happen - those were just gawd fearing Christians following holy scripture, not some Muslim horde seeking to enslave all who won't submit to their scribbled version of the truth. :rolleyes:
Personally, I think the whole idea of pushing for a mosque on lower Manhattan is a BIG mistake and a HUGE PR disaster for the American Muslim communtiy - and it also could cost us dearly if we don't handle it well.
And so it goes...;)
Richard :munchin
What would such a bill say? Do you have some sort of zoning regulation or building code in mind?
I really have no idea, I just don't know how these things work. I don't think outright asking, "Are you for or against a mosque being built..." is constitutional, but hey, a federal judge just found California's gay marriage ban unconstitutional, and that was voted on by the people.
GratefulCitizen
08-05-2010, 13:17
I have a compromise for them.
There should be a building constructed with multiple stories, owned by the city.
The mosque can occupy the first level.
The first level ceiling/second level floor should be made of sturdy glass which can be walked upon.
A memorial area for 9/11 can be on this second level.
Visitors can see the mosque first hand (beneath their feet) and learn tolerance for islam.
The area to the southeast of the building should be cleared and grass should be planted.
It can be a "pet area" so peoples dogs won't leave piles on the street.
There should also be a food area which serves plenty of pork.
Tolerance is a two-way street.
There should also be a food area which serves plenty of pork.
Tolerance is a two-way street.
I've read of half frozen pigs with IBS spotted running around that part of the city. They might come wholesale in this recession..
http://pibillwarner.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/imam-feisal-abdul-rauf-of-masjid-al-farah-nyc-laughs-about-building-mosque-near-world-trade-center-on-hizbut-tahir-ht-website-the-u-s-constitution-under-shariah/
I am intolerant, but not without VALID reason.
"Recently, the SLA notified three businesses on West Broadway that it is moving to revoke their liquor licenses. All four establishments (Bars) are in the vicinity of Masjid al-Farah a Sufi mosque in a nondescript two-story building at 245 West Broadway. According to the state’s Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) law, liquor licenses are prohibited for establishments that are on the same street and within 200 feet of a building “occupied exclusively as a school, church, synagogue or other place of worship…” The SLA learned of the mosque—and began an investigation of bars in the area—after Angerosi’s neighborhood opponents brought it to the agency’s attention at a hearing last May."
This also occurred in the Grammacy section of Manhattan, where a restaurant was forced to cover its windows due to the musox across the street. The restaurant had been there 15 yrs prior to the musox. The cab drivers have made the street unpassable with empty cabs as they worship in their make shift room.
The Reaper
08-05-2010, 18:40
Let's save the epithets and name-calling.
No one would allow those terms here towards Blacks, or Hispanics, or Asians.
Call Arabs and Muslims what they are.
Thanks.
TR
John Locke, Islamic Supremacism, and the Ground Zero Mosque
August 4th, 2010 by Andrew Bostom
Apropos to very legitimate concerns about the proposed Ground Zero Mosque—which today (8/3/10), unfortunately cleared a zoning hurdle, celebrated by the witless Mayor Bloomberg—John Locke, 325 years ago, discussed the predicament of Islamic supremacism in his first of four letters concerning religious tolerance “A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION” (John Locke, The Works, vol. 5 Four Letters concerning Toleration [1685])
Whether in the guise of the formal 17th century Ottoman Caliphate of Locke’s era, or currently, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, representing all 57 Muslim nations on earth, and the avatar of global Sharia as the oxymoronic “Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,” timeless, totalitarian Islamic religious law is antithetical to the conceptions of religious tolerance formulated by Locke and other seminal Western political philosophers. Although Locke’s 1685 letter affirms that, “neither pagan, nor mahometan, nor jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth, because of his religion,” he appears to have understood the threat to a pluralistic multi-religious society posed by the eternal conception of a global Muslim umma, answerable in the end, only to Islam, and Islamic leadership.
That church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate, which is constituted upon such a bottom, that all those who enter into it, do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince. For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own government. Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the court and the church afford any remedy to this inconvenience; especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person; who has not only power to persuade the members of his church to whatsoever he lists, either as purely religious, or as in order thereunto; but can also enjoin it them on pain of eternal fire. It is ridiculous for any one to profess himself to be a mahometan only in religion, but in every thing else a faithful subject to a christian magistrate, whilst at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the mufti of Constantinople; who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman emperor, and frames the feigned oracles of that religion according to his pleasure.
Source > http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2010/08/04/john-locke-islamic-supremacism-and-the-ground-zero-mosque/
:munchin
John Locke, Islamic Supremacism, and the Ground Zero Mosque
August 4th, 2010 by Andrew Bostom
A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke, 1689
http://www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm
Richard :munchin
A Letter Concerning Toleration
John Locke, 1689
http://www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm
Shariah, the Jizya, the penalty for Kufr, and the Kafiroon…
No-body therefore, in fine, neither single persons, nor churches, nay, nor even commonwealths, have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other, upon pretence of religion. Those that are of another opinion, would do well to consider with themselves how pernicious a seed of discord and war, how powerful a provocation to endless hatreds, rapines, and slaughters, they thereby furnish unto mankind. No peace and security, no not so much as common friendship, can ever be established or preserved amongst men, so long as this opinion prevails…
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=764&chapter=80887&layout=html&Itemid=27
Hopefully I am within my lane and keeping the with spirit of this discussion.
Fareed Zakaria's response to the ADL's decision to object to the Mosque and the ADL's rebuttal.
Fareed's Letter to the ADL in regards to returning his Hubert Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms prize:
Dear Mr. Foxman,
Five years ago, the ADL honored me with its Hubert Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize. I was delighted and moved to have been chosen for it in good measure because of the high esteem in which I hold the ADL. I have always been impressed by the fact that your mission is broad – “to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens” – and you have interpreted it broadly over the decades. You have fought discrimination against all religions, races, and creeds and have built a well-deserved reputation.
That is why I was stunned at your decision to publicly side with those urging the relocation of the planned Islamic center in lower Manhattan. You are choosing to use your immense prestige to take a side that is utterly opposed to the animating purpose of your organization. Your own statements subsequently, asserting that we must honor the feelings of victims even if irrational or bigoted, made matters worse.
This is not the place to debate the press release or your statements. Many have done this and I have written about it in Newsweek and on my television show – both of which will be out over the weekend. The purpose of this letter is more straightforward. I cannot in good conscience hold onto the award or the honorarium that came with it and am returning both. I hope that it might add to the many voices that have urged you to reconsider and reverse your position on this issue. This decision will haunt the ADL for years if not decades to come. Whether or not the center is built, what is at stake here is the integrity of the ADL and its fidelity to its mission. Admitting an error is a small price to pay to regain your reputation.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/06/fareed-zakaria-s-letter-to-the-adl.html
The ADL's response.
To which Foxman responded, in part:
I hope you have read our statement on the proposed Islamic Center at Ground Zero and, more importantly, understand our position. We did not oppose the right for an Islamic Center or a mosque to be built. What we did was to make an appeal based solely on the issues of location and sensitivity. If the stated goal was to advance reconciliation and understanding, we believe taking into consideration the feelings of many victims and their families, of first responders and many New Yorkers, who are not bigots but still feel the pain of 9/11, would go a long way to achieving that reconciliation.
ADL has and will continue to stand up for Muslims and others where they are targets of racism and bigotry, as we have done at the request of and on behalf of Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/08/adl_if_mosque-builders_really.html
Pull the wool off and see the world.
V/r,
Forward
Fareed Zakaria's response...
Isn't he one of the writers that influences Obama's perception - "The Post American World" ?
16282
A Syrian's perception:
When Islam Acts Like a Conquering Army
By Farid Ghadry
Reform Party of Syria
One does not celebrate a victory by planting one's flag on the soil of the enemy unless he is occupying that land or intends to occupy it. If the Mosque is to be built in New York next to Ground Zero, then we might as well move Iwo Jima Memorial to Japan.
Some 25 years ago, I met at the infamous Le Fouqet in Paris with a Saudi national businessman who was very close to the al-Saud. It was a business meeting but because of few drinks the Saudi had, the conversation quickly turned to politics. Knowing I held a US passport as well as a Saudi one, he had a message for the US: Saudi Arabia will become the most powerful country and we will conquer all lands.
It was almost comedic hearing a Saudi, half inebriated, claim world dominance. The connect between his words and reality were so far apart, I did not give it too much thought at the time, nor did I fully understand what his words meant. These were the words of a drunkard fool after all.
Saudi Arabia controls Makah and Medina, the two Holiest Places in Islam. This means that 1.5 billion Muslims turn their heads and kneel for Saudi Arabia five times a day as a reminder of their piety but more importantly their submission. What the Saudi businessman was telling me twenty five years ago was "It's not the oil stupid, it's religion". If we let Saudi Arabia fund and build the Mosque in New York as a token of their triumphalism over the US for 9/11, we are in fact not applying the Freedom of Religion laws but rather, we are giving my religion the chance to conquer New York by planting its flag of victory.
Mayor Bloomberg is focused on one set of laws when he should be investigating every religious edict or Fatwa of Islam that emanated from our scholars the last 25 years. But what if religion acts like a conquering army? How could we reconcile this fact with our laws? Being an American, laws will always prevail, but being a Muslim also, I have a warning: We will conquer you if you do not change your laws accordingly.
The US better reconcile between Freedom of Religion and Islam as a conquering army soon. The two cannot co-exist for long.
http://www.aina.org/news/20100806211608.htm
The Economist's "Lexington" offers a POV that merits consideration. YMMV. Source is here (http://www.economist.com/node/16743239/print).Lexington
Build that mosque
The campaign against the proposed Cordoba centre in New York is unjust and dangerous
Aug 5th 2010
WHAT makes a Muslim in Britain or America wake up and decide that he is no longer a Briton or American but an Islamic “soldier” fighting a holy war against the infidel? Part of it must be pull: the lure of jihadism. Part is presumably push: a feeling that he no longer belongs to the place where he lives. Either way, the results can be lethal. A chilling feature of the suicide video left by Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the band that killed more than 50 people in London in July, 2005, was the homely Yorkshire accent in which he told his countrymen that “your” government is at war with “my people”.
For a while America seemed less vulnerable than Europe to home-grown jihadism. The Pew Research Centre reported three years ago that most Muslim Americans were “largely assimilated, happy with their lives… and decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes.” Since then it has become clear that American Muslims can be converted to terrorism too. Nidal Malik Hassan, born in America and an army major, killed 13 of his comrades in a shooting spree at Fort Hood. Faisal Shahzad, a legal immigrant, tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square. But something about America—the fact that it is a nation of immigrants, perhaps, or its greater religiosity, or the separation of church and state, or the opportunities to rise—still seems to make it an easier place than Europe for Muslims to feel accepted and at home.
It was in part to preserve this feeling that George Bush repeated like a scratched gramophone record that Americans were at war with the terrorists who had attacked them on 9/11, not at war with Islam. Barack Obama has followed suit: the White House national security strategy published in May says that one way to guard against radicalisation at home is to stress that “diversity is part of our strength—not a source of division or insecurity.” This is hardly rocket science. America is plainly safer if its Muslims feel part of “us” and not, like Mohammad Sidique Khan, part of “them”. And that means reminding Americans of the difference—a real one, by the way, not one fabricated for the purposes of political correctness—between Islam, a religion with a billion adherents, and al-Qaeda, a terrorist outfit that claims to speak in Islam’s name but has absolutely no right or mandate to do so.
Why would any responsible American politician want to erase that vital distinction? Good question. Ask Sarah Palin, or Newt Gingrich, or the many others who have lately clambered aboard the offensive campaign to stop Cordoba House, a proposed community centre and mosque, from being built in New York two blocks from the site of the twin towers. Every single argument put forward for blocking this project leans in some way on the misconceived notion that all Muslims, and Islam itself, share the responsibility for, or are tainted by, the atrocities of 9/11.
In a tweet last month from Alaska, Ms Palin called on “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the “ground-zero mosque” because it would “stab” American hearts. But why should it? Cordoba House is not being built by al-Qaeda. To the contrary, it is the brainchild of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a well-meaning American cleric who has spent years trying to promote interfaith understanding, not an apostle of religious war like Osama bin Laden. He is modelling his project on New York’s 92nd Street Y, a Jewish community centre that reaches out to other religions. The site was selected in part precisely so that it might heal some of the wounds opened by the felling of the twin towers and all that followed. True, some relatives of 9/11 victims are hurt by the idea of a mosque going up near the site. But that feeling of hurt makes sense only if they too buy the false idea that Muslims in general were perpetrators of the crime. Besides, what about the feelings, and for that matter the rights, of America’s Muslims—some of whom also perished in the atrocity?
Ms Palin’s argument does at least have one mitigating virtue: it concentrates on the impact the centre might have, without impugning the motives of those who want to build it. The same half-defence can be made of the Anti-Defamation League, a venerable Jewish organisation created to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. To the dismay of many liberal Jews, the ADL has also urged the centre’s backers to seek another site in order to spare the feelings of families of the 9/11 victims. But at least it concedes that they have every right to build at this site—and that they might (only might, since the ADL hints at vague concerns about their ideology and finances) genuinely have chosen it in order to send a positive message about Islam.
The Saudi non-sequitur
No such plea of mitigation can be entered on behalf of Mr Gingrich. The former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives may or may not have presidential pretensions, but he certainly has intellectual ones. That makes it impossible to excuse the mean spirit and scrambled logic of his assertion that “there should be no mosque near ground zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia”. Come again? Why hold the rights of Americans who happen to be Muslim hostage to the policy of a foreign country that happens also to be Muslim? To Mr Gingrich, it seems, an American Muslim is a Muslim first and an American second. Al-Qaeda would doubtless concur.
Mr Gingrich also objects to the centre’s name. Imam Feisal says he chose “Cordoba” in recollection of a time when the rest of Europe had sunk into the Dark Ages but Muslims, Jews and Christians created an oasis of art, culture and science. Mr Gingrich sees only a “deliberate insult”, a reminder of a period when Muslim conquerors ruled Spain. Like Mr bin Laden, Mr Gingrich is apparently still relitigating the victories and defeats of religious wars fought in Europe and the Middle East centuries ago. He should rejoin the modern world, before he does real harm.
Fareed Zakaria's response...
Isn't he one of the writers that influences Obama's perception - "The Post American World" ?
One in the same. He isn't worth giving the time of day in my opinion yet many still will listen and take sides based at face value alone. It is tragic but true.
As for the BHO parallel...no comment.
Isn't he one of the writers that influences Obama's perception - "The Post American World" ?
T-Rock and forward,
Have either of you read Why Do they Hate Us, and what was your view on it?
If we see a picture of Zero holding a copy of Gates of Fire or Starship Troopers is that a positive on the chance he learns something, or reason to think less of Stephen Pressfield or Heinlein?
Folks have passionate views on this Mosque, but is your criticism of Zakaria linked to this issue alone, since he is hard to pigeon hole as anything other than a shrewd reporter. I certainly don't agree with his or any reporters views completely, yet he has taken both sides of the aisle to task on a variety of issues.
If you recall,
He was initially a supporter of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, His 2001 piece Why Do They Hate US, was a keen analysis of how to deal with the threat of Islam, He pulled no punches and basically blasted the Saudis and Arabs for the failings of the Islamic world. He tore Islamic violence nut Anjem Choudary a new one on his show, and ridiculed the Iranians on their election.
Folks often ask why don't Muslims denounce terror or speak up against tyranny, well what do you call his grilling of Choudary? Finally anyone who can tick James Carville off to the point of violent threats can't be all bad...;)
http://http://www.newsweek.com/2001/10/14/the-politics-of-rage-why-do-they-hate-us.html
Why Do They Hate US, was a keen analysis...
I would respectfully disagree...why did they hate us in 1783 ?
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUuH2G7dPFk&list=PL7398C647F839FF21&index=6&feature=plpp_video
Finally anyone who can tick James Carville off to the point of violent threats can't be all bad
I can agree with this :D
ETA
FWIW, Fareed Zakaria thinks Hezbollah is a good model of Religious Tolerance...
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2010/08/22/gps.last.look.synagogue.cnn.html
Why color Hezbollah as a tolerant organization when its goals are to wipe Israel from the face of the earth?
Re: Occidental Soapbox as cited in post #70 (http://occidentalsoapbox.blogspot.com/2008/10/islamic-crusades-episode-5-why-did-they.html)
America and the Barbary Pirates: An International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjprece.html
Richard :munchin
akv,
Thank you for taking the time and writing several great points. They are issues worth discussing.
After reading, Why Do They Hate Us, I concluded that Zakaria makes a very logical and concise case that the root of the "religious extremist" is a dysfunctional society brought about my the incompetence of leadership. -Makes sense, at face value. I agree with him on several points concerning the complexity of America appeal and the founded fears of Islamic countries for helping the US.
For what it is worth, evaluating a source, understanding the individuals background, and putting the person in context of the times, is important to understanding why something is presented as it is. In this case, an American who is the son of a Indian congressmen and Islamic scholar, and a Muslim who grew up in Bombay.
"The historian Paul Johnson has argued that Islam is intrinsically an intolerant and violent religion. Other scholars have disagreed, pointing out that Islam condemns the slaughter of innocents and prohibits suicide. Nothing will be solved by searching for "true Islam" or quoting the Quran. The Quran is a vast, vague book, filled with poetry and contradictions (much like the Bible)."
(http://fc.yarmouth.k12.me.us/~david_pearl/wikiresources/whydotheyhateus.pdf)
I take issue with the above mentioned (see thread http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29876) and now further question his motives. It appears, MOO, that he is trying to keep this secular by removing the fundamental root causes of why Islam (as a form of governance) is in at least some small part responsible for the series of events that lead the Arab world astray from the "progress" they enjoyed during the fifties and sixties. (That however is an entirely different problem for another time.)
Every Islamic country in the world has condemned the attacks of Sept. 11. To many, bin Laden belongs to a long line of extremists who have invoked religion to justify mass murder and spur men to suicide.
(http://fc.yarmouth.k12.me.us/~david_pearl/wikiresources/whydotheyhateus.pdf)
This is flat out a slighting of fact to create a unified impression of condemnation. It is cleverly crafted and it leads the reader to believe that both the people and the heads of state abhorred the cowardly attacks of 9/11. Look at the footage coming out of Palestine and I believe it was Saddam Hussein who said, " "I don't think that your [US] administration deserves the condolences of Iraqis, except if it presents its condolences to the Iraqi people for the 1,500,000 Iraqis it killed, and apologises to them ..." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/22/iraq.afghanistan) Yes he gave the American people his condolences but to follow up with that trash? Thank you for your time see you in two years. But I digress.
There is no doubt that Mr. Zakaria is a brilliant man, but how can such a "secular" individual not address the issues and built a complete picture of the problem? He promotes and highlights facts, admittedly better than a politician, but in a matter to create subtle implications to guide a reader to a flawed conclusion. His motivations and end state are beguiling to me, though this is only my opinion and I have yet to read his four books to reach a formal conclusion.
As far as the conclusions concerning BHO reading his work... Well I am sure that he has learned something from his book, but unlike Gates of Fire or Starship Trooper the topic has a direct bearing on current events and more importantly contribute to the formulation of thoughts on the subject by our Commander in Chief. I would simply hope (against all reason in this case) that POTUS would formulate and take a deeper look at the motivations behind said information.
He supported "stirring the pot" prior to the invasion, condemned it during, and praised the surge for working. Flip flop.
He isn't all bad but I take what he says with a very large helping of salt. Like you said, "Finally anyone who can tick James Carville off to the point of violent threats can't be all bad."
Good points made though and it reminded me that I need to keep an open perspective. As Herbert Spencer once said:
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
DJ Urbanovsky
08-08-2010, 12:09
"The site was selected in part precisely so that it might heal some of the wounds opened by the felling of the twin towers and all that followed. True, some relatives of 9/11 victims are hurt by the idea of a mosque going up near the site. But that feeling of hurt makes sense only if they too buy the false idea that Muslims in general were perpetrators of the crime. Besides, what about the feelings, and for that matter the rights, of America’s Muslims—some of whom also perished in the atrocity?"
Horseshit, I say.
When the real victims of the 9/11 attack (the friends and families of those who died in the towers - the ones who are left behind to deal with it all) are saying "We oppose this. This is wrong. This HURTS us!" What then? Is that promoting healing? I think it's rubbing salt in the wound.
To hell with what we think. We should be listening to what THOSE people think.
dadof18x'er
08-08-2010, 13:04
The motives behind building the Mosque are questionable, however, the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks were Islamic Terrorists.
In the US, we also have Right-Wing Christian Terrorists. Had the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks been Right-Wing Christian Terrorists, would you feel the same anger even though they were American and Christian?
Islamic Terrorists are the enemy not all followers of Islam.
here's another take on "motives" IMHO I think it nails it.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2010/08/muslim-hijacking-of-ground-zero.html
The Reaper
08-08-2010, 17:53
"Besides, what about the feelings, and for that matter the rights, of America’s Muslims—some of whom also perished in the atrocity?"
Does he mean the ones hijacking the planes?
TR
Praise be to allah and pass the ammunition - Rauf's trip to the Middle East in order to collect Zakat, " will be hosted by the U.S. government as part of an outreach program to "bring the message of moderation, peace and understanding."
Source > http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/06/imam-feisal-ground-zero-mosque-opinions-columnists-claudia-rosett.html
Ground Zero Imam Heading to Saudi Arabia, UAE
August 7, 2010 - by Claudia Rosett
Next stops for Feisal Abdul Rauf, imam of the plan for a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero: Courtesy of the U.S. State Department, Rauf — a.k.a. Imam Feisal – is scheduled to spend the rest of the summer on a swing through the petro-dollar palaces of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, and Qatar.
For more details, here’s the column in which yesterday evening I broke this bit of news (I have not found it reported anywhere else so far — which leaves me wondering why, amid the emoting and editorializing splashed all over the MSM by defenders and commenders of Rauf, no one seems to be asking where he’s actually disappeared to): “Further Travels of Imam Feisal.”
Rauf’s summer itinerary suggests odd priorities for a man who, in the name of harmony and bridge-building, has stirred up a furious debate in the U.S. — and then quietly left the country last month, leaving many questions unanswered about such matters as where and how he plans to raise the $100 million he’ll need to realize his dream of a high-rise Islamic hub right up the street from where the Twin Towers stood.
Neither Rauf nor the State Department seems eager to publicize his summer trip to Saudi Arabia and points nearby, though his tour appears imminent — as in, he’ll probably be touching down in the Middle East this coming week, and he’s not due back till early September. My source for this information is the New York office of his Cordoba Initiative foundation, and his wife and co-director at the Cordoba Initiative, Daisy Khan. But they didn’t exactly volunteer the information unbidden. Rauf himself came briefly to the phone last week, at his Cordoba Initiative office in Malaysia, when I tracked him down there on a hunch — after his New York office said he was traveling, not feeling well, and could not be reached. As soon as I asked about funding, he said he was in an “important meeting,” and got off the phone.
Since then, Rauf has been “unavailable” at his Cordoba Initiative office in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. When I phoned there and asked for him earlier this week, one of his assistants told me: “All media requests have to go through his office in New York.” At the New York office, I was told they were giving no more interviews, and for questions about the Malaysian office, I was referred back in a circle to the Cordoba Initiative in Malaysia. Finally, uninvited and with no appointment, I called the mobile phone of his wife and work partner, Daisy Khan. In answer to my specific questions, she said that Rauf was about to visit Saudi Arabia, etc., on a trip hosted by the State Department. In response to further questions, she allowed as how the State Department was sending her, as well, on a trip to Dubai and Abu Dhabi later this month. She said there would be no fund-raising on these trips. But no one at the Cordoba Initiative seems ready to rule out the possibility of taking large sums of money from these places, should it at some point happen to be offered.
As for the State Department: After three days of my repeated questions and phone calls, State by Friday’s close of business had yet to provide any response to my request for confirmation of Rauf’s trip, Khan’s trip, or details about their State-sponsored summer outreach excursions to the Middle East. Apparently, it takes quite a while at State to get “clearance” for disclosure to the American public of such basic details as who, exactly, is engaging in public outreach at our expense and on our behalf.
Anyway, in the quest to discover Where in the World is Imam Feisal? — it looks like after his sojourn in Malaysia he’ll be turning up soon in Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Manama, and Riyadh. Whom he or his wife will meet with on their State-sponsored bridge-building tours, how their expenses will be handled, whether they will be paid any fees or honoraria, and what other arrangements have been made on their behalf are all matters that State apparently finds it a bridge too far to disclose. Why? New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg may find all this to be of absolutely no interest — see Bill Kristol’s terrific editorial, “Shut Up, He Explained.” But there are a lot of Americans, most of them not billionaires a-la-Bloomberg, who think that sometimes money, and its origins, does matter. When is Feisal Abdul Rauf planning to fill us in on the real sources of all funds flowing toward the coffers of his projects near Ground Zero?
Source > http://pajamasmedia.com/claudiarosett/news-flash-ground-zero-imam-heading-to-saudi-arabia-uae/
What is ZAKAT? > http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=342820&postcount=158
Walid Shoebat weighs in > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-UDl3j8WZQ
Edited to add:
And the Jawa Report weighs in too > http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/203507.php
NOT SO FAST > http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/203508.php
Ret10Echo
08-09-2010, 05:28
Irony comes to mind...:mad:
The point of origin is shut, while the result is building anew......
August 2010 Last updated at 06:40 ET
Germany shuts 9/11 plotters' mosque in Hamburg
Police raided the mosque on Monday and hunted for evidence of jihadist activities
German police have shut down the Hamburg mosque where the 9/11 hijackers met before their suicide attacks on the US in 2001.
Police said they believed the Taiba mosque was again being used as a meeting point for extremists.
The cultural association that runs the mosque has also been banned.
A German intelligence report last year said radical Muslims had travelled to military training camps in Uzbekistan after associating at the mosque.
"We have closed the mosque because it was a recruiting and meeting point for Islamic radicals who wanted to participate in so-called jihad or holy war," said Frank Reschreiter, a spokesman for Hamburg's state interior ministry.
He said 20 police officers had been searching the building and had confiscated material, including several computers, the Associated Press reported.
There was no announcement of any arrests.
'Major hub'
The mosque, formerly called the al-Quds Mosque, in Hamburg's St Georg district has been under surveillance since the 2001 attacks.
A recent intelligence report described the mosque as "a major hub for the jihadist scene in Hamburg", which it said included 45 radical Islamists.
US investigators say an al-Qaeda cell based in Hamburg masterminded the 9/11 attacks, in which hijackers crashed two planes into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon in Washington, and one crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
About 3,000 people died in the attacks - the worst acts of terror carried out on US soil in modern times.
Story is here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10911542)
The cost will be substantially higher than $100mil....
Stay safe.
Well Sir, I believe you're steel on target :D
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXsa8Hn_TXI
If I were in construction, I would follow Rudy Giuliani's example, and take the pledge :munchin
ETA:
"The man who bought the "Ground Zero Mosque" with $ 4.8 MILLION in 2006 was a waiter in 2002"
Source > http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2010/08/geraldo-man-who-bought-ground-zero.html
I been gone five days and in those five days it included a drive to NY. I had plenty of time to listen to local talk radio. The people in the Cities in the North East live in a different world then most Americans.
The same people Bloomberg is supporting in building this Mosque are the same people who will be voting on giving him a third term. I am talking about the civic groups/Council Members who voted on not making the old Coat Factory a Historic Landmark. Not the Muslims who want the Mosque.
If it is built, and it will more then likely be built. It will be celebrated and perceived as a great victory for our enemies around the world. We will be perceived as weak. Islam prays on weakness.
No one gave a rats ass about the danish Cartoons. It wasn't until the Danish apologized when the riots and protest started up in full force. The fact is many of the people who will worship in this Mosque are the same ones who cheered when the towers fell.
...So this is where my tax dollars are going :mad:
US State Dept Sends Mosque Imam to Mideast
August 9, 2010 - 7:01 PM | by: Jake Gibson
WASHINGTON– State Department officials on Monday confirmed Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, will soon be going on a trip of the Middle East and the U.S. government will be picking up the tab.
The planned construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City has set off a contentious national debate over religious freedom in the U.S., drawing impassioned opposition from some families of 9/11 victims.
Rauf has emerged as a controversial figure because of his refusal to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization, which is how the U.S. government classifies the group. The imam also has been quoted as saying U.S. foreign policy was in part responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
“He is a distinguished Muslim cleric,” said State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley. “We do have a program whereby, through our Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau here at the State Department, we send people from Muslim communities here in this country around the world to help people overseas understand our society and the role of religion within our society.”
Rauf and his partners are preparing to build a $100 million Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero, where on September 11, 2001 two airliners hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists, slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 innocents.
The project, known as Park 51, cleared a final hurdle on August 3rd, when decision by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission cleared the way for construction. The tower could span up to 15 stories and will house a mosque, a 500-seat auditorium and a pool.
The State Department has not yet divulged a detailed itinerary of Rauf’s trip, although Arab media is reporting he will visit the oil rich states of Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi.
“It is to foster greater understanding and outreach around the world, among… Muslim- majority communities,” said Crowley. “We've done this many, many times, with many leading figures… over the past few years.”
The project has also drawn outspoken criticism from Sarah Palin who famously tweeted, “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation. It stabs hearts.”
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has forcefully defended the project as a symbol of America’s religious tolerance.
Source > http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/08/09/us-state-dept-sends-mosque-imam-to-mideast/
So this is where my tax dollars are going Given your threat assessment, if you were 'king for a day,' what would be America's grand strategy?
Given your threat assessment, if you were 'king for a day,' what would be America's grand strategy?
I would have the State Department send John Hagee to visit Jerusalem, Ephesus, And the Sea of Galilee :eek:
ETA - Had to take the better half and daughter out to dinner Sigaba, sorry for the late response.
Although I have little more than a HS education, my short military experience, a CC trade education, and my life experiences - it may not mean much to you considering you are an educated scholar. BUT, if I were "King" for a day, I would start by implementing the following strategery.
My Proclaimation to the Muslim world, and countries who have succumbed, and to those states who are in the process of relenting to the Supremacist Ideology of Islam (Sharia) would be this - if they were truly interested in building bridges of diversity and freedom:
1) STOP funding terrorism against the Kafiroon - we are reevaluating our ME policy. Separate your Church and State NOW, and allow your people to speak freely.
h1.1 Zakat is obligatory
(a) for every free Muslim (O: male, female, adult or child):
h8.17 The seventh category is those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in military operations {Jihad} for whom no salary has been allotted …
(Reliance of the Traveller, pages 244-274)
2) STOP the ongoing RIDDA (ارتداد, irtidād) wars that continue this very day which are so prevelant throughout your regions. STOP the theo-politcal systems of legally mandated hatred which is nothing more than state sponsored legalized MURDER of the innocent:
c2.5 The unlawful (haram) is what the Law-giver strictly forbids. Someone who commits an unlawful act deserves punishment, while one who refrains from it out of obedience to the command of Allah is rewarded.
(3) and unbelief (Kufr), sins which put one beyond the pale of Islam (as discussed at o8.7) and necessitate stating the Testification of Faith (Shahada)…
o8.2 In such a case, it is obligatory for the caliph (A: or his representative) to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does, it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed
(A: though if there is no Caliph (def: o25), no permission is required.
o8.7 (2) to intend to commit unbelief, even if in the future. And like this intention is hesitating whether to do so or not: one therby immediately commits unbelief:
(The Reliance of the Traveller)
3) STOP State sponsored legally mandated BIGOTRY, the club of "Mo-Allah" does not have the market cornered on morality:
w4.0 THE FINALITY OF THE PROPHET’S MESSAGE
(1) Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) is the last prophet and messenger. Anyone claiming to be a prophet or messenger of Allah after him or to found a new religion is a fraud, misled and misleading.
(2) Previously revealed religions were valid in their own eras, as is attested to by many verses in the Holy Koran, but were abrogated by the universal message of Islam, as equally attested to by many verses of the Koran. Both points are worthy of attention from English-speaking Muslims, who are occasionally exposed to erroneous theories advanced by some teachers and Koran translators affirming these religions’ validity but denying or not mentioning their abrogation, or that it is unbelief (KUFR - Kafiroon) to hold that the remnant cults now bearing the names of formerly valid religions, such as “Christianity” or “Judaism,” are acceptable to Allah Most High after He has sent the final messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) to the entire world (dis: o8.7(20).
The penalty for Kufr = DEATH
4) STOP State sponsored legally mandated RACISM under Sharia, which you so willingly uphold as the law of your land - and allow the HEBREWS, as well as the Kafiroon entry into your governments to hold key positions, and allow the HEBREWS, and Kafiroon legal migration (Hijra) into your lands, and PROTECT them. Allow talented musicians, like Lenny Kravitz, David Lee Roth, Gene Simmons, and Gene Klein to hold charity Rock Concerts to raise money for Women's Rights, and for the families who have lost loved ones for the penalty of Kufr - in which the concerts are to be held within one blocks distance from the "Black Stone"
Until the above criteria are met, we will no longer enable your endeavors (feeding the crocodile). Therefore, we will no longer provide relief, aide, or military technology/assistance of any form to be introduced into any country that has the slightist notion of implementing the Supremacist Ideology of Islam's Sharia. American Zakat of any form will not be allowed to be given overseas.
5) All remaining "stimulus" money will be diverted for energy exploration (OIL), the expansion of new and existing refineries, and alternative energy sources - we will rid ourselves of ME Oil, as well as other providers. Energy Policy will be put in place that doesn't reqiure drilling in 5,000 ft of water.
6) ALL GOVERNMENT SOCIAL WELFARE systems in place will be scrutinized and eventually CUT (privatized), the funds will be diverted to energy policy, and to our nations "Common Defense" - which is in the general welfare of our nation - we will work TOWARDS balancing our budget.
7) My team of financial experts (nmap, Penn, and the financial gurus of PS.com) will remove ALL obstacles for business to flourish in this country. :-)
This is all I have time for since we just finished a "Rapid Response" - I'm not holding my breath...
Ret10Echo
08-10-2010, 18:21
Would any other religion be made this offer?
NY governor offers help moving ground zero mosque
By MICHAEL GORMLEY (AP) – 3 hours ago
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York Gov. David Paterson offered state help Tuesday if the developers of a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks agree to move the project farther from the site.
Paterson, a Democrat, said that he doesn't oppose the project as planned but indicated that he understands where opponents are coming from. He said he was willing to intervene to seek other suitable state property if the developers agreed.
"I think it's rather clear that building a center there meets all the requirements, but it does seem to ignite an immense amount of anxiety among the citizens of New York and people everywhere, and I think not without cause," Paterson said in a news conference in Manhattan.
The developers declined to comment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last week made an impassioned defense of the project planned for lower Manhattan, declined to comment through a spokesman.
"I am very sensitive to the desire of those who are adamant against it to see something else worked out," Paterson said.
Paterson said he expects the state Public Service Commission, which must sign off on the Corboda Initiative's project, to follow the law and not politics in its review.
Paterson noted that "we really are still suffering in many respects" from Sept. 11 and that impassioned feelings were bound to emerge from a mosque just a couple of blocks from where nearly 3,000 people died at the hands of Muslim extremists.
He noted that Muslims died in the Sept. 11 attacks, too, and that "we have to remember that sometimes it's the fanaticism of religion that have driven people to do what they do, not the worship of the religion itself."
Supporters of the cultural center, including some Jewish activists, argue the aim of the Cordoba Initiative is to improve understanding of Islam. They point out that Muslims worshipped in the same area for a long time before the 13-story, $100 million proposal became public in May and was the subject of public hearings in the city and debate on television and radio nationwide.
Opponents note that the center will replace a building damaged by the landing gear of a jet that slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. They say the religion that fueled the hatred in the terrorists shouldn't be displayed so near to the site and in a place New Yorkers will have to pass daily.
A city board cleared the way for the existing building to be razed to make way for the center, which is to include athletic and arts facilities and be dedicated to peace and tolerance. Critics are suspicious of who will fund the project, and developers haven't released their sources of capital.
Carl Paladino, a Republican candidate for governor, said the plan is "no different than Japan asking to build a memorial to kamikaze pilots next to the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor."
Bloomberg argues, though, that it "would be untrue to the best part of ourselves, and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans, if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan."
The State Department said Tuesday that the imam behind the center was being sent on a religious outreach trip to the Middle East, a plan that predated the controversy.
The department is sponsoring Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's visit to Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, where he will discuss Muslim life in America and promote religious tolerance, department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
"We have a long-term relationship with him," Crowley told reporters, noting that Rauf had visited Bahrain, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in 2007 and went to Egypt last January as part of a State Department exchange program.
A Marist College poll released Tuesday found that 53 percent of New York City voters polled oppose constructing the mosque there. Just 34 percent favored the plan in the poll, which also showed a slide in Bloomberg's traditional high approval ratings.
The Marist poll surveyed 696 New York City voters July 28 through Aug. 5 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.
(This version CORRECTS the figures and language in the final paragraph to include results among voters, instead of residents.)
Con Edison owns half the property. Could someone buy the property from them? I'm sure there are more than enough Investment Bankers whose friends may have died on Sept 11th.
American Center for Law and Justice Calls on State Department to Cancel Tax-Funded Middle East Trip by Controversial Imam
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) – The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) on Tuesday called on the U.S. State Department to remove Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf from a taxpayer-funded trip to Muslim countries, citing his controversial views about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
While the State Department has not released a statement on the issue, spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Monday, “I think we are in the process of arranging for him [Rauf] to travel as part of this program. And it is to foster a greater understanding and outreach around the world among Muslim majority communities.”
Crowley also said of Imam Rauf, “He is a distinguished Muslim cleric. We do have a program whereby through our Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau here at the State Department, we send people from Muslim communities here in this country around the world to help people overseas understand our society and the role of religion within our society.”
Imam Rauf is seeking to build an Islamic community center, the Cordoba House, about two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan. Imam Rauf is controversial, in part, because two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, he told CBS’ 60 Minutes, “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”
When then asked by CBS’ Ed Bradley in that Sept. 30, 2001 interview to explain “how” America was an accessory to the 9/11 attacks, Imam Rauf said, “Because we have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”
Also, while the U.S. State Department has labeled Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) as a terrorist organization, Imam Rauf apparently has declined to say whether he agrees with that designation.
The trip overseas is sponsored through the Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau of the State Department. Crowley said on Monday that “the itinerary is still being worked” and that Imam Rauf “is by no means the only Muslim religious figure in this country to participate in the program.”
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), said of the apparent trip, “This shows a tremendous lack of judgment on behalf of the State Department and for the American taxpayers to be funding this global journey is not only wrong, but deeply offensive.”
The ACLJ is representing a New York City firefighter who survived the 9-11 attacks and who opposes the construction of the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero.
“It seems with each passing day we learn more disturbing information about this project and the people behind it,” said Sekulow. “We demand that the State Department put a halt to the Imam's participation in this publicly funded trip.”
The ACLJ is planning to file an official letter of protest with the State Department, demanding that the government “cease and desist” in its plans to sponsor Rauf on the trip.
The ACLJ already has filed suit in New York challenging a vote by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), which denied landmark status to the building where the imam wants to build the community center, which many critics view will essentially be a mosque.
The lawsuit, filed last week, charges that the Landmarks Preservation Commission violated the New York City Charter and the New York City Administrative Code.
Among the assertions made in the suit: the Landmarks Commission failed to properly review the record on the issue of landmarks status and to consistently apply administrative precedent; it acted hastily in voting to deny landmark status; and it failed to acknowledge the significance of the site as a historic and hallowed landmark from the attacks of 9/11 that killed 2,985 people.
Below is the transcript from Monday’s press briefing at the State Department concerning the proposed trip and Imam Rauf.
QUESTION: “P.J., there’s a report in Forbes that Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, is going on a trip to the Middle East. It’s basically to bring peace – moderation, and peace, and understanding to the region. And the claim by his people is that it’s a U.S. government-supported trip. Do you know or rather is the U.S. Government supporting this trip? And would there be any problem with that in light of the – that this could be used as a fundraising – also simultaneously for fundraising for a controversial project?”
MR. CROWLEY: “He is a distinguished Muslim cleric. We do have a program whereby through our Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau here at the State Department, we send people from Muslim communities here in this country around the world to help people overseas understand our society and the role of religion within our society. I think we are in the process of arranging for him to travel as part of this program. And it is to foster a greater understanding and outreach around the world among Muslim majority communities. But there are strict procedures as to the kind of activity that occurs during the course of this travel. I think this is exactly what we’ve presented it as. And we’ve done this many, many times with many leading figures since – over the past few years.”
QUESTION: “And is it just him and can you give me any guidance to the itinerary or the cost?
MR. CROWLEY: I think the itinerary is still being worked. And he is by no means the only Muslim religious figure in this country to participate in the program.”
QUESTION: “And how about just that last point about whether – there’s been reports in some Arabic language media that he plans to fundraise for the Islamic center and mosque overseas. Might he be –“
MR. CROWLEY: “Again, I will double check. But that would not be something he could do as part of our program.”
Source > http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/70845
:munchin
Dozer523
08-11-2010, 06:17
Con Edison owns half the property. Could someone buy the property from them? I'm sure there are more than enough Investment Bankers whose friends may have died on Sept 11th. And the profit incentive is. . . ?
I mean to say that if they feel particularly strong about this issue they're going to use their own personal money. I did not mean using the money of their own firm. There is no profit for them from this.
Given your threat assessment, if you were 'king for a day,' what would be America's grand strategy?
8) As "King", I will appoint a bi-partisan commision of Scientists and Scholars to evaluate demoting Islams status as a religion.
Why you may ask? Here's why: The religion of Islam is like a rainbow. It is a political system, culture, and a religion (spiritual) - a supremacist ideology that divides the world in two spheres, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, where it's practitioners are mandated to carry out its justice, not in the heavenly (spiritual) sense, but in the earthly (carnal) sense. The religion part is what is required for a Muslim to avoid Hell and enter paradise. The political system of Islam determines the treatment of Kafiroon (promotes RACISM, BIGOTRY, HATE, and MURDER) and the governance of Muslims - the theo-political aspect cannot be separated.
Apologists who argue that Islam is moderate, or folks like me who argue the practitioners of Islam (terrorists) are not violating the tenets of their faith, fail to see the full spectrum of its political system. I see the rainbow as RED (violent), and other folks see the rainbow as green (peaceful). No rainbow is red or green, it is all of those colors and more. You can no more remove the aggression from Islam (Red) than you can the green (peace). The only way to evaluate Islam is to look at it as a whole. Islam defies logic and is profoundly dualistic. Therefore, Islam should be reduced to an ideological club (like Nazism) that promotes Hate, Bigotry, Racism, and murder...
I will require ALL inhabitants of my land to read this: http://www.cspipublishing.com/Self_Study_Political_Islam.htm
ETA: The Qur'an codified by Sharia law violates our Constitution:
> http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25528&highlight=sharia+constitution
Sigaba Sir, what would you do as King-for-a-Day ?
Sigaba...what would you do as King-for-a-Day?I would stage a revamped Project SOLARIUM with the intent of updating/rebooting NSC 162/2 (known contemporaneously as "The New Look").
I would stage a revamped version of Project SOLARIUM with the intent of updating/rebooting NSC 162/2 (known contemporaneously as "The New Look").
Kewl, missile defense :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COl4soeox6Y
Con Edison owns half the property. Could someone buy the property from them? I'm sure there are more than enough Investment Bankers whose friends may have died on Sept 11th.They signed a lease w/an option to buy.
Stay safe.
Glenn Beck: The Moderate Imam Behind 'Ground Zero Mosque'
Religious freedom is one thing, but should we investigate Feisal Abdul Rauf's intentions?
> http://video.foxnews.com/v/4307739/beck-the-moderate-imam-behind-ground-
:munchin
ETA: YES Glenn, if you're reading, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has told us his intentions. He did so in his book entitled "A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post 9/11."
> http://www.911familiesforamerica.org/images/RaufWTCcover.jpg
http://article.nationalreview.com/438616/raufs-dawa-from-the-world-trade-center-rubble/andrew-c-mccarthy
http://www.aina.org/news/2010089110149.htm
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has lied about his commitment to religious dialogue (al-Taqiyya) - According to the book "A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post 9/11," his purpose is to place restrictions on freedom of speech and openly advocate Sharia, which is incompatible with our Constitution. The Hanbali jurist "Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah" who wrote "The Madinan Way," was considered a Sufi, and as an advocate of Sharia, it seems Imam Rauf shares his views.
> http://www.911familiesforamerica.org/images/RaufWTCcover.jpg
> http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/05/sufi_jihad.html
> http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=active&q=Taqi+ad-Din+Ahmad+ibn+Taymiyyah+SUFI&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=8897fd7bb03aef60
> http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=active&q=%22The+Madinan+Way%22+%22Ibn+Taymiyya&aq=f&aqi=m1&aql=&oq=%22The+Madinan+Way%22+%22Ibn+Taymiyya&gs_rfai=&fp=d8d7f7252633376c
~al-Nasikh wal-Mansoukh~
:munchin
Question: What does it mean to separate religion from state in Islam?
Abdul Rauf:…What is happing in the Muslim world after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the secular state, that the traditional relationship between state and religious institutions were subject to a separation, which resulted in a reaction that generated Islamic movements wanting to erect an Islamic state in the Islamic world. So if we watch history that after Rashidun Caliphate (Rightly Guided Caliphate) there was a form of separation between government and religious institutions that was represented by [Muslim] jurisprudence and since the Muslims on a personal level are required to follow the prophet (peace be upon him) on all aspects of life and conduct as permissible through a societal level as well. For that, we collectively believe that the state that was erected by the prophet in Medina was the ideal model for an Islamic state. The challenge today in the Islamic world is how do we accomplish this in our current era.
The challenge I was referring to is this; how do we call for the principles and standards that the prophet (peace be upon him) used to build the Islamic state in Medina. The challenge we have today is how do we accomplish this while keeping the prophet’s methodology in our current changing times. This challenge was an issue that the scholars and Caliphs had to face throughout the Islamic history, which resulted in the creation of several Islamic schools of thought with multiple views that are viewed equally.
…an Islamic state can be established in more than just in a single form or mold; it can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of [Islamic] Shariah that are required to govern. It is known that there are sets of standards that are accepted by [Muslim] scholars to organize the relationships between government and the governed.
Read the rest here > http://www.shoebat.com/blog/archives/393
TOMAHAWK9521
08-13-2010, 07:52
I never understood why the WTC was never rebuilt, either as it was or else some other design, after all this time. I heard many talking about how doing so would only upset the Muslims and encourage further violence. And now we have the power-hungry little Napoleanic runt, mayor-for-life saying we need to embrace diversity (oh that word) and not upset the muslims by not allowing them to build their monument of victory. I wonder if the Saudis offered him a nice little payoff like they tried with Rudi?
Some might consider this mosque as the alternative to the never-to-be-completed "Victory Over America Palace in Baghdad.
I never understood why the WTC was never rebuilt, either as it was or else some other design, after all this time.There's a lot of money to be made studying, planning, discussing, and then not building a commercial site.;)
…at the Ramadanadingdong dinner no less… :rolleyes:
Obama stands up for Ground Zero mosque
By ABBY PHILLIP | 8/13/10
President Barack Obama on Friday endorsed a controversial plan to build a mosque and Islamic center just blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan, despite the strong objections of conservatives, civic groups and those who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks.
“Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground,” Obama said at a White House dinner celebrating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. “But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”
Having steered clear of the controversy for weeks, Obama took on opposition to the mosque directly — a move that many other Democratic lawmakers had been hesitant to do in the face of highly emotional appeals against its construction.
But polls indicate the issue could be a high-voltage third rail for politicians who support the project: a recent CNN poll found that 68 percent of those surveyed did not approve of building a mosque so close to where the World Trade Center towers fell, killing more than 2,000 people.
In recent weeks, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had deflected questions on the issue, insisting it is “a matter for New York City and the local community to decide.” But Obama had been criticized for being slow to weigh in on the controversy, especially in light of his past statements in support of religious freedom and tolerance for Muslims in the United States.
In his speech Friday, Obama called for sensitivity with respect to developing in lower Manhattan, but cautioned against drawing comparisons between mainstream Islam and the ruthlessly violent ideology of al Queda, which he said is a “gross distortion” of the faith.
Source > http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41060.html
How are the radicals violating the tenets of their faith Mr. President ?
:munchin
http://www.aolnews.com/surge-desk/article/president-obama-supports-ground-zero-mosque/19593492?icid=main|welcome|dl1|link1|http%3A%2F%2F www.aolnews.com%2Fsurge-desk%2Farticle%2Fpresident-obama-supports-ground-zero-mosque%2F19593492
Another story of the annointed one supporting the mosque. This is another indicator of his total disconnect with the american people as well as what he truly supports.
I never understood why the WTC was never rebuilt, either as it was or else some other design, after all this time. I heard many talking about how doing so would only upset the Muslims and encourage further violence. And now we have the power-hungry little Napoleanic runt, mayor-for-life saying we need to embrace diversity (oh that word) and not upset the muslims by not allowing them to build their monument of victory. I wonder if the Saudis offered him a nice little payoff like they tried with Rudi?
Some might consider this mosque as the alternative to the never-to-be-completed "Victory Over America Palace in Baghdad.
Clashing architect/engineering egos and labor union problems was the reason a few years ago.
ZonieDiver
08-13-2010, 21:53
I never understood why the WTC was never rebuilt, either as it was or else some other design, after all this time. I heard many talking about how doing so would only upset the Muslims and encourage further violence. And now we have the power-hungry little Napoleanic runt, mayor-for-life saying we need to embrace diversity (oh that word) and not upset the muslims by not allowing them to build their monument of victory. I wonder if the Saudis offered him a nice little payoff like they tried with Rudi?
Some might consider this mosque as the alternative to the never-to-be-completed "Victory Over America Palace in Baghdad.
I would say... "If we haven't even started ANYthing yet, it can't really be THAT important to us.". Can it??????
The Reaper
08-13-2010, 22:20
Well, NY played a big part in putting him into office.
Hope they enjoy the results, no big surprise to me.
TR
I was also an advocate for rebuilding the towers even bigger and better, yet many NY'ers said they wouldn't want to work in the new towers, some felt it was now sacred ground and merited a memorial, others frankly felt the new buildings would incur greater risk of repeated attacks, and life wasn't worth it. The bulge bracket banks seemed to concur since several began building new facilities spread out across smaller buildings across the NY/NJ area.
The Ground Zero Mosque is emotional for many of us, IMHO allowing it to be built is a sign of strength not weakness. Americans take pride in the freedoms rights and protections of our constitution. An issue like this mosque tests the extent of our resolve and if we remain true to our laws and beliefs. Are we what we say we are or are we willing to subjectively bend or ignore the constitutional rights we hold sacred when they apply to issues or groups, we might find distasteful or morally reprehensible. Groups like the KKK, NAMBLA, and the American Nazi Party are disgusting to most of us, yet we acknowledge their rights to assemble under the protections of our constitution, and their rights to private property, until they break the law in which case they deserve and warrant vigorous prosecution. What would folks here think of a prominent Pro Life advocate or a anti-drug DA who advocated an abortion or leniency when their teenage daughter came home pregnant or was busted for dealing drugs? This issue however, is greater than the social stigma of hypocrisy, this issue is an acid test on whether or not these protections and freedoms we claim, are mere populist lip service or in fact further demonstrated proof of the legitimacy and impartiality of the laws inherent to our American culture.
Folks mentioned why don't some investment bankers just buy the building, that is a solution, but even if altruistically wealthy buyers could be found, instead it might be better for us all if at $100 million a pop several mosques are built. If we assume those behind the mosque have nefarious motives, at the end of the day the money is buying a building. Instead $100 million could be used to buy a lot of IED's, weapons, technology, and training for AQ cells and insurgents.
This issue is greater than religious tolerance, the stance of our enemies on tolerance and freedom are clear. This was a pass/fail test of the strength of the American Constitution, and I believe we passed.
Finally,while the owners of this mosque have every legal right to build it and worship in accordance with their beliefs, America will be watching their conduct.
If they are cavalier and abrasive towards the community, the legal victory will rapidly atrophy into a Pyhrric one. Middle of the road Americans who differentiate between radical Islam and the religion as a whole, might find these beliefs challenged and the resulting environment considerably less tolerant and hospitable towards Muslims in America.
dualforces
08-14-2010, 00:05
To me, this does seem like a grand diplomatic move as painful as it's short term intentions seem to be publicly.
Strategically it makes sense from that POV.
The Ground Zero Mosque is emotional for many of us, IMHO allowing it to be built is a sign of strength not weakness.
I choose not to live inside the kettle, but hey, I’m batshit crazy like that :D - IMHO, a house divided cannot stand…
It’s all about Sharia…
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-864522917532871834#
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFOnv3xiKPU
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQLIa-p7xNs&feature=channel
> http://cicentre.net/wordpress/?s=Ikhwan&x=13&y=11
> http://globalmbreport.com/
> http://www.thomasmore.org/qry/page.taf?id=19&_function=print&sbtblct_uid1=801&month=06&year=2010
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRbum9x0nU
> http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2010/08/obamas-us-treasury-department-pushing.html
> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/10/tax-dollars-to-build-mosques/
“For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies”
Liquid Gold :munchin
TOMAHAWK9521
08-14-2010, 04:42
You gents have brought up very valid answers and well thought out responses to my questions. Thanks.
I suppose I should try being optimistic about this whole controversy.
1. We proved our Constitution is still the best governing document in the world.
2. The next time we get hit we won't have to waste lives, money or logistics to go overseas to kick them in the nuts to get our point across. :D
May be of interest to some - not so much to others.
Michael R. Bloomberg is a former Wall Street mogul with a passion for the rights of a private property owner. He is a Jew whose parents asked their Christian lawyer to buy a house and then sell it back to them to hide their identity in an unwelcoming Massachusetts suburb. And he is a politician who regards his independence as his greatest virtue.
That potent combination of beliefs and history, those closest to Mayor Bloomberg say, has fueled his defense of the proposed Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan — a defense he has mounted with emotion, with strikingly strong language and in the face of polls suggesting that most New Yorkers disagree with him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/nyregion/13bloomberg.html?_r=1&src=mv&ref=nyregion
Doesn't sound to me as if the good Mayor yearns to return to those goode olde dayes.
And so it goes...
Richard's $.02 :munchin
The Ground Zero Mosque is emotional for many of us, IMHO allowing it to be built is a sign of strength not weakness.
You make some good points. I don't believe it is just a constitutional issue though. Yes, they have the legal right to build the mosque anywhere they wish, if they own the property. Is it a well thought out idea, with the feelings and rights of others in mind as well? No, I don't think it is. Using some of your examples, would NAMBLA be allowed to build an office or outreach facility within a couple blocks of an elementary school? Even if someone within the organization owned the land, I would think the community outrage would prevent it. Would the KKK be allowed to build an office or other building in the middle of a mostly black neighborhood? Or even on a street named after Dr. Martin Luther King? Even if someone in the organization owned the land, I would think there would be such an outpouring of dissent, that the city would be forced to deny the permits.
Yes we have the constitutional rights to do certain things like this. There are times, however, when common sense and respect for the rights and sensibilities of others need to be taken into account. In another article I read, the example of building a German WWII museum near Auschwitz was mentioned. They may have the right, but it is simply not the RIGHT thing to do.
I have the right to tell everyone I meet on the street to go screw themselves. Sooner or later though, I would probably get punched. I have the right to play my music as loud as I want. If my neighbor is disturbed by this though, it would only be good manners and considerate to turn it down.
Nightflyer
08-14-2010, 06:44
Warrior Mentors-
Im a young Soldier who doesn't suffer from a lack of motivation and my confidence level is very high. Im a good student and even better college athlete. I'm a native New Yorker, and have been working very hard on my SFAS for a good long while now. I've always been a leader, and the "go to guy" when it comes to crossing the goal line in any endevor. Phase V – Language Training is going to be a problem for me when it comes for me to move on in my Army career. That said, I can work with anyone and it's not that hard for me to get my point across to anyone without speaking their Language. Im from New York, you know what I mean? lol.
Mayor Bloomberg, is a complete and utter ass hat. The day of 9/11 and the days to follow were very tough on all of us and our country. How easy people forget? I lost my friend Joshua Reiss that day. Joshua started that day with a simple phone call to his grandmother at 0830 everyday from his little work station on the 102nd floor of Canton Fitzgerald, in the North Tower. The weird thing is he just transfered fron a company located on the 40th floor just two weeks before..
We had 100 refrigerated trailers lined up in the streets for the victims and their remains. My dad and the NJ Aviation Army Guard we're on alert that morning and everything was in chaos and the people and good citizens were scared to death. I was fourteen years old at the time of the attack. At 0930 I told my friends in the locker room to leave school and roll out and run home to make a rally point with our families. I ran from school and flew home as fast as I could to be with my mom and dad and my family. I wasn't really scared but I was more concerned about being prepared for anything. The princeton and central area of New Jersey was shut down and the only things moving were Black Hawks and Soldier's from FT Dix..
It didn't hit me till my friend called me and said, hey Night, what about joshua? The family, Gary and Judy are going nuts. It doesn't look good. Joshua never made it home..The FBI found Joshua's secruity and credit cards in perfect condition. They ID joshua's remains from 30lbs of flesh they found through DNA..
iT'S not about Muslims or a mosque. "It's about our people" who were going about their business that day as free Americans and who were killed for it in the worst way imaginable. Americans don't care about anyones religion or what faith they are we only care about doing what's right in this world. Can we build ST Patricks Cathedral in Mecca? no my friends we can not. Sharia Law is nasty and I refuse to learn about Islam and or " Submit " or bow down to any religious fanatics who's sole purpose in life is to make us conform to their crazy religious ideology and make us pay for being Americans..
It's not about the muslim mosque. It's about my people and the loved ones we lost.
I stopped being a kid that day and turned to
Loyalty-Duty-Respect-Selfless-Service-Honor-Intregrity- and Personal Courage..
Night
Yet more proof that it is easier to grow older than wiser.
NXI = (Fr + Hr) - (O + R + Ts)
And so it goes...:(
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Although their goals are the same, the Ikhwan is a little more discreet, while Hizb ut-Tahrir is in your face. Doesn't Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf look animated at this Hizb ut-Tahrir conference...
> http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/2007/12/27/imam-masjid-al-farah-new-york-city-konstitusi-as-sesuai-syari%E2%80%99ah/
> http://www.hizb-america.org/multimedia/video/191-video-usa-khilafah-conference-2009
> http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2010/08/oh-so-fucking-moderate-ground-zero.html
Nothing to see here.....move along...
Nightflyer
08-14-2010, 22:13
Although their goals are the same, the Ikhwan is a little more discreet, while Hizb ut-Tahrir is in your face. Doesn't Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf look animated at this Hizb ut-Tahrir conference...
> http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/2007/12/27/imam-masjid-al-farah-new-york-city-konstitusi-as-sesuai-syari%E2%80%99ah/
> http://www.hizb-america.org/multimedia/video/191-video-usa-khilafah-conference-2009
> http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2010/08/oh-so-fucking-moderate-ground-zero.html
Nothing to see here.....move along...
Although their goals are the same, the Ikhwan is a little more discreet, while Hizb ut-Tahrir is in your face. Doesn't Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf look animated at this Hizb ut-Tahrir conference...
> http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/2007/12/27/imam-masjid-al-farah-new-york-city-konstitusi-as-sesuai-syari%E2%80%99ah/
> http://www.hizb-america.org/multimedia/video/191-video-usa-khilafah-conference-2009
> http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2010/08/oh-so-fucking-moderate-ground-zero.html
Nothing to see here.....move along...
Warrior Mentor-
Yes, it's true. But. No fear. The Unions won't or can't drive on. lol. Not going to happen. :lifter just saying. Not at a Ground Zero, New York.
Night
Warrior Mentor-
:confused: you lost me :confused: I may be able to show you how to turn some wrenches though :D
If you are refering to me as WM, please don't - I'm not qualified, just a guest in someone elses house :cool:
greenberetTFS
08-15-2010, 05:38
Obama supports mosque at Ground Zero :( :mad:
WASHINGTON - After skirting the controversy for weeks, President Barack Obama is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying a nation built on religious freedom must allow it.
"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he said. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."
The White House had not previously taken a stand on the mosque, which would be part of a $100 million Islamic community center two blocks from where nearly 3,000 people perished when hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Press secretary Robert Gibbs had insisted it was a local matter.
It was already much more than that, sparking debate around the country as top Republicans including Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich announced their opposition. So did the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group.
Obama elevated it to a presidential issue Friday without equivocation.
While insisting that the place where the twin towers once stood was indeed "hallowed ground," Obama said that the proper way to honor it was to apply American values.
Harkening back to earlier times when the building of synagogues or Catholic churches also met with opposition, Obama said: "Time and again, the American people have demonstrated that we can work through these issues, and stay true to our core values and emerge stronger for it. So it must be and will be today."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent who has been a strong supporter of the mosque, welcomed Obama's words as a "clarion defense of the freedom of religion."
But some Republicans were quick to pounce.
"President Obama is wrong," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero."
Entering the highly charged election-year debate, Obama surely knew that his words would not only make headlines in the U.S. but be heard by Muslims worldwide. The president has made it a point to reach out to the global Muslim community, and the over 100 guests at Friday's dinner in the State Dining Room included ambassadors and officials from numerous nations where Islam is observed, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
While his pronouncement concerning the mosque might find favor in the Muslim world, Obama's stance runs counter to the opinions of the majority of Americans, according to polls. A CNN/Opinion Research poll released this week found that nearly 70 percent of Americans opposed the mosque plan while just 29 percent approved. A number of Democratic politicians have shied away from the controversy.
Opponents, including some Sept. 11 victims' relatives, see the prospect of a mosque so near the destroyed trade center as an insult to the memory of those killed by Islamic terrorists in the 2001 attacks.
Big Teddy :munchin
While insisting that the place where the twin towers once stood was indeed "hallowed ground," Obama said that the proper way to honor it was to apply American values.
Can I get an "amen" for some good ole Jefferson values.. :D
During the Ramadanadingdong dinner, the POTUS pointed out one truth that most Americans seem to forget. It deserves a little extra special scrutiny :D ,, the POTUS said that Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America. "The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan — making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago."
My big ole hairy Butt :eek: how disingenuous could this man be…what he didn’t explain was why we have a United States Navy and Marine Corps…
The earliest merging of Islam into 'the American story' was to punish the Islamists for their banditry and extortion (Jizya). Good thing Jefferson had a complete understanding of Jihad and the Qur’an, and opted not to pay the Jizya…
I don’t know who this youtube Mr. Patriot is, but I like his video, it’s short & sweet
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HcGZ4iXiI
“From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” OoRah!
dadof18x'er
08-15-2010, 07:38
Can I get an "amen" for some good ole Jefferson values.. :D
During the Ramadanadingdong dinner, the POTUS pointed out one truth that most Americans seem to forget. It deserves a little extra special scrutiny :D ,, the POTUS said that Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America. "The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan — making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago."
My big ole hairy Butt :eek: how disingenuous could this man be…what he didn’t explain was why we have a United States Navy and Marine Corps…
The earliest merging of Islam into 'the American story' was to punish the Islamists for their banditry and extortion (Jizya). Good thing Jefferson had a complete understanding of Jihad and the Qur’an, and opted not to pay the Jizya…
I don’t know who this youtube Mr. Patriot is, but I like his video, it’s short & sweet
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HcGZ4iXiI
“From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” OoRah!
now the Fed is footing the travel bill for the imam to promote all this....where's it going to end? :mad: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/feds_funding_zero_imam_mideast_trip_OTq9dmoHpxbaKv JbB4VLGM#ixzz0wdreZ2DL
Nightflyer
08-15-2010, 11:47
I may be able to show you how to turn some wrenches though :D
If you are refering to me as WM, please don't - I'm not qualified, just a guest in someone elses house :cool:
Yes Sir, I would find it hard to belive that the various unions ie; cops, fireman and the guys that turn a wrench would support the building of the mosque at ground zero. No freaking Way! and now I learn from dadof18xer that we're footing the bill for the imam to go on a world tour to promote this?? How can our leadership be so blind? Im against it. Plain and simple. It's just wrong. I carry on. ;)
Night
This type of activity (and many others) has been a focus of the DoS since it took over these programs from the former USIA on 1 October 1999.
Here's the program:
Bureau of International Information Programs
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/120948.pdf
Here's the former US Information Agency site:
http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/
A little research can foster a broader perspective on a few of these matters - whether one chooses to agree with it or not.
And so it goes...
Richard's $.02 :munchin
I can't help but wonder when this Country will tire of kissing Muslim ass. :rolleyes:
o where right now is Rauf? Still in Malaysia? Sipping tea with who-knows-whom in the Middle East? Jetting between Southeast Asia and the Gulf at U.S. taxpayer expense? And while he’s on these travels, what’s going on with the web site of his Cordoba Initiative? Last week, after someone in his Malaysia office referred all questions back to his office in New York, the phone number and address of his office in Malaysia quietly vanished from the Cordoba web site. Roughly around the same time, as Anne Bayefsky noticed and explained in a Pajamas Media post this week, Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative web site also erased a photo showing Rauf meeting in Malaysia a while back with an Iranian official, Mohammad Javad Larijani
Thanks to the blogs for doing the work the leftist MSM wont do, you can read the rest here:
Creeping Sharia > http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/why-is-the-ground-zero-mosque-removing-web-pages-and-changing-its-name/
Jawa Report > http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/
Free Republic > http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2571220/posts?page=11
(fm Big Teddy) Obama supports mosque at Ground Zero
The Kenyon will say/do anything to make the mid-term election about anything except him...
"It's not Obamacar/care, it's Freedom of Religion the GOP hates!"
"It's not illegal immigration, it's the Latinos the GOP hates!"
"It's not the failed economy, it's poor people the GOP hates!"
(It doesn't end...Doctor Spin came from Chicago.)
Serpent6x6
08-16-2010, 18:16
"Freedom of religion might provide the right to build the mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero, but common sense and respect for those who lost their lives and loved ones gives sensible reason to build the mosque someplace else."
Common sense isn't very common.
Nightflyer
08-16-2010, 18:18
The speech friday was all everyone was talking about today. It seems he backed off a bit but it won't help him out much. I belive this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. lol. He lacks being a chip off the old block. :lifter
Night
dadof18x'er
08-16-2010, 18:31
"Freedom of religion might provide the right to build the mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero, but common sense and respect for those who lost their lives and loved ones gives sensible reason to build the mosque someplace else."
Common sense isn't very common.
a muslim point of view....not much about freedom of religion..http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Mischief+Manhattan/3370303/story.html
:munchin
Ground Zero Mosque is Part of Ideological War
D.L. Adams Aug 16th 2010
Alternative history is a popular genre in American fiction and film. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Hitler got the Bomb before we did? What if the American Revolution had failed? These kinds of speculative, leading questions can also help us understand current events.
What if, during the height of the Cold War, President Eisenhower had been found to be a Communist? What if President Kennedy was a Stalinist? The answer to these questions is obvious: impeachment.
The United States fought a protracted decades-long ideological war against Communism. The entire population of the country was involved in this effort; the horrors, injustice, and brutality of Communism were commonly known as was the obvious superiority of our own democratic system in comparison to it.
Those few who publicly discuss the threat of Islam are often described as bigots or paranoids even after 9/11, Fort Hood, and thousands of successful and interdicted jihad attacks. The jihad forces fight a growing ideological war against the United States and the West but we do not respond in kind.
“Paranoid” is the word often used to describe such bell-ringers and critics but, as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you.
Ignorance about Islam is far more prevalent and the fact that it should be so even ten years on from 9/11 is a devastating indictment of our culture, political and religious leadership, education system, and our connection with what we hold dear and true.
In the third Lord of the Rings movie Gandalf asks the steward of Gondor, “As steward, you are charged with the defense of this city. Where are Gondor’s armies?” We should ask the same question, where are the armies of the United States?
They fight two wars to prop up two Islamic states whose foundational legal code is Islam itself. The constitutions of Iraq (Article 2) and Afghanistan (Articles 1 and 2) affirm this. This means that the United States supports two Sharia law countries with the blood of our best and extraordinary amounts of national treasure even as our own economy falls.
There can be no more obviously antithetical system of laws than Islamic Sharia to that of our Constitution. American support of Sharia law is nothing short of tragic and self-destructive.
President Obama’s announcement of support for the Ground Zero mosque should come as no surprise. His fawning speech last year in Cairo, his bowing to the Saudi King, and his comments regarding “Arab and Pakistani Americans” in his autohagiography “Audacity of Hope” (p.261), “that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” “Them” in the quote refers to Arab and Pakistani Americans (adherents of Islam). Obama’s support of the Ground Zero mosque is in keeping with his previous statements and actions.
9/11 and Fort Hood, subsequent jihad attacks, ongoing jihad against Israel and other democracies is the context in which we live. The motivator for jihad is Islamic doctrine.
The mosque at Ground Zero has nothing whatever to do with religious tolerance or religious freedoms as the president suggested in his recent Ramadan White House remarks. The mosque at Ground Zero is the newest phase in an endless ideological war against the United States and non-Muslims everywhere.
Where do we go from here now that our Commander in Chief publicly supports an oppositional and hostile ideology whose purpose is our destruction?
Had Eisenhower or JFK publicly supported Communism during the Cold War the result would have been impeachment. We are now engaged in an ideological war more important than the Cold War, and we are not fighting.
Source > http://bigpeace.com/dladams/2010/08/16/ground-zero-mosque-is-part-of-ideological-war/
There are some interesting comments at that link...especially the one from tomtom200.
There are some interesting comments at that link...especially the one from tomtom200.
Interesting…it seems people are becoming more aware of "The Madinan Way"
“If introducing Islam into America promotes religious freedom, then why is there no religious freedom in the Muslim world” ?
w4.0 THE FINALITY OF THE PROPHET’S MESSAGE
(2) Previously revealed religions were valid in their own eras, as is attested to by many verses in the Holy Koran, but were abrogated by the universal message of Islam, as equally attested to by many verses of the Koran. Both points are worthy of attention from English-speaking Muslims, who are occasionally exposed to erroneous theories advanced by some teachers and Koran translators affirming these religions’ validity but denying or not mentioning their abrogation, or that it is unbelief (KUFR - Kafiroon) to hold that the remnant cults now bearing the names of formerly valid religions, such as “Christianity” or “Judaism,” are acceptable to Allah Most High after He has sent the final messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace) to the entire world (dis: o8.7(20).
(Reliance of the Traveller)
----------------------------
ETA > the scrubbed web pages from Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's Cordoba Initiative have been found....
If building bridges, why not Hindu, Christian, or Zoroastrian Finance ?
pdf > http://bigpeace.com/files/2010/08/http___174.132.114.190_arkdev__qcontent_shariah-index-project.pdf
Jawa > http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/203619.php
Big Peace > http://bigpeace.com/cbrim/2010/08/17/ground-zero-mosques-hidden-websites-follow-the-shariah/
With deference to LOTR fans, Gandalf or other wizards, orcs, etc...
Despite the very real and greater threat of Soviet military might and possibility of nuclear holocaust neither President mentioned by Mr. Adams's piece, Eisenhower or Kennedy banned the American Communist Party, or infringed upon their constitutional protections to assemble etc. I suspect this was done more out of respect for our nations Bill of Rights than any communist sympathies. We managed to survive this threat with credit to our military and economic strength, yet the role of our national congruency reinforced by adherence to our Constitution and freedoms played no small part. The American example stood in stark contrast to Soviet experience for all the world to see.
Ironically, the late Senator McCarthy did more damage to America with his paranoid Communist witch hunts. Should we still be suspicious of anyone raised under the Iron Curtain? While it's likely prudent to remain suspicious of Putin and his thugs, how many of us distrust Poles, East Germans, or Hungarians these days? Instead we see them as just people, good and bad, who were forced to endure a brutal totalitarian regime, frankly just as the Iraqi's and Afghans more recently endured Saddam Hussein and the Taliban respectively.
No one is disputing the presence of AQ terrorist cells or subversives both home and abroad, when we ID such types bust/terminate them, but lets not forget the notion unlike any of the despotic regimes we despise in America, here you are innocent until proven guilty, and we should not turn on our own simply out of fear. The Left does not hold a monopoly on silver tongued rascals who manipulate people by playing to their fears...
A hard heart has a false tongue.
- Ambrose Bierce
And so it goes...
Richard :munchin
I actually agree with you akv. Nevertheless, the inflexible approach of the builders to offers to move, and the scurrying of Cockroaches that goes on when the light shines in, reinforce my views - An honorable intention doesn't mind when the light shines...
Build 10,000 Mosques, just not in that location...
AngelsSix
08-18-2010, 05:27
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/half_baked_mosque_8ItuaW0WIByZa5xZ0rCmpJ
Sorry if this was already posted...I just thought it was an interesting aside.
An interesting perspective.
Richard :munchin
Ground Zero: Exaggerating the Jihadist Threat
Time, 18 Aug 2010
Should Muslims be allowed to build a mosque at Ground Zero? Merely posing the question is an act of deliberate distortion. As its defenders point out, the Community Center at Park51 will occupy not a solitary inch of the 16-block site on which the Twin Towers stood. Once built, the center will indeed house a mosque, "open and accessible to all" — but also a swimming pool, basketball court, auditorium, library, day-care facility, restaurant and cooking school. The center is being built by a private organization on land it legally owns. Twenty-nine out of 30 Lower Manhattan community-board members voted to approve it. By every legal standard, the case for allowing Park51 to be built is, in the words of conservative UCLA constitutional-law professor Eugene Volokh, "open and shut."
But the question isn't going away. President Obama's statement on Aug. 13 endorsing "the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan" has unleashed another storm of partisan bloviation. Obama is "pandering to radical Islam," says Newt Gingrich; John Boehner finds Obama's comments "deeply troubling." On this issue, the President's critics have public opinion on their side: nearly 70% of Americans in a CNN–Opinion Research Corporation poll say they oppose a Ground Zero mosque.
Many opponents of the Park51 project claim that the mosque itself isn't the problem; it's the idea of building it so close to the World Trade Center. Such misgivings have some validity. But the heat the mosque controversy has generated, on both the left and right, is unhealthy, misplaced and ultimately self-defeating. It reflects our tendency to exaggerate the real threat posed by Islamic extremism and what America should do about it. And nine years after 9/11, the fight over the mosque near Ground Zero shows how obsessed we remain with an enemy that may no longer exist.
The mosque's critics and champions both say their goal is to counter radical Islam. In his Aug. 3 speech defending the Park51 project, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that "we would play into our enemies' hands" if we were to deny American Muslims the right to build a mosque where they choose. "To cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists," Bloomberg said. New York Congressman Jerrod Nadler, a mosque supporter, says, "Everybody's liberty is at stake here." The mosque's opponents make the same argument in reverse. Gingrich has called the Cordoba Initiative part of "an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization." Building the mosque, in the words of one conservative columnist, would be "a symbolic monument to the triumph of Islamism in the United States."
The prevalence of such rhetoric on both sides of the mosque debate makes it seem as if the struggle against global jihadism hangs in the balance. The truth is that Osama bin Laden and his ilk face much bigger problems. The story of the past decade in the Muslim world is that of the widespread rejection — or "refudiation," to borrow a phrase — of terrorism. A study by the Pew Research Center earlier this year found that support in Muslim countries for suicide bombings has fallen precipitously from post-9/11 levels. One-third of Pakistanis believed terrorism was justified in 2002; now just 8% do. For all our anxiety about the rise of religious extremism, no government in the Arab world has been toppled by forces sympathetic to al-Qaeda since 2001. And though some militant Muslims surely wish us harm, their ability to actually inflict it has eroded; it has been more than five years since the last successful al-Qaeda attack in the West.
The eclipse of al-Qaeda has come about largely through revulsion at the jihadists' indiscriminate slaughter of fellow Muslims, from Indonesia to Iraq. And yet we have failed to notice. A Gallup poll taken in June found that Americans still believe terrorism is a bigger threat to the future well-being of the country than health care costs, unemployment and illegal immigration. (Only the federal debt was deemed an issue of equal seriousness.) America's post-9/11 obsession with terrorism, the belief that we are locked in an epic ideological struggle with radical Islam, has stretched our resources to the limit and distracted us from higher-order priorities. National myopia poses a bigger challenge to the U.S.'s long-term stability than terrorism ever will.
What does this mean for the mosque near Ground Zero? However the dispute is ultimately resolved, its impact on the "threat" posed by radical Islam will be negligible. That's because the threat is receding on its own. Allowing a place of worship to be built in lower Manhattan will constitute neither an American triumph nor a defeat. It will simply tell the world that this nation, wisely, has decided to move on.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2011400,00.html
What does this mean for the mosque near Ground Zero?…It will simply tell the world that this nation, wisely, has decided to move on…
…into a total state of complacency, a slumbering acquiescence, in a similar fashion as the people of Germany, during the rise of National Socialism... :eek:
:munchin
August 18, 2010
Muslim opponent of mosque reports threat
By Brian Lilley, Parliamentary Bureau
OTTAWA - She spoke out against the Ground Zero mosque, now a Canadian Muslim
woman says she is being threatened. Raheel Raza, a founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress, calls the idea of a mosque within 300 metres of Ground Zero “a deliberate provocation.”
Last week Raza joined Maureen Basnicki a Canadian widow of 9-11 in attending a meeting about the mosque in New York City.
“They were very arrogant. They didn’t answer questions,” Raza told QMI Agency.
The meeting was hosted by Daisy Khan, the wife of the Imam promoting the mosque and Sharif El Gamal, the man whose property firm owns the land the mosque is to be built on.
Raza says she asked questions about who was financing the building, estimated to cost $100 million, and whether any of the money would come from countries other than the United States. There has been much speculation that the mosque is being funded through Saudi Arabian sources but at the Manhattan meeting Raza said there were no answers.
On Monday, back in Toronto, Raza says she received a call on her cellphone from a man who identified as Sharif El Gamal. “His tone was intimidating,” said Raza. “He accused me of 'jumping into’ the meeting he called and then said 'May Allah protect you.’ I was shocked and hung up.”
Raza says she took the phone call as a clear threat against her.
“Why would I need Allah’s protection?” asked Raza.
Raza says El Gamal's tone was threatening and she took the phone call as a clear threat against her, and not as it is sometimes used, as a casual phrase meaning goodbye. Contacted at his New York office El Gamal initially didn’t have much to say. “I’m confused by your phone call,” he said before hanging up.
Contacted a second time El Gamal said “There was no phone call made by anybody” before again hanging up the phone to abruptly end the call.
Raza insists there was a call, “I saved the number on my cell.” The number on Raza’s cellphone matches that of El Gamal’s Soho Properties offices in New York.
The proposal to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero has become a hot political topic in the United States.
Mauren Basnicki, who lost her husband Ken in the attacks on the World Trade Center, told QMI Agency she originally had an open mind about the mosque being built so close to the site of the 9-11 attacks, now she is against it.
“We all believe in religious tolerance. I don’t think for one minute that this is about religious tolerance,” said Basnicki.
Speaking with QMI Agency from her home in Collingwood, Ont., Basnicki says many might be afraid to speak out for fear of being branded as bigoted but to her the location is just insensitive and she’d like to see it move.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2010/08/17/15054001.html
…a slumbering acquiescence, in a similar fashion as the people of Germany, during the rise of National Socialism...FYI, your references to Nazism fly in the face of decades of historiographical debate over the nature, rise, and fall of National Socialism.
What does this mean for the mosque near Ground Zero? However the dispute is ultimately resolved, its impact on the "threat" posed by radical Islam will be negligible. That's because the threat is receding on its own. Allowing a place of worship to be built in lower Manhattan will constitute neither an American triumph nor a defeat. It will simply tell the world that this nation, wisely, has decided to move on.
Move on?
Move on? Really?
I don't think so.
Nightflyer
08-18-2010, 17:37
Move on?
Move on? Really?
I don't think so.
Gypsy- Well said, that's a fact. We need to stay in the fight and hold our ground. You know the nation is pissed off when Harry Reed backs off and wants to join the fight.
Night
Nightflyer
08-18-2010, 19:10
I apologize Warrior Mentors- for the back to back post ect. But how about Nancy "blink eyes" with her UNBELIVEABLE remark?
Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave an interview Tuesday in which she expressed hope that the funding sources of those opposing the mosque would be looked into, but did not specify how. Republicans have seized on Pelosi's remarks since then, part of a growing political firestorm over the construction of the center.
"There is no question that there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some, and I join those who have called for investigation looking into, how is this opposition into the mosque being funded?" she asked.
Funded? investigation? what? looking into those who opposed the mosque? is she completely lost or smoking socks?
Way to stay in the fight from the beginning and Holding Ground. Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.)
Night
Thomas Paine
08-18-2010, 19:12
Gypsy- Well said, that's a fact. We need to stay in the fight and hold our ground. You know the nation is pissed off when Harry Reed backs off and wants to join the fight.
Night
Or he's in a desperate fight to keep his job this election cycle...
And it's Reid, not to be confused with the other Senator Reed - Jack.
FYI, your references to Nazism fly in the face of decades of historiographical debate over the nature, rise, and fall of National Socialism.
So the whole of Germany willingly accepted a Supremacist ideology that advocated the genocide of the Jews, as part of its vision, or were the German people as whole asleep? :confused:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBFBvceJvIU&feature=related
Considering the Madinan way, the way of which Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf adheres, what part of Islam isn’t racist or anti-Semitic towards the Kafiroon, or the Jews ? :confused:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him”
FWIW - IMO, below was the Islamic anti-Semitic blueprint for the genocide of a race, utilized by Hitler…sanctioned by those who follow the “Soundness of the Basic Premises of the School of the People of Madina”
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl8sMDZkyXc
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJI0HQLHlX4&feature=related
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E51OUnvvSf8&feature=related
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDpd5VIWXlM&feature=related
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDRzeUValOM&feature=related
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3IDsmqrUnM&feature=related
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIMkNiqVV-o&feature=related
Such an einfache weltanschauung amazes me.
Richard
So the whole of Germany willingly accepted a Supremacist ideology that advocated the genocide of the Jews, as part of its vision, or were the German people as whole asleep? :confused:Does an ahistorical comparison between Nazism and Islam help achieve your political objective or does the attempt raise questions better left unasked?
Why do you confine your view of German history to either/or interpretations? (FYI, German historiography is keen on multi-causality.)
Did Nazism always advocate the genocide of the Jews or did that objective develop over time? You are hinting at a teleological interpretation of the Holocaust that historians have, IMO, successfully challenged. (Are you on to something that they have missed?)
Why do you exclude Jews in your formulation of "the German people"? (You do so in this post as well as in your current signature.)
Such an einfache weltanschauung amazes me.
Richard
Why must it be complicated? ;)
Why must it be complicated? ;)
Because I have found it always is.
However - YMMV - but so it goes...
Richard :munchin
Such an einfache weltanschauung amazes me.
It amazes me too, because there's a reason Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf won't renounce Hezballah or Hamas and their Supremacist Ideology.
By his actions, he shares the ideology of this young lady > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fSvyv0urTE
What was the commonality between al-Mashriqi, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, Hitler, and Nazism?
> http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/10/22/hitler-and-jihad-part-1/
ETA:
Sigaba, my sigline represents Islamic doctrine codified by Sharia to make a point, which separates the Muslim from the Supremacist ideolgy of Islam. Does the good Muslim invalidate Islamic teachings from the Qur’an that advocate intolerance and violence toward non-Muslims (Kafiroon) ?
The Objectives of Jihad
o9.0
(O: Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion.
o9.1 Jihad is a communal obligation (def: c3.2). When enough people perform it to successfully accomplish it, it is no longer obligatory upon others.
o9.6 It is offensive to conduct a military expedition against hostile non-Muslims without the Caliph’s permission (A: though if there is no Caliph (def: o25), no permission is required.
(The Reliance of the Traveler. Pgs 599-609)
o22.1 ( I )
(9) those (nasikh) which supersede previously revealed Koranic verses;
(10) and those (mansukh) which are superseded by later verses.
(The Reliance of the Traveler. Pgs 625, 626)
----------------------
> http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/auschwitz-blueprints/
6.8SPC_DUMP
08-18-2010, 22:20
I agree 100% with the Time article: it is a deliberate distortion to call it a mosque at Ground Zero.
It's a muslim cultural center (7000 capacity) and a symbol for them erected near where ours was demolished. Staging it's opening 10 years to the day of ours crumbling erases any doubt of provocation to me. I don't know how to live peacefully with a culture with out respecting their right to have different beliefs - but this anything but that.
Great excuse to bump up the white domestic terrorist severance though.
T-Rock:
I feel like a nazi for never once posting something in support of a bill providing medical care for the First Responders who sucked in tons of pulverized asbestos. I guess Hero's don't complain as much. The EPA has to worry about taking the blame for BP's toxic mess anyway.
Teh awesome > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-dPSh--CHU
:munchin
Source > http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/203647.php
incarcerated
08-21-2010, 16:14
Photo found at:
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1305018/Now-Muslim-Miss-USA-says-DONT-build-mosque-near-Ground-Zero.html
Photo caption:
This aerial photo shows the New York city block, lower right, where a 13-storey mosque is planned for construction two blocks north of the World Trade Centre site, centre left.
I'm confused. Would someone be so kind as to post a source for the claim that it is anyone's intention to open the cultural center on 9/11?
I agree 100% with the Time article: it is a deliberate distortion to call it a mosque at Ground Zero.
It's a muslim cultural center (7000 capacity) and a symbol for them erected near where ours was demolished. Staging it's opening 10 years to the day of ours crumbling erases any doubt of provocation to me. I don't know how to live peacefully with a culture with out respecting their right to have different beliefs - but this anything but that.
Great excuse to bump up the white domestic terrorist severance though.
T-Rock:
I feel like a nazi for never once posting something in support of a bill providing medical care for the First Responders who sucked in tons of pulverized asbestos. I guess Hero's don't complain as much. The EPA has to worry about taking the blame for BP's toxic mess anyway.
Sigaba, my sigline represents Islamic doctrine codified by Sharia to make a point, which separates the Muslim from the Supremacist ideolgy of Islam.T-Rock--
What ever the intent of your sig line, the (unintended) consequence of its phrasing is that it implicitly endorses the Nazis' definition of who is and is not German. This endorsement raises at least two questions.
IMO, you are undermining the credibility of your analysis of Islamic theology with your ill-considered and unsustainable generalizations about modern German history. You want your readers to accept the notion that "A" is similar to "B." But you are making it ever more clear that you have not invested serious time and effort to understand "B".
Sooner or later, some may come to question your understanding of "A" as well.
Just my $0.02.
incarcerated
08-22-2010, 15:19
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703589804575445671238186074.html
Mosque Planner Says Opposition Goes 'Beyond Islamophobia'
NEW YORK
AUGUST 22, 2010, 4:38 P.M. ET
By THOMAS CATAN
WASHINGTON—A leader of a planned Muslim community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero compared opposition to the project to the persecution of Jews, in comments that could add to the controversy over the center's proposed site.
"We are deeply concerned, because this is like a metastasized antisemitism," said Daisy Khan, who is spearheading the project with her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. "It's beyond Islamophobia. It's hate of Muslims."
Ms. Khan, appearing on ABC News's "This Week" on Sunday, vowed to push ahead with plans to build a 15-story complex two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan, saying there was "too much at stake."
The words could further inflame an already angry debate about the proposed location of the community center, which opponents denounce as a "victory mosque." Rival protests for and against the $100 million center were planned in lower Manhattan on Sunday....
The imam behind the project is described by many as a moderate Muslim leader who has long called for reconciliation between religions. But critics have focused on comments he made shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, to question whether he is as moderate as his supporters say.
Specifically, they point to comments by Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf that while the U.S. didn't deserve what happened on 9/11, its policies were "an accessory to the crime." Asked on Sunday about those comments, Ms. Khan said they had been part of a wider interview that addressed support by the Central Intelligence Agency for Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban in the 1980s - when the U.S. was fighting a proxy war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
"I don't know what the big deal is. It's freedom of religion, you know?"
- Cassandra, a stripper at New York Dolls in Lower Manhattan where the building of a mosque near Ground Zero has ignited controversy. Time, 20 Aug 2010
And so it goes...;)
Richard :munchin
"I don't know what the big deal is. It's freedom of religion, you know?"
- Cassandra, a stripper at New York Dolls in Lower Manhattan where the building of a mosque near Ground Zero has ignited controversy.
Ahh, what delightful irony. I wonder if Cassandra has contemplated the social changes such things imply, and how such changes might affect her in the future. I suspect she has not.
Ahh, what delightful irony. I wonder if Cassandra has contemplated the social changes such things imply, and how such changes might affect her in the future. I suspect she has not.
What delightful irony in her name.
What delightful irony in her name.
That's a great catch! My compliments!
dadof18x'er
08-22-2010, 17:14
not trying to change the direction of this thread but this construction protest
is gaining momentum and is quite interesting. If you can log on to FB this one
is very interesting...http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/pages/The-911-Hard-Hat-Pledge/144148528942849?ref=ts
if you don't FB here's a calmer version...http://www.bluecollarcorner.com/blog/?p=750
What delightful irony in her name.I would bet twenty bucks in two dollar bills that the irony is not lost on her.;)
I would bet twenty bucks in two dollar bills that the irony is not lost on her.;)
And I'd wager a garter stuffed with singles that you're correct! She's probably a Phi Beta Kappa pre-med student working to pay tuition at NYU. ;)
Richard :munchin
ZonieDiver
08-22-2010, 18:36
And I'd wager a garter stuffed with singles that you're correct! She's probably a Phi Beta Kappa pre-med student working to pay tuition at NYU. ;)
Richard :munchin
Do 'singles' still work? Crap!!! We were stuffing singles into garters, or dropping them into buckets, at the 'Circus' and the 'Clown' back in '70-'71!
I figured with inflation, it had to at least be 5 bucks these days! :D
Do 'singles' still work? Crap!!! I figured with inflation, it had to at least be 5 bucks these days! :D
5$!!!!! No wonder she stayed over on your side of the stage! :p :D
Richard :munchin
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JxmuUzkBm0
Mosab Hassan Yousef certainly sees through the BS, he was schooled in the Medinan way...
Since Islam is inherently political, how will Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf deal with the political fallout :confused:
“And there are those who put up a mosque by way of mischief and infidelity - to disunite the Believers - and in preparation for one who warred against Allah and His Messenger aforetime. They will indeed swear that their intention is nothing but good; But Allah doth declare that they are certainly liars. " (Sura 9:107)
ETA
In order for Abdul Rauf not to be considered a liar, from a theological, legal, and doctrinal perspective, what must the GZ Mosque do in order to fulfill the spirit of “Mo-Alla” - in the way of building bridges to peace, as not to disunify the believers ?
Surah 9 pretty much validates the idea of conquest and holds the key to what the GZ Mosque is all about for true believers. Sura 9 is all about how big “Mo” had given his word and signed his name to building the bridges of peace through cultural centers and Mosques.
Go ye, then, for four months, backwards and forwards, (as ye will), throughout the land, but know ye that ye cannot frustrate Allah (by your falsehood) but that Allah will cover with shame those who reject Him. (Sura 9:2)
And then, “Mo-Alla” goes on to renege on his commitment…will Rauf do the same?
And an announcement from Allah and His Messenger, to the people (assembled) on the day of the Great Pilgrimage,- that Allah and His Messenger dissolve (treaty) obligations with the Pagans. If then, ye repent, it were best for you; but if ye turn away, know ye that ye cannot frustrate Allah. And proclaim a grievous penalty to those who reject Faith. (Sura 9:3)
How trustworthy is the word of an Imam whose messenger and god are willing to break their sworn oaths of peace and unity?
Sura 9:5 holds the key…
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/quran/009.qmt.html
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/quran/009.qmt.html
:munchin
Thomas Paine
08-23-2010, 08:16
More on the Imam, this one by Paul Sperry:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/rauf_moderate_vVYXWDsRdiF6UGZUr3xvNO
Rauf: a moderate?
By PAUL SPERRY
Last Updated: 6:44 AM, August 23, 2010
Posted: 12:28 AM, August 23, 2010
In the Ground Zero mosque debate, de fenders of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf have pointed out that in 2003 the FBI brought him in to help train its agents -- so how radical could he be?
The first problem is that Rauf's "help" turned out to be worse than worthless. The bigger problem is that the FBI has a rotten record when it comes to identifying moderate Muslims -- as opposed to ones who are happy to feed non-Muslims the pabulum they're willing to swallow.
Start with Rauf and the FBI. He was brought into the New York field office to give at least four sessions of sensitivity training.
Speaking for about two hours each time, "he gave an overview of Islamic culture and some of the differences between what fundamentalist terrorist groups say are the teachings of the Koran and what he believes, as a student of religion, the Koran actually says," FBI New York office spokesman James Margolin told me back then.
For example, Rauf asserted that the Koran "certainly doesn't counsel terrorism, murder or mayhem," Margolin says. And he said terrorists have misinterpreted jihad to mean violent, or armed, struggle against nonbelievers. Rauf assured agents it means internal struggle.
Now, it's tricky for outsiders to say what the Koran "really" says. But Rauf's claim definitely isn't mainstream. Respected Koranic scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali, for example, confirms in his venerable translation and interpretation of the Muslim holy text that jihad means advancing Islam, including by physically fighting Islam's enemies.
Yes, Rauf's mistaken interpretation matters: For starters, the false belief that terrorists have a wildly different reading of the Koran than most Muslims would make it far harder for FBI agents to understand the subtle, step-by-step radicalization process -- a process not well described by US law enforcement until the NYPD's landmark 2007 report, "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat."
Of course, the Kuwait-born Rauf has to know the facts here. If he believes jihad is really just an internal struggle, then why does he refuse to condemn Hamas? (Why, for that matter, did he in late 2001 suggest that "US policies were an accessory to the crime" of 9/11?)
There's also Rauf's laughable claim that the Islamic legal code is compatible with the US Constitution.
Rauf is hardly what most of us think of as a moderate Muslim. But our government isn't great at making these distinctions. The State Department last week sent Rauf on a $16,000 goodwill tour around the Muslim world.
On top of this is the problem of Muslim preachers who speak with forked tongues. Some of the worst:
* Zaid Shakir, who appears in an anti-terror video with eight other "moderate" US imams. Shakir says, in carefully parsed language, that Islam forbids "indiscriminate" violence and the killing of "civilians."
Killing US soldiers is another story, however, as Shakir allowed in a pre-9/11 sermon on jihad to San Francisco Muslims.
"Islam doesn't permit us to hijack airplanes filled with civilian people," he told them privately in 2001. However, "if you hijack an airplane filled with the 82nd Airborne, that's something else." He gave his blessing to bombs, too, as long as they don't hit too many civilians. And civilians are fair game if "there's a benefit in that."
"What a great victory it will be for Islam to have this country in the fold and ranks of the Muslims," sermonized Shakir, who's been portrayed as a moderate by The New York Times.
* Ali al-Timimi, the noted imam who put on a moderate face in public while secretly plotting against us.
Timimi publicly denounced Islamic violence while privately praising the 9/11 attacks. He even cheered the Columbia space-shuttle disaster as a "good omen." Timimi, who once enjoyed federal security clearance, is now behind bars for soliciting terror and treason.
* Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born imam who led Friday prayer in the US Capitol and became the media's go-to "moderate" spokesman for the Muslim community after 9/11. On the day of the attacks, he told the press: "We're totally against what the terrorists had done." Now a federally designated al Qaeda terrorist fugitive, he speaks more honestly to Americans: "9/11 was the answer of the millions of people who suffer from American aggression. You are still unsafe."
Many Muslim leaders talk about tolerance and interfaith dialogue, but behind our backs they plan our destruction. To deal with the Muslim community, we must deal with its leaders. But based on their track record of dissembling, we can't go on blindly trusting them.
Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of "Infiltration" and "Muslim Mafia."
RCP had this article this morning, then dropped it. What's up with that?
Andalusian Myth, Eurabian Reality
Bat Ye'or and Andrew G. Bostom
On Sunday, April 18, 2004, this revealing exchange took place between outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and interviewer Chris Wallace of FoxNews: Chris Wallace: "In the apartment that was blown up, police found a videotape in which the bombers referred to Spain as Andalusia, what it was called by the Muslim Moors before they were driven out in 1492."
Jose Maria Aznar (through the translator): "So this means that Iraq, for them, was just a pretext. In the eyes of Islamic terrorism, it looks at the West, and Spain is a very special part of this parcel, because they feel that to recover Spain is to get back some of their territory."
Islamic scholar Mordechai Nisan recently discussed the contention by the founder of the Institute of Islamic Education, M. Amir Ali, that Medieval Spain had actually been "liberated" by Muslim forces, who "deposed its tyrants". Nisan extrapolated this ahistorical narrative line, and pondered:
"Reflecting on March 11, as Muslim terrorism killed 200 and wounded 1,400 in Madrid, one wonders whether one day this event will also not be commemorated as a liberating moment. "
Events surrounding the completion of the new Granada Mosque, which was marked by celebratory announcements July 10, 2003 of a "...return of Islam to Spain", were also consistent with Nisan's dark musings. At a conference entitled "Islam in Europe" that accompanied the opening of the mosque, disconcerting statements were made by European Muslim leaders. Specifically, the keynote speaker at this conference, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim leader, encouraged Muslims to cause an economic collapse of Western economies (by ceasing to use Western currencies, and switching to gold dinars), while the German Muslim leader Abu Bakr Rieger told Muslim attendees to avoid adapting their Islamic religious practices to accommodate European (i.e., Western Enlightenment?) values.
Shortly after this event, a Wall Street Journal editorialist in a grossly distorted encomium to Muslim Spain, mentioned the "pan-confessional humanism" of Andalusian Islam, and even asserted: "one could argue that the oft-bewailed missing 'reformation' of Islam was under way there until it was aborted by the Inquisition."
María Rosa Menocal, Yale Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, in her 2002 hagiography of Muslim Spain, The Ornament of the World, has further maintained that "the new Islamic polity not only allowed Jews and Christians to survive, but following Qur'anic mandate, by and large protected them."
We believe that reiterating these ahistorical, roseate claims about Muslim Spain abets the contemporary Islamist agenda, and retards the evolution of a liberal, reformed "Euro-Islam" fully compatible with post-Enlightenment Western values.
Iberia (Spain) was conquered in 710-716 AD by Arab tribes originating from northern, central and southern Arabia. Massive Berber and Arab immigration, and the colonization of the Iberian peninsula, followed the conquest. Most churches were converted into mosques. Although the conquest had been planned and conducted jointly with a strong faction of royal Iberian Christian dissidents, including a bishop, it proceeded as a classical jihad with massive pillages, enslavement, deportations and killings.
Toledo, which had first submitted to the Arabs in 711 or 712, revolted in 713. The town was punished by pillage and all the notables had their throats cut. In 730, the Cerdagne (in Septimania, near Barcelona) was ravaged and a bishop burned alive. In the regions under stable Islamic control, Jews and Christians were tolerated as dhimmis - like elsewhere in other Islamic lands - and could not build new churches or synagogues nor restore the old ones. Segregated in special quarters, they had to wear discriminatory clothing. Subjected to heavy taxes, the Christian peasantry formed a servile class attached to the Arab domains; many abandoned their land and fled to the towns. Harsh reprisals with mutilations and crucifixions* would sanction the Mozarab (Christian dhimmis) calls for help from the Christian kings. Moreover, if one dhimmi harmed a Muslim, the whole community would lose its status of protection, leaving it open to pillage, enslavement and arbitrary killing.
By the end of the eighth century, the rulers of North Africa and of Andalusia had introduced Malikism, one of the most rigorous schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and subsequently repressed the other Muslim schools of law. Three quarters of a century ago, at a time when political correctness was not dominating historical publication and discourse, Evariste Lévi-Provençal, the pre-eminent scholar of Andalusia, wrote: "The Muslim Andalusian state thus appears from its earliest origins as the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in a blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation."
The humiliating status imposed on the dhimmis and the confiscation of their land provoked many revolts, punished by massacres, as in Toledo (761, 784-86, 797). After another Toledan revolt in 806, seven hundred inhabitants were executed. Insurrections erupted in Saragossa from 781 to 881, Cordova (805), Merida (805-813, 828 and the following year, and later in 868), and yet again in Toledo (811-819); the insurgents were crucified, as prescribed in Qur'an 5:33*.
The revolt in Cordova of 818 was crushed by three days of massacres and pillage, with 300 notables crucified and 20 000 families expelled. Feuding was endemic in the Andalusian cities between the different sectors of the population: Arab and Berber colonizers, Iberian Muslim converts (Muwalladun) and Christian dhimmis (Mozarabs). There were rarely periods of peace in the Amirate of Cordova (756-912), nor later.
Al-Andalus represented the land of jihad par excellence. Every year, sometimes twice a year, raiding expeditions were sent to ravage the Christian Spanish kingdoms to the north, the Basque regions, or France and the Rhone valley, bringing back booty and slaves. Andalusian corsairs attacked and invaded along the Sicilian and Italian coasts, even as far as the Aegean Islands, looting and burning as they went. Thousands of people were deported to slavery in Andalusia, where the caliph kept a militia of tens of thousand of Christian slaves brought from all parts of Christian Europe (the Saqaliba), and a harem filled with captured Christian women. Society was sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines, with the Arab tribes at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the Berbers who were never recognized as equals, despite their Islamization; lower in the scale came the mullawadun converts and, at the very bottom, the dhimmi Christians and Jews.
The Andalusian Maliki jurist Ibn Abdun (d. 1134) offered these telling legal opinions regarding Jews and Christians in Seville around 1100 C.E.: "No...Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to [greet] them with the [expression], 'Peace be upon you'. In effect, 'Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God's warning. They are the confederates of Satan's party; Satan's confederates will surely be the losers!' (Qur'an 58:19 [modern Dawood translation]). A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace."
Ibn Abdun also forbade the selling of scientific books to dhimmis, under the pretext that they translated them and attributed them to their co-religionists and bishops. In fact, plagiarism is difficult to prove since whole Jewish and Christian libraries were looted and destroyed. Another prominent Andalusian jurist, Ibn Hazm of Cordoba (d. 1064), wrote that Allah has established the infidels' ownership of their property merely to provide booty for Muslims.
In Granada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population by the local Muslims. It is estimated that up to five thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. This figure equals or exceeds the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade.
The Granada pogrom was likely to have been incited, in part, by the bitter anti-Jewish ode of Abu Ishaq, a well known Muslim jurist and poet of the times, who wrote: "Put them back where they belong and reduce them to the lowest of the low..turn your eyes to other [Muslim] countries and you will find the Jews there are outcast dogs...Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them...They have violated our covenant with them so how can you be held guilty against the violators?"
The Muslim Berber Almohads in Spain and North Africa (1130-1232) wreaked enormous destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations. This devastation- massacre, captivity, and forced conversion- was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra.
Bat Ye'or, www.dhimmitude.org, www.dhimmi.org , is the author most recently of Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, and the forthcoming Eurabia.
Read the rest - Source > http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2010/08/about-that-cordoba-initiative.html
alright4u
08-25-2010, 17:23
Their hero was a damn thief and a murderer of innocent people riding in caravans. Jesse and Frank James had more class.
Hell for 3-4 coins the bastard wanted a hand cut off for simple theft of fruit.
Yet the Great ONE robbed caravans worth a 100,000 the value of a piece of fruit? Let's not forget he killed them, too'
So Islam sucks in teaching.
If you like rob the rich not the poor- you might like Islam.
This religion is not going to assimilate in America.
Surprise: More hate crimes against Christians than against Muslims
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/surprise-more-hate-crimes-against-christians-than-against-muslims-101489994.html#ixzz0xfE4ngvK
"This morning there was a report that a cab driver in New York was stabbed because he was Muslim. While the facts are still emerging, all reasonable people can agree this is a shameful and un-American act if this proves to be true......."
The linked story starts with the above subject but goes into some statistics.
The above story may have some unusual twists it's own darn self.
"Alleged Anti-Muslim Attacker Works for Pro-Cordoba Initiative Company"
http://bigpeace.com/stzu/2010/08/25/alleged-anti-muslim-attacker-works-for-pro-cordoba-initiative-company/
You just can not make this stuff up.
greenberetTFS
08-25-2010, 18:10
5$!!!!! No wonder she stayed over on your side of the stage!
Richard :munchin
For openers,God Bless those hard hats!.......... :D As for you and Zonie, I'll bet you two guys haven't been to a strip joint since you've been out of the service......:eek:
Big Teddy :munchin
As for you and Zonie, I'll bet you two guys haven't been to a strip joint since you've been out of the service......:eek:
Big Teddy :munchin
Res Gestae lads !!! Res Gestae !! No statements until RL clears you......
Their hero was a damn thief and a murderer of innocent people riding in caravans. Jesse and Frank James had more class.
Hell for 3-4 coins the bastard wanted a hand cut off for simple theft of fruit.
Yet the Great ONE robbed caravans worth a 100,000 the value of a piece of fruit? Let's not forget he killed them, too'
So Islam sucks in teaching.
If you like rob the rich not the poor- you might like Islam.
This religion is not going to assimilate in America.
I couldn't agree more with you, Alright! For some reason the words, "we ain't played cowboys and muslims, yet" keeps rolling around in the back of my head. Yeah, I'm just sayn!!! :lifter
alright4u
08-25-2010, 20:09
SF Soldiers playing the damn COIN game of Petraus plus his BS that he invented it. Add the PC, MC, EEOC officers. We win wars by killing the damn enemy- not PC BS.
SF Soldiers playing the damn COIN game of Petraus plus his BS that he invented it.
COIN (nee CI or CGW or CRW) was a part of SF doctrine and national strategy long before any of us here made it to Group or GEN Petraus was lauded for 'reinventing' it.
And on the subject at hand:
Looking at Islamic Center Debate, World Sees U.S.
NYT, 25 Aug 2010
For more than two decades, Abdelhamid Shaari has been lobbying a succession of governments in Milan for permission to build a mosque for his congregants — any mosque at all, in any location.
For now, he leads Friday Prayer in a stadium normally used for rock concerts. When sites were proposed for mosques in Padua and Bologna, Italy, a few years ago, opponents from the anti-immigrant Northern League paraded pigs around them. The projects were canceled.
In that light, the furor over the precise location of Park51, the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, looks to Mr. Shaari like something to aspire to. “At least in America,” Mr. Shaari said, “there’s a debate.”
(cont'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/26islamic.html
Richard :munchin
alright4u
08-26-2010, 15:36
Ironically, a 5th Group Major asked some questions. The O&I committee had his answers in old blue books.
Now this WTC Mosque to get back on track is going to be taller then the Empire State Building.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2319602620100823
6.8SPC_DUMP
08-30-2010, 19:30
On a some-what related note Larry Silverstein (of Silverstein Properties), who acquired the World Trade Center complex for $3.2 billion (99-year lease) on July 24, 2001, has reached a deal to rebuild in the area of W.T.C buildings 1 and 2 (the two big ones). I haven't seen anything on what the new buildings might look like.
W.T.C. Silverstein Deal Finalized, Finally (http://www.observer.com/2010/real-estate/silverstein-deal-finalized)
The board of the Port Authority today voted in favor of a deal struck between Mr. Silverstein, the agency's staff and the city and state governments that provides the developer a bailout package of sorts to allow him to build two towers on the site, provided he can find a relatively small tenant commitment and raise $300 million in capital. Given that the package accounted for hundreds of millions in new subsidies on top of old subsidies already in place, it was not a deal typical of government economic development efforts; but, in the end, the governmental powers that be opted for this over an unending stalemate that rendered the World Trade Center site paralyzed.
:munchin
The Tangled Web of the GZM Imam's Organizations Raises Questions
IPT News
August 26, 2010
The backers of the Ground Zero Mosque have virtually no money, one of the group's leaders says, and plan to create another nonprofit organization that would further complicate the already labyrinthine financial network surrounding the project.
Daisy Khan, one of the leaders of the project, told supporters over the weekend that the mosques organizers have "nothing in the bank" for their effort. Khan said there is no money and that she doesn't know of anything that has been raised.
Tracing the money going to the two nonprofit groups led by Khan and her husband and partner in the mosque project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, requires a world map.
Federal tax records show Rauf and Khan direct the two groups supporting the mosque project – the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). Those two organizations, along with Soho Properties, which owns the site of the proposed mosque and community center, are coordinating the project.
However, federal tax records show the Cordoba Initiative has not listed contributions from at least two charitable foundations that have supported its activities. In another case, a foundation gave money to Cordoba's sister group, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), that was supposed to go to Cordoba; that money was also not listed in Cordoba's tax records.
Cordoba has failed to list almost $100,000 in charitable donations since 2007, federal tax records show.
Between 2006 and 2008, Cordoba's charitable tax filings with the IRS show a total of $31,668 in gross receipts. However, tax filings from two charities that have donated to Cordoba or ASMA show more than $130,000 to donations to Cordoba during that time.
They include:
$98,000 from 2006 through 2008 from the Deak Family Foundation, a Rye, N.Y.-based nonprofit organization.
$32,000 from the William and Mary Greve Foundation of New York in 2007.
The Greve foundation also gave ASMA $25,000 in 2008 "to support Cordoba Initiative in improving Muslim-West relations." There is no record in the Cordoba Initiative's tax filings that shows it received $25,000 from ASMA. Greve foundation officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The Deak foundation's contributions to Cordoba were routed through ASMA, the religious organization Rauf founded in 1997 as the American Sufi Muslim Association, said R. Leslie Deak, the foundation's director. The Deak foundation has also given more than $100,000 between 2006 and 2008 to the National Defense University Foundation. That group supports activities at the National Defense University, a Pentagon think tank in Washington.
However, Cordoba's tax filings between 2005 and 2008 show no contributions from ASMA.
The missing donations are troubling, said Bob Blitzer, a former FBI counterterrorism chief now in private business. "Obviously, they're not running things very well," Blitzer said. "It's the whole issue of the money is really bothering the public. Does he have the money?"
Blitzer said the missing money could be due to theft, embezzlement or sloppy bookkeeping. "They're really open for somebody who, particularly the government since they're filing as a nontaxable institution, could look into why the money is missing," he said.
As a religious organization, ASMA is exempt from filing the same federal tax forms as Cordoba. That means it is not required to name its donors, or reveal how much it receives in donations or how it spends its money in federal tax documents.
The church status for ASMA comes from the group's original 1997 filing with the IRS. ASMA was originally created as the American Sufi Muslim Organization and stated on its federal application it would provide "facilities for the local Muslim community in offering five time daily prayers" and other religious functions. As a result, the group was granted church status and was exempted from filing the traditional tax forms and financial disclosures associated with other charities.
The group changed its name from the American Sufi Muslim Association to the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) in 2006, New York state corporation records show. Its current web site mentions nothing about the group hosting prayer services. Instead, it cites five key parts of its mission, to educate, incubate, advocate, organize and mobilize on behalf of Islam.
Their church status, former FBI counter-terrorist chief Blitzer said, could also be subject to an investigation. "The bigger issue is, if they got tax exempt status as a church and they're now not having services, how can they maintain their status for any length of time?" Blitzer said.
A financial statement found on ASMA's web site for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, also does not mention religious services as one of the group's functions. The statement says ASMA is "a non-profit intermediary organization established in 1997 and dedicated to reshaping the discourse about Islam."
The same financial statement lists Cordoba as a "related party." The statement says Cordoba is a separate corporation that will "work with ASMA as a sister organization sharing the same infrastructure, space, utilities, vendor services and co-sponsorship of programs to remain fiscally lean and keep operational costs low for both."
The statement, however, does not show that ASMA sent any money to Cordoba between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009.
During that time, ASMA reported receiving $1,382,194 in grants, the financial statement shows. Donors included the United Nations Population Fund, $53,664; the Dutch government's MDG3 Fund, $481,942; the Hunt Alternatives Fund, $15,000; the Carnegie Corp. of New York, $122,000; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, $50,000; and the Qatar government fund, $576,312.
There are no available records for anything called the Qatar government fund, although the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation has a sovereign wealth fund known as the Qatar Investment Authority.
At various times this year, Rauf has said he plans to solicit donations for the $100 million mosque and community center project from overseas sources, although he has not named any donors. One possible source could be Malaysia, where Cordoba has an office, according to a 2009 New York corporate filing.
In an interview earlier this year, however, Khan said there is no connection between the two offices that share the same name. "I don't know what the status of that organization is," Khan told investigative reporter Claudia Rosett of Forbes magazine on Aug. 11. Yet Khan is named as a Cordoba official in the 2004 tax form that includes the reference to the Malaysian official. Khan is also listed as a Cordoba director in its 2008 tax filing, which is the latest on record.
Imam Rauf was also listed as a participant in several meetings of the Malaysia-based Perdana Global Peace Organisation, according to the group's web site. Perdana is led by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
Mohamad was prime minister from 1981 to 2003. Shortly before he left office, he told a gathering at the Organization of the Islamic Conference that Jews rule the world by proxy. Mohamad said he was not anti-Semitic but opposed "Jews who kill Muslims" and "the Jews who support the killers of Muslims."
Creating a new nonprofit group to handle the finances for the mosque profit means that outsiders looking to monitor the group's finances would have to wait until 2012, according to guidelines for nonprofits posted on Guidestar.org. That site tracks nonprofit groups and their finances.
It takes an average of two months for the IRS to rule on a group's nonprofit filing, Guidestar says. So, if the group filed immediately, it could receive tax-exempt status in late October. IRS regulations require all nonprofits to file their tax forms within five months after the end of their fiscal year. That would push disclosure of the mosque group's finances to March 2012 at the earliest.
Until then, however, questions about Rauf and Khan's finances remain. "When you see this kind of activity, it makes you pause," Blitzer said.
Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2134/the-tangled-web-of-the-gzm-imams-organizations
spherojon
09-01-2010, 15:29
While browsing the internet this crossed my path. While the article isn't much to look at, the video is. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said the point of the ad is to "challenge the notion that Muslims were not also targeted on 9/11."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100901/pl_yblog_upshot/muslim-americans-launch-pr-initiaive-promote-911-as-day-of-national-service
dadof18x'er
09-01-2010, 15:35
While browsing the internet this crossed my path. While the article isn't much to look at, the video is. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said the point of the ad is to "challenge the notion that Muslims were not also targeted on 9/11."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100901/pl_yblog_upshot/muslim-americans-launch-pr-initiaive-promote-911-as-day-of-national-service
I found this article about muslim brotherhood getting stimulus funds....
http://bigpeace.com/cbrim/2010/08/29/coming-august-31-direct-access-stimulus-grants-for-the-muslim-brotherhood/
I found this article about muslim brotherhood getting stimulus funds....
http://bigpeace.com/cbrim/2010/08/29/coming-august-31-direct-access-stimulus-grants-for-the-muslim-brotherhood/
Who'da thunk it.....our tax dollars going to the Ikhwan....it's not like they have any influence...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFOnv3xiKPU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQLIa-p7xNs&feature=channel
Nightflyer
09-02-2010, 17:48
Warrior Mentors- There's breaking news. I'm in class so here goes..
MYFOXNY.COM - Fox 5 News reported Thursday that one of the financial backers of the Islamic mosque and cultural center project in Lower Manhattan once contributed to a terror group, although the investor says the contribution was made because he thought he was giving money to a harmless charity.
One of the key players in Sharif El-Gamal's Mosque near Ground Zero is Egyptian born businessman, Hisham Elzanaty. Fox 5 News has learned exclusively and confirmed with Mr. Elzanaty’s attorney that Elzanaty made a “significant investment” in the development of the mosque near Ground Zero.
Fox 5 has also uncovered Elzanaty has teamed up with El-Gamal on at least two real estate deals: the controversial mosque site and another deal involving a commercial property in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.
In the Chelsea deal, mortgage documents show Elzanaty played a major role signing off as the guarantor on El-Gamal's $39 million mortgage.
When Fox 5 News reporter Charles Leaf tracked down Elzanaty outside his Long Island home in Roslyn Heights last week Elzanaty avoided the camera and did not answer a single question about his business dealings with El-Gamal.
Fox 5 News has also learned that in 1999 Hisham Elzanaty sent money to an organization that would later be deemed by the U.S. government to be a terrorist group.
The organization was the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, also known as HLF. The now defunct group’s 1999 tax records show Elzanaty contributed more than $6,000 to HLF.
Two years later, in 2001, HLF was shut down by the federal government and designated as a global terrorist. After a mistrial in 2007, in 2008 five HLF leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group that focuses on radical Islamic terrorist groups. The research group shared its information on HLF with Fox 5 News and IPT’s Managing Director, Ray Locker tells us HLF, “masked what their true purpose was, they funneled money to Hamas which used that money to conduct terrorist operations. In many cases they gave that money to the widows and children of so-called martyrs. ”
Federal investigators say HLF was set up as the largest Muslim charity in the United States based in Richardson, Texas, but from its inception the group existed to support Hamas.
Mr. Elzanaty's attorney tells Fox 5 News exclusively his client believed he was making contributions to an orphanage.
But IPT’s Ray Locker claims even back then TV and newspapers were reporting suspicions of the group’s ties to terror. “If you gave money (to HLF) in 1999 you probably had some inkling that HLF was giving money to Hamas and therefore to terrorist operations,” Locker says.
Mr. Elzanaty's contribution to HLF came in the same year his Egyptian parents, Abdou Elzanaty and Abed Raboh Fawkia Elzanaty, were killed in a plane crash. On October 31, 1999, Egyptair flight 990 left New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport bound for Cairo, but crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket Island killing 217 people. U.S. investigators concluded the flight’s pilot deliberately crashed the plane in a suicide, while Egyptian investigators disagreed, concluding the flight had mechanical problems.
Elzanaty’s attorney tells Fox 5 the tragic plane crash changed Mr. Elzanaty's life and brought him closer to Islam.
--------------
See below for the 1999 IRS 990 form for the organization known as: Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF).
It shows Hisham Elzanaty’s $6,050 contribution. (Specific street addresses and names have been removed by Fox 5 News)
In 2001 the HLF was shut down by the U.S. government and designated as a global terrorist. After a mistrial in 2007, in 2008 five HLF leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas, a group on the U.S. governments List of Foreign Terrorists.
U.S. Government's List of Foreign Terrorists:
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm
Hamas is the same dirty terrorist who drove a VBIED into the Devil Dog barracks back in the early 80's. How could our intel resources not know about this shady stuff sooner? Some people need to be a little bit more squared away and ratchet down at their jobs is all I have to say.
Respectfully.
Night
On October 31, 1999, Egyptair flight 990 left New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport bound for Cairo, but crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket Island killing 217 people.
FWIW, that was the flight in which Gameel Al-Batouti insisted on taking the controls shortly after takeoff while yelling “Allahu akbar!” - as he shut down the engines, and both elevators were moved three degrees nose down, the plane dived over 14,000 feet in 36 seconds into the ocean. :(
TOMAHAWK9521
09-09-2010, 01:00
So now this asshole is saying the mosque can't be moved or else it will incite hatred and violence amongst radical islamists and threaten national security? Gee, what a surprise. :mad:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/09/imam-warns-moving-mosque-enrage-muslims/
In addition to the above, this article has a bit more local commentary.
Imam: Handling of Islamic center plan a matter of national security
By the CNN Wire Staff
"The whole national security thing: that's a veiled threat," Andy Sullivan, a union construction worker who wants all New York construction workers to boycott the proposed Islamic center, said on CNN's "AC 360" Wednesday night. "He's saying 'you make me move' and, guess what, the whole radical Muslim world is coming after us."
"This is a turf war," Sullivan said.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/09/new.york.islamic.center.imam/?hpt=T1
So the 'Jets' and the 'Sharks' are gonna rumble again...and the popularity of revivals remains unabated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu7sRdRrm_w
The Imam didn't say it "can't" be moved - he said it would now be difficult {complicated, sensitive} and potentially dangerous, and must be handled in a way that neither encourages nor allows radical elements to use such a decision for the furthering of their agendas.
The interview with Soledad O'brien is here.
http://www.cnn.com/
Richard :munchin
This gross over simplification attempts to trivializes the positions of the actors, by comparison to “West Side Story”? Surly you jest, but OK; now that we have succumbed to threats of retaliation, I guess we’ll need O’Leary and McGarry to find a resolution for Power Sharing in deeply divided places, like Manhattan.
Appeasement is no answer to overt or veiled threats. The reasoning is what? That the radical islamist will react violently if the muskox is forced to moved, due to the override consideration that its within the zone of a grave yard/crime site where thousands of families are left without closure. It will recruit more suicide bombers? Theres going to be a negative reaction? There will be anyway?
You empower them by succumbing to their manipulation of constitutional guarantees, our open society is offensive to their cultural traditions.
A recent example; On 22st in NYC the muslims decided to open a unauthorized, non permit, illegal pray room/store front muskox. This has been the result: The city refused, by not enforcing the law, to close the place for non code compliance, has resulted in the street being impassable at various times due to empty cabs left in the middle of the street. The bar across the street-operating in their location for 20+ years was “Forced” to cover a very valuable Manhattan asset, its window, as the sight line of the bar offended these POS.
The more seemingly legal battles they win, through the lack of confrontation, the more embolden they are becoming.
Tick, Tick, Tick
TraininDummy
09-15-2010, 14:33
Gentlemen,
I was walking through my old student union at the University of Oklahoma the other day with my wife and saw a flyer for an Islamic Panel Discussion that will be held at OU later this month. It's titled "My America, My Islam: Muslims talk about Islam in America and the New York Islamic Center Controversy" the web address for the discussion is
http://newsok.com/my-america-my-islam-discussion-tuesday-at-ou/article/3495191
The panel will be held on September 21, 2010 at 7:00pm at the Regents Room, Oklahoma Memorial Union.
The flyer posted there will be three members on the discussion panel. I have gladly done some research on each of them.
1. Mona Eltahawy who is described as an award winning columnist, who is frequently published in the Washington Post and speaks around the world on Islamic Issues. You can visit her blog at www.monaeltahawy.com
She claims to be a moderate who only got involved in the NYC mosque debate only because of the constitutionality of the issue in a CNN video here: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2010/09/09/nr.muslim.panel.imam.feisal.cnn.html
She also commented on the racial bigotry of the 9/11 rally this year: "I will not surrender that comfort as birds of a feather plan to flock to NYC for a hatefest to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11. The right-wing group “Stop Islamization of America” will be hosting a rally against the proposed Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Attending will be a who’s who of bigots – former speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, publisher Andrew Breitbart, and, most notoriously, the far-right Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, who has called my religion “the ideology of a retarded culture.” The rest of the entry can be found here: http://www.monaeltahawy.com/blog/?p=308
2. Mohammad Daadaoui is described as an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Middle East Studies at Oklahoma City University. In 2009, Mohammad and OCU hosted in first "Islam Day" on campus. He invited members of CAIR to come to campus and talk to students about "the religion of peace." A section of the article states "Daadaoui organized lectures and interfaith panel discussions with community leaders including Razi Hashmi of the Oklahoma Council on American-Islamic Relations; Imad Enchassi, Imam of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City and Rabbi Abbey Jacobson of the Emanuel Synagogue in Oklahoma City. OCU religion professors John Starks and Dann May will also speak." Full article can be found here: http://www.edmondsun.com/features/x46858183/OCU-celebrates-diversity-with-Islam-Day-creation-of-iFast
3. Malaka Elyazgi is described as the Chair of the Ethnic American Advisory Council to Governor Brad Henry, OK. She is a leader of the Muslim community in Oklahoma. I found an article that states "Malaka A. Elyazgi's husband Mohamed was quoted as a spokesman for the mosque in Norman following the October 1, 2005, suicide bombing on the OU campus. He was a business partner in a small shop in Oklahoma City with Mufid Abdulqader, who was indicted as a fundraiser for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, of which Abdulqader's half-brother is the supreme political leader." Full article can be found here: http://www.batesline.com/archives/2007/05/is-there-only-o.html
I have known that OU has had a strong influence from the Muslim community for quite some time. OU's petroleum engineering and energy management programs are some of the best in the nation. That is one reason why so many Saudis, Syrians, Jordanian, etc attend the university. It is also known that one of the 9/11 hijackers trained in aviation at OU. I do not expect any of these "speakers" to be moderate, to say the least. It is my speculation that this is a potential act of subversion against our nation's youth to plant false impressions in the minds of American students who will one day become prominent members of American society.
........She also commented on the racial bigotry of the 9/11 rally this year: "I will not surrender that comfort as birds of a feather plan to flock to NYC for a hatefest to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11. The right-wing group “Stop Islamization of America” will be hosting a rally against the proposed Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan................
Maybe someone can ask her why there are no churches in Mecca.
We all know why - just want to know if she'll admit it.
Maybe someone can ask her why there are no churches in Mecca.
Has there ever been a Christian church in Mecca? :confused:
Richard
The Reaper
09-15-2010, 16:23
Oh, the First Amendment only applies to them. Anyone who disagrees is practicing hate speech, no matter if it is true or not.
I swear we would have given Goebbels and Tojo their own press corps and network in the US during WWII to comply with their version of fairness.
TR
It is also known that one of the 9/11 hijackers trained in aviation at OU. I do not expect any of these "speakers" to be moderate, to say the least. It is my speculation that this is a potential act of subversion against our nation's youth to plant false impressions in the minds of American students who will one day become prominent members of American society.
Having read through the links provided, I'm left scratching my head at your conclusions. Speculations of subversion are a powerful statement, and can quickly lead to credibility judgements if unfounded. Oliver Stone has made a pretty penny off of conspiracy theories, how many organizations are competent enough to pull of such an act of subversion, and while OU seems just a fine school, why target Oklahoma? Discounting the opinions of Longhorns fans, is Oklahoma the flagship university of the Americas and a proportionate incubator for future American leaders?
You mention three examples of speakers.
1) Mona Eltahawy. Having read through her blog IMHO she is whiny, self centered and focused more on slights to domestic Muslims, without contemplating the pain felt by NY'ers on 9/11. She is quick on the draw with the word "bigot". Yet what is so subversive about her message, she is in NY willing to talk these issues out sharing her perspective with anyone, denounces violence, and is proud to be an American. I think she is annoying ( though if she wanted to hug me too, I'd let her) and about as dangerous as diet soda.
2) Mr. Daadaoui's Islam Day on campus states it's goals as raising cultural awareness of Islamic stereotypes on campus and raising money for a local food bank. While the latter goal is commendable. I wouldn't attend since among the the invited is CAIR, but how is this any different from any "group day" or other special interest group on campus? Is it so enthralling that college kids will simply drop everything to stop and talk about Muslim stereotypes? It sounds about as interesting as watching grass grow, even if they did serve free shawarmas.
3) Malaka Elazgi is a grandmother and the chair of the Governor of Oklahoma's Ethnic Advisory council having lived in Tulsa for 40 years. Of the three, she seems the least credible due to her husbands business dealings. Someone should tell the ever vigilant Mr. Bates that Sandra Kaye Rana's surname is a Hindu name, and if he has issues with the composition of the Governors council, maybe he should take it up with Governor Henry?
Other than an example of the usual garden variety liberal academic special interests activism evident across US campuses, how is this an act of subversion? What is the specific dangerous message to American youth here?
The presenter will just counter with, that Saudi Arabia is another country with it's own set of laws. It does not allow for other religions to practice openly (will have to check this). They will also say that this is the United States and that we should not suspend the 1st amendment just because Saudia Arabia does not have one in their constitution. I mean pointing that out will not cause Saudia Arabian govt to suddenly allow for the building of churches, buddhist temples, and synagogues in Mecca. Saudia Arabia will not care for these discrepancies.
I believe the only way to persuade the Imam to move the mosque is to make him understand the victims of 9/11 point of view.
I believe the only way to persuade the Imam to move the mosque is to make him understand the victims of 9/11 point of view.
Oh, something tells me he doesn't care about the victims families POV. At all.
I don't know if he ever made a blatant statement like that on internet newspapers or even television.
Originally, this whole mosque was planned because the building that they were using is currently to capacity and they need more room. He may or may not care but you can't decide what he thinks just from what you assume. You can maybe infer from his actions but from his point of view, he is trying to get a bigger place to worship.
I think in order to foster their effort in showing that they are trying to bring a message of peace, they should reserve space in this community center for worship by Christians, Jews, Buddhist, Sikhs, and other religions I may have omitted. By doing this, they will show that they seperate themselves from the radicals whose ideology did not include tolerance that led to the murder of 3000 people.
ZonieDiver
09-15-2010, 17:59
I think in order to foster their effort in showing that they are trying to bring a message of piece, they should reserve space in this community center for worship by Christians, Jews, Buddhist, Sikhs, and other religions I may have omitted. By doing this, they will show that they seperate themselves from the radicals whose ideology did not include tolerance that led to the murder of 3000 people.
I would obey the #1 Rule of SCUBA Diving, and NOT hold my breath waiting for that particular "message of piece"!
Besides, it seems the guy is a "slum lord"!
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/09/14/ground-zero-mosque-imam-a-slumlord/
It is also known that one of the 9/11 hijackers trained in aviation at OU.
Potential hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui. Oklahoma University is also where Joel Henry Hinrichs III blew himself up with a backpack IED outside the stadium during an OU-Kansas football game.
Bed bugs have been on the rise throughout NYC as well. However, the lack of responding to tenant requests is not excusable.
Has there ever been a Christian church in Mecca?
There’s ample history of fourteen kings and queens who ruled in northern Arabia and a large body of evidence that shows Mecca did not exist before the advent of Christianity, so much for Ismail’s Ax :D
Archaeological evidence also shows that Baca is not Mecca, and that Baca was by the bank of the Mediterranean Sea roughly 15-20 miles north of Nazareth and roughly 20 miles North West of the Sea of Galilee.
The ancient cities and kingdoms of Arabia are rich in histories and archaeological information pointing to Hubal being the moon god of the Kaba…
http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Light-History-Rafat-Amari/dp/0976502402
:munchin
http://www.sacredsites.com/middle_east/saudi_arabia/mecca.html
Richard
Ret10Echo
09-16-2010, 05:31
Perception -
But even if he doesn’t, there is no doubt that many in the Muslim world will regard the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero as a tribute to Islamic victory over “infidel” America. Islamist leaders worldwide will employ the symbolism of a mosque at Ground Zero as a recruiting tool to jihad, swelling their ranks and escalating the threat against America.
Article is here (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39006)
I don't think we "get it" as a culture.
PedOncoDoc
09-16-2010, 05:38
http://www.sacredsites.com/middle_east/saudi_arabia/mecca.html
Richard
Interesting piece - thanks for sharing, Richard. I was not aware of much of the history and folklore including the Adam & Eve story ties.
From the aforementioned site:
To this day, Mecca remains strictly closed for persons not of the Muslim faith.
Yes, tolerance seems to be a very important tenant to the belief system...
“…Abraham, or Ibrahim, came to Mecca with his Egyptian wife Hagar and their child Ishmael. Here Hagar lived with her son in a small house, at the site of the earlier shrine, and Abraham came to visit her on occasion…”
“…After the departure and return of Abraham to Mecca, and his discovery that Hagar had died, Abraham was then ordered by God to make Hagar’s house into a temple where people could pray. Therefore, he demolished the house and began construction of the Ka’ba. God gave Abraham precise instructions concerning how to rebuild the shrine and Gabriel showed him the location. It is said that by the grace of God the Divine Peace (al-sakinah) descended in the form of a wind which brought a cloud in the shape of a dragon that revealed to Abraham and Ishmael the site of the old temple…”
http://www.sacredsites.com/middle_east/saudi_arabia/mecca.html
Claiming Mecca’s existence since the time of Abraham without support of the historical record is not logical, even more so considering Mecca was 1200 kilometers from where Abraham actually lived - he must have had one of those Zoroastrian winged camels :D