Ground Zero Mosque
Hello New Yorkers and all Americans out there. Save the date, June 6, 2010 and come to Ground Zero for a rally to stop the spread of Islam in the US. It is time that this little known news item gets blasted into the public arena. This story has had a very low profile, in spite of the fact that the NYTimes had it on their front page on the December 8th. Since then, there has been very little publicity or follow up stories. (Link: www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/nyregion/09mosque.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=nyregion)
The background information begins on 9/11 at 45 Park Place, the Burlington Building, where a portion of one of the planes, either the Flight 11 or 175, crashed through the roof as 80 employees were seeking safety in the basement. For several years the owner unsuccessfully tried to sell the building for $18 million. Finally, in June 2009, the property was purchased by an investment firm called “Soho Properties,” with one of the individual investors listed as the Cordoba Initiative, a name militant Muslims often say when they refer to the glory of the Muslim empire during their occupation of Spain.
Further investigation shows that this “interfaith group” was founded by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is the spiritual leader of another nearby mosque, Al Farah at 245 West Broadway. The records show that the 61-year old Iman paid $4.85 million, all in cash. With an additional investment of $150 million the Park Place property’s 50,000 square feet of air rights could be developed into a 13-story full-fledged Islamic Mosque and Community Center, It’s Feisal’s dream that this could potentially become one of the largest NYC mosques to serve the ever-growing Muslim population. Presently, the building is legally being used every Friday as an extension of Imam Feisal’s mosque, as overflow prayer space to accommodate the growing Muslim community in NYC.
At a May 5 meeting of the Lower Manhattan community board the project was supported including an opening date of September 11, 2011, which will be the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. One has to wonder what this board was thinking when they gave their approval or why it has been encouraged by city officials and the surrounding neighborhood. It is apparent that Mayor Bloomberg’s Director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs, Fatima Ahama, Imam Feisal’s wife, Daisy Khan, who serves on the advisory team for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and Lynn Rasic, a spokesperson for the memorial, all are speaking out in support “The idea of a cultural center that will strengthen ties between Muslims and people of all faiths and backgrounds.” They all believe that the Park Place location is key to the investors and other supporters of this project. There is also support coming from some Jewish leaders like Rabbi Arthur Schneier, the spiritual leader of the Park Avenue Synagogue on East 67th Street, and Joy Levitt, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Center, whose center would be a model for the Feisel’s plan. Added to this is Joan Brown Campbell, a former general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ USA and now director of the department of religion at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate NY, who is also a supporter of Iman Feisal. She stated: “Building so close is owning the tragedy. It’s a way of saying we want to be here to repair the breach, as the Bible says.” She also has acknowledged the possibility of a backlash from those opposed to a Muslim presence at ground zero.
This brings us to the rally on June 6, D-Day 1944, which is being hosted by Pamela Geller, Executive Director of the human rights group ‘Stop Islamization of America (SIOA)’ and is joined by ACT for America, Manhattan; Z Street; Freedom Defense Initiative; Faith Freedom International, No Mosque at Ground Zero and many more to be announced. Miss Geller has commented: “What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World trade Center buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack? Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn’t dream of such an insult. It’s a stab in the eye of America. The date for this rally has been chosen symbolically as the day Americans acted against the evil of Nazism. Now it is time for Americans to stand up against the evil of Islamic jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism.” She continues by saying: The only Muslim center that should be built in the shadow of the WTC is one that is devoted to expunging the Koran and all Islamic teachings of the violent jihad that they prescribe, as well as all hateful texts and incitement to violence.” Speakers at the No 9/11 Mosque rally will include Nonie Darwish, ex-Muslim and author of Now They call Me Infidel;Simon Deng, the Sudanese ex-slave and campaigner for human rights for Sudanese Christians; James Lafferty of the Virginai Anti-Shariah Task Force; and Anders Gravers of Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE). SIOA is one of America’s foremost organizations defending the freedom of speech aganst Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia law to the US.
Questions need to be asked by New Yorkers like: Where did Imam Feisel get $4.85 million in cash to buy this property? Where will the $150 investments come from? It is a significant fact that a good percentage of the hundreds of mosques being built or already built in the USA during the past two decades have had support from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Iran, all with radical Islamic activists. In addition to these sites being places of worship, they also act as a center for the distribution of propaganda literature, written in Arabic and Urdu and proven to be radical in content. You do not have to go too far to already see this. In Brooklyn, Queens, and Detroit the mosques are growing. Recently, the government discontinued work on a major Iranian-funded mosque and center in NYC that had been quietly operating under the auspices of Pahlavi Foundation.
So, come to this rally on June 6 and stand with those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and those who see the slow creeping of Islamic Sharia laws quietly coming to America!
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I had to move this to events but you may want to write up another article we can feature in the Conservative Opinion category!
If you object to the Cordoba Mosque anywhere near Ground Zero, sign the petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/killcordoba/ and pass it on. Any elected official who supports this project should be investigated for who/what is funding their next campaign. It’s called BLOOD MONEY, and that they can even ENTERTAIN this idea is incomprehensible. This proposal is a moral abomination in every respect, and so is anyone who can possibly forget the images of innocent people jumping to their deaths on that beautiful, sunny Tuesday morning, entirely because of –correctly interpreted or not– Muslim ideology.
*Opposition* to the WTC mosque is a slap in the face to 9/11 victims, because it empowers terrorist pseudo-Muslims abroad to kill more Americans. This has a symbolic element and a practical element. Symbolically, an abandonment of core American principles of religious freedom and celebration of diversity is a victory for the terrorists, because the terrorists oppose our multicultural (“impure”), tolerant (“permissive”) society. Practically, Al Qaeda can now point to Palin and others to say to innocent young Muslims who haven’t chosen a side in the fight, “look, America thinks your way of worshiping God is inappropriate and should be curtailed; look, America thinks you are evil and threaten them.” Those young listeners have done nothing wrong. But once they feel threatened by America, and told by Al Qaeda that they must defend their religion and their home, they may choose to take up arms against us. That decision would be wrong and uninformed, but it will happen. Let’s make it happen less, by showing the Muslim world that we support and represent them more than Al Qaeda does.
Learning about Islam from American media and even some books is a woefully inadequate way to become informed about what Islam is and what Muslims believe, want, and do. As with Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and other religious communities throughout the world, the vast majority of Muslims are good people who want to coexist peacefully and respectfully with the rest of the world. Any argument that starts with a different premise is bound to go astray.
Before you judge, go talk to Muslims in the US and abroad and see what they’re like. Then ask yourself if they should have the right to worship God in the US. What better way to stay true to American principles than celebrate everyone’s freedom of religion?
Politicians Employ Hate and Fear to Oppose Mosque
by Miguel A. De La Torre
By denying others the inherent right to worship, as the Liberty of Worship monument reminds us, I devalue and debase my own faith and beliefs, de la Torre writes. (Photo: David Ball)
I was recently walking down 14th Street in Washington, D.C., when I was stopped in my tracks by an inscription I read under a monument.
At the Reagan Building, in the entrance to the U.S. Agency for International Development, is a massive statue of a woman reclining on what appears to be a Victorian couch. Engraved on the pedestal beneath the statue were the following words: “Our liberty of worship is not a concession nor a privilege but an inherent right.”
As I stood there, staring at these words, I couldn’t help but think of the politically inspired controversy raging throughout the nation about building a mosque close to – not at – Ground Zero. It is obvious that the debate is designed to rally the xenophobic base to vote against a people who, according to the D.C. monument known as “Liberty of Worship,” have an inherent right – not a concession nor a privilege – to worship as their conscience leads them.
Hate and fear, two powerful political motivators, are unabashedly and unapologetically being employed to rally the worst in Americans. To equate a mosque with terrorists is either the height of ignorance or depth of callous manipulation.
Equating Al-Qaeda to Islam is like equating the Ku Klux Klan to Christianity. Both organizations may draw their inspiration from their respective faiths, but believers in each tradition would be among the first to disavow any connection between their faith and terrorists who claim to act in the name of that same faith.
When we consider the past 2,000 years of blood-soaked Christian history, the millions upon millions who were slaughtered in the name of Jesus because they refused to accept our imposed faith (think of religious wars in Europe or the genocide of indigenous people here), we can conclude that those of us who follow the Prince of Peace as Messiah have much more from which to repent.
Maybe that great modern-day theologian, Woody Allen, said it best: If Jesus were to return to earth, it would take him months to recover from throwing up over everything that has been done in his name.
To deny people the inherent right to worship because extreme elements of their tradition misused their sacred texts and teachings to advocate mayhem and death would mean that neither Muslims nor Christians would ever be allowed to build any house of worship close to Ground Zero.
And yet, close to Ground Zero there is a Catholic Church, in spite of its history of Crusades against Muslims or the Inquisition against fellow Christians. Also close to Ground Zero is the Dutch Reform Church with its own history of involvement with the slave trade.
We can go down the list of every Christian denomination and find pages in our past that we wish would not exist, but they do. And it is important that Christians committed to the Gospel message of salvation and liberation continue to distinguish between the terrorists within their own faith, and believers in Jesus’ actions and words – just as true believers in Allah have made the distinction between Al-Qaeda and the teaching of the Quran.
And yet, what should be a no-brainer – that all Americans should protect with their lives the freedom to worship, even if the religion is different from their own – has instead become a political hot potato used against the incumbent party.
Politicians like Newt Gingrich make the false comparison that building a mosque next to Ground Zero is like building a Japanese shrine next to Pearl Harbor. Although the analogy may sound reasonable at first glance, it ignores the inherit biases, if not racism, of the statement.
First, Pearl Harbor was attacked by a nation; and yes, I would agree that the nation of Japan should not build a monument by Pearl Harbor. The Twin Towers were brought down by a group of individual terrorists, not a nation, people or religion. And I agree that a group of terrorists should not be allowed to build a monument next to Ground Zero.
But a mosque is not a monument; it is a house of worship. And it is not being built by foreign terrorists, but by Americans who happen to be Muslims and have an inherent right to worship the Creator as their conscience leads them.
I am a Christian. I believe in the resurrection of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. My conversion to Christianity radically changed my life and continues to do so. I am a Christian and not a Muslim by choice.
Nevertheless, because of my faith, because of my belief in the Gospel message, because the very image of this God I worship resides in all humans, I will stand by my Muslim brothers and sisters and demand justice – and demand that the mosque be built.
Not for their sake, not for the sake of political correctness, nor for some idea of pluralism, but for my own sake. By denying others the inherent right to worship, as the Liberty of Worship monument reminds us, I devalue and debase my own faith and beliefs. I participate not in the physical violence unleashed by the terrorists on 9/11, but in an institutional violence that is just as deadly, for it robs fellow humans of their sacredness and dignity.
Those in power may succeed in preventing the building of the mosque. They may succeed in continuing to chip away at our freedoms due to their stringent ideologies and doctrinal beliefs.
If they do, heaven help us, for they truly would continue to create a new America far from the principles of our four freedoms: freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of speech and, of course, the freedom to worship.
Miguel A. De La Torre is professor of social ethics at Iliff School of Theology in Denver.