Category Archives: Ground zero mosque

More ground zero mosque solutions

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From Imam Rauf:

Mr. Rauf argued radical extremists had “hijacked” the debate over the relationship between the West and Islam, then stunned many in the audience by suggesting one way to reduce ill feeling toward Muslims was to order a “media blackout” of coverage of suicide bombers.

Censorship of Islamist atrocities: yes, that should do it.

From John Stackhouse an evangelical theologian who thinks Rauf is a “moderate”, that he should go ahead and build it and that everyone else concentrate on more important things:

Controversy continues to rage over whether moderate Muslims should build, and should be allowed to build, a mosque or a community centre near Ground Zero in New York City. (Yes, they’re moderate: I have met the imam in question, Feisal Abdul Rauf, and his wife, Daisy Khan, who also leads the project. They are just what intelligent, sensible people would want in Muslim leaders: affable, well-informed, well-spoken, serious, convinced, and committed to good relationships with their neighbours of every stripe.)

Stackhouse does little to bolster his credentials as a judge of character by adding:

I’m a Christian. In fact, I’m an evangelical Christian. Am I implicated in the shooting of abortion doctors? Am I implicated in the policies of the Harper government here or the Bush administration recently gone? Am I implicated in whatever James Dobson or Pat Robertson or Franklin Graham or Benny Hinn says? If so, then I’m a pretty dangerous guy.

How did Harper, Bush, Dobson etc. get lumped into the same category as the murderers of abortion doctors?  How is James Dobson dangerous? Why were Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama or Jeremiah Wright not on the list? Presumably because it’s a list of the political right which, in Stackhouse-land is, a priori, tainted.

From someone who has the appearance of being a genuinely moderate Muslim speaking on a US news program this morning – I didn’t catch his name, unfortunately – who made the blindingly simple and obvious observation that if the majority in the US (the number is around 70%) opposes the ground zero mosque, why would Muslims want to further alienate them by going ahead and building it? He said it should be moved.

Imam Rauf: I didn’t think my mosque would be controversial

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From here:

The imam in the middle of the Ground Zero mosque controversy said Sunday he would never have picked that location if he knew it would create the conflict it did, but he has no plan to move the Islamic center from the proposed site two blocks from where the World Trade Center fell.

“I would never have done it. I’m a man of peace. I mean, the whole — the whole objective of peace work is not to do something that would provoke controversy,” said Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf.

This, of course, means that Rauf is either an idiot or a liar. I don’t think he is an idiot.

TV evangelist wants to build Christian centre at Ground Zero

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In this case, Rev. Bill Keller isn’t claiming his “Christian Centre” is to foster ecumenical love and harmony, but to “counter the lies of Islam”. While I’m not particularly Add an Imageconvinced that Rev. Bill’s strategy for countering Islam’s lies is going to be at all effective, I am eagerly awaiting the flood of support he will undoubtedly receive from all those who trumpet the mosque developers’ constitutional right to build their mosque anywhere they jolly well want to.

From here:

An evangelical preacher has vowed to build a Christian centre at New York’s ground zero in protest at the mosque proposed to be built there.

Bill Keller said he is raising funds to build a house of worship within a few blocks of where terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

As tension mounted ahead of the ninth anniversary of the attack this Saturday, Keller said Muslims were ‘going to hell’ and he had to intervene to counter ‘the lies of Islam’.

Keller, a TV evangelist, has ratcheted up the ill-feeling directed towards Muslims and his inflammatory language sparked renewed fears of Islamophobic responses.

His first sermon was on Sunday at the New York Marriott Downtown Hotel, his temporary headquarters, and he plans to open his Christian centre on January 1 next year.

‘When they decided to build a mosque and decided to preach what I consider a 1,400-year-old lie from Hell, I decided that somebody should be down there preaching the truth of God’s word,’ Keller told the crowd.

‘All these people will die and burn in hell. Islam is not and has never been a religion of peace.

‘How could you build bridges with people who ask their Muslim brothers to fly a plane into the Twin Towers and killed thousands of innocent people?’

A selection of ground zero mosque supporters

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The first specimen is from the foul-mouthed irrational contingent:

Then we have a bishop from  my favourite denomination:

Episcopal Bishop Supports Building of ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque

Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Diocese of New York,

I am writing to tell you that I wholeheartedly join other religious and civic leaders in calling on all parties involved in the dispute over the planned lower Manhattan Islamic community center and mosque to convert a situation that has sadly become ever more divisive into, as Archbishop Timothy Dolan recently stated, “an opportunity for a civil, rational, loving, respectful discussion.”  [just like the loving, respectful discussion you had to depose bishop Bob Duncan?]

The plan to build this center is, without doubt, an emotionally highly-charged issue. But as a nation with tolerance and religious freedom at its very foundation, we must not let our emotions lead us into the error of persecuting or condemning an entire religion for the sins of its most misguided adherents.

The worldwide Islamic community is no more inclined to violence that any other. [overlooking the obvious point that no other religion is presently inspiring violence quite as effectively as Islam]

And the celebrity dimwit:

Def Jam co-founder/Hip-Hop mogul Russell Simmons has thrown in his support for a controversial mosque being built near the site of the 9/11 terror attack in Manhattan in 2001.

Simmons has placed a series of religious symbols on the panes of his Liberty St. penthouse, which spells out the word “Co-Exist.”

Other messages in the windows of Simmons’ home include “It’s the Law” and “USA is Free.”

…..

“If your blaming Muslims for the attack on 9/11 then you need to change your mind,” Simmons said about the controversy surrounding the mosque. Did we blame Christians for the first world trade attack? [no, but that was probably because it was a Muslim who did it] It creates a cycle of negativity.”

There’s nothing like Hip-Hop for dispersing cycles of negativity.

Yet more on the ground zero mosque

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There are a number of arguments that politically liberal Christians – and non-Christians – seem to enjoy making in defence of allowing the building to go ahead:

It’s not a mosque, it’s a cultural centre with a prayer room.

This is true up to a point; it is a cultural centre, a large Islamic cultural centre with a large – a very large – prayer room. The prayer room will be large enough to house up to 2000 people; I am uncertain whether a reluctance to call this a mosque is the blinkered response of people refusing to allow a cherished preconception to be demolished or whether calling a room designed to house 2000 praying Muslims a mosque inflicts semantic violence on the word. And I don’t particularly care: the question remains – should a large Islamic building be constructed on a site where 3000 people were murdered by individuals whose inspiration was Islam.

The Imam pushing the construction is a “moderate Muslim”

I confess I have difficulty understanding the meaning of “moderate Muslim”; the only reason the term is in use at all is because there are so many immoderate Muslims wanting to blow people up – when it isn’t convenient to behead them. There is no such thing as a “moderate Christian”; the nearest category I can think of would be a “nominal Christian”. From the perspective of Christians who take their faith seriously, a nominal Christian is someone who doesn’t; and I suspect the same is true of Muslims.

I would like to posit the existence of another category: the “stealth moderate Muslim”, the Muslim who, living in an environment hostile to his ideology, holds fast to it but pretends not to. Muslims in this category occasionally let their slips show, though. A few years ago on the Michael Coren show a “moderate Muslim”, a lawyer – an apparently personable and rational fellow – admitted when pushed that yes, indeed, the Koran does advocate the death sentence for those who abandon Islam for another religion. He didn’t look particularly comfortable about it but, since it is in the Koran, he couldn’t disagree. I think Imam Feisal is in this category. Although he condemns the 9/11 murders – what idiot wouldn’t – he nevertheless thinks that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened”, that sharia law is nothing other than natural law in another guise, that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation. He is a man who takes Islam seriously.

The building won’t even be at ground zero, it is two blocks away

The building that was standing in the spot where the mosque is to be built was destroyed by the events of 9/11. Why would it not be considered part of the devastation that constitutes ground zero?

To prevent the building of the mosque would be a curtailing of religious freedom

Religious freedom does not include the natural right to build a place of worship anywhere you want. Let us imagine – it might be a strain, I admit – that a group of demented Christians decided to blow up the Taric Islamic centre in Toronto killing a 1000 or so Muslims. After the dust settles, a Christian developer manages to buy the land where the mosque stood and decides to build a cathedral –in the interest of religious harmony and outreach to Muslims. Does anyone believe either that his motives would be sincere or that he would be allowed to do this in the name of “religious freedom”? He would not, and rightly so.

Further, there are 200 mosques in Manhattan: no-one is suggesting closing any of them; land some distance away from ground zero has been offered and turned down. Muslims are as free to worship as anyone.

The fact that Imam Feisal even wants to build his Islamic centre is a portent of ill intent.

Allowing the mosque to be built is the Christian thing to do

First, the decision is primarily a political one: although freedom of religion is guaranteed in the US, this freedom, like any other, is not without its limits and doesn’t necessarily encompass building a place of worship anywhere – particularly when it infringes on another’s freedom. Time will tell, but I strongly suspect that Obama’s implicit approval of the mosque is another nail in his political coffin.

Second, from a Christian perspective some seem to think that allowing the mosque to be built is the tolerant and loving thing to do – after all, perhaps this Christian hyper-tolerance will so shock Muslims it will tip them over the edge into Christianity. Others think it is the wimpy thing to do.

A Christian who takes his faith seriously cannot believe that Islam is true – if it is, then Jesus was merely a prophet and Christianity a lie. While Christians have to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s – and freedom of religion is Caesar’s in our democracy – Christian tolerance does not mean acquiescing to the promotion of false faiths – there is absolutely no Christian imperative demanding tolerance of a ground zero mosque.

Ground Zero Mosque: an Irishman has a better grip on what’s going on than Obama

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First the truth about jihad: it really is a military imperative:

It is disturbing to note that the President Obama and his advisers are now routinely saying things about Islam and American history that are, basically, not quite true.

John Brennan, the president’s top counter-terrorism adviser recently called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” and stated that “[we do not] describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community…”

However, a more knowledgeable voice, the respected historian Bernard Lewis, finds that “the overwhelming majority of [Islamic] classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists…understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.”

Second, the truth about Islam: it is an all encompassing ideology that is political, militarily aggressive and advocates killing those who don’t submit to it:

The Ayatollah Khomeini has said: “Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world. . . . But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. . . . Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers … Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur’anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”

Third, Obama is in a state of advanced delusion about the historical role of Islam in the US:

In a recent editorial entitled “Obama’s Islamic America – What country is he talking about?” The Washington Times says, “President Obama says Islam has always been part of America, which raises the question, does the president know something about American history that we don’t? …. Mr. Obama said the rituals of Ramadan ‘remind us of the principles that we hold in common and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramdan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America….’

The Washington Times says “That Islam has had a major role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings may come as a surprise to Muslim women. Young Afghan girls who are having acid thrown in their faces on the way to school might want to offer their perspectives….Most puzzling is the President’s claim that ‘Islam has always been part of America.’ Islam had no influence on the origins and development of the United States. It contributed nothing to early American political culture, art, literature, music or any other aspect of the early nation.”
The Washington Times’ version of history is not as nice as Mr. Obama’s. It does, however, have the advantage of being far closer to the truth.

Fourth, the Cordoba Initiative is disseminating lies:

The Cordoba Initiative, the group behind the Ground Zero Mosque, also have a penchant for rewriting history and making dubious statements. Their website says: “Despite what many think, Islam and the West have a long history of coexistence and harmony. For nearly 800 years, the city of Cordoba in Spain endured as a shining example of tolerance among the three monotheistic religions.”

This is a complete falsification of history. Sadly, Islam and the West do not have a long history of harmony, as the Crusades and almost continuous conflict for 1400 years testifies. The Cordoba Initiative harks back to the Caphilate of Cordoba as a paradise of religious tolerance. It was in fact an imperialist Islamic state which had invaded and occupied Spain, a state in which Jews and Christians were either second class citizens or slaves until the native Spanish Christians repulsed Islam from Iberia in 1492.

Yet the Cordoba Initiative continues: “there is a close similarity between the values expressed in American secular documents and those characterizing Islamic Law…”
The idea that Sharia Law bears any real resemblance to the United States’ constitution, with its Enlightenment, common law and Christian-based values is beyond parody. It is, for example, reported that Imam Rauf, the man behind the Cordoba Initiative, will not sign a document saying that apostates from Islam should not be killed. Such killing is an accepted  tenet of Sharia law. However, I can’t recall reading that in the US Constitution.

Fifth, Obama is a weak leader, the last thing that the US needs at the moment:

Last Friday the president said that Muslims’ right to religious freedom “includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan.” If that’s his opinion, fair enough.

However, the very next day he said: “I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there…”
Except, very obviously, he was.

Perhaps the good that will come out of all this is that it will wake everyone up to the fact that a president who won’t comment on the wisdom of building a mosque at ground zero shouldn’t be president.

More on the ground-zero mosque

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The Canadian Muslim who thinks it’s a bad idea is being threatened:

Muslim opponent of mosque reports threat

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.”

Plans to rebuild the Greek Orthodox Church destroyed on 9/11 have been killed by government:

Greek Orthodox leaders trying to rebuild the only church destroyed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks expressed shock this week after learning, via Fox News, that government officials had killed a deal to relocate the church.

The St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, once a tiny, four-story building in the shadows of lower Manhattan, was destroyed in 2001 by one of the falling World Trade Center towers. Nobody from the church was hurt in the attack, but the congregation has, for the past eight years, been trying to rebuild its house of worship.

While demanding the right to build a mosque at the site of the mass murder that was inspired by Islam, the Muslim country that is probably financing it won’t even allow non-Muslims into some of its cities: as an act of reciprocity, how would Saudi Arabia respond to a plan to build a cathedral next to Masjid Al Haram, I wonder?

Non-Muslims are barred from entering the cities of Mecca and Medina — not merely barred from building synagogues or churches, but barred, period, because their infidel feet are deemed unfit to touch the ground. This is not an al-Qaeda principle. Nor is it an “Islamist” principle. It is Islam, pure and simple.

“Truly the pagans are unclean,” instructs the Koran’s Sura 9:28, “so let them not . . . approach the Sacred Mosque.” This injunction — and there are plenty of similar ones in Islam’s scriptures — is enforced vigorously not by jihadist terrorists but by the Saudi government. And it is enforced not because of some eccentric sense of Saudi nationalism. The only law of Saudi Arabia is sharia, the law of Islam.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi wants to investigate groups who have made this a “political issue”. Obviously they are deranged conspiracy theorists: how could a flag-planting exercise by an ideology whose dominant aim is to subdue everyone who disagrees with it possibly have anything to do with politics?

Nancy Pelosi wants some answers.

The house speaker is calling for an investigation into groups protesting the building of the Ground Zero mosque.

“There is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some,” she told San Francisco’s KCBS radio on Tuesday.

Still, at least we have Mr. “Change You Can Believe In” providing unswerving, consistent leadership.

The last word must go to Kathleen Parker who has this unusual puritanical approach to urban planning:if you don’t want something built, then obviously you should build it.

The mosque should be built precisely because we don’t like the idea very much. We don’t need constitutional protections to be agreeable, after all.

Hit me again Barack, it hurts, so it must be good for me.

Hamas agrees with Obama’s preposterous endorsement of ground zero mosque

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Just what Obama needs for his approval ratings: Hamas agreeing with him:

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Muslims “have to build” it there.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.

After saying what he really thinks in an unguarded moment, Obama is now trying to extract both feet from his momentarily incontinent mouth:

President Barack Obama, who recently voiced his support for the building of a Mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero in New York City, now says he was only expressing the importance of the legal right to religious freedom, not giving the project his stamp of approval.

But it is impossible to see the second paragraph here as anything less than presidential approval:

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,” Obama said, weighing in for the first time on a controversy that has riven New York City and Americans.

“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.”

Meanwhile St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church has been trying to exercise its “right” to rebuild for 9 years and has seen nothing but a commitment to bureaucratic obstacles. But, then, it is Christian, so why would Obama or anyone else in his administration care?

The story of the tiny St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and its efforts to rebuild after the collapse of the World Trade Center is one of well-intentioned promises that led to endless negotiations, design disputes, delays and mounting costs.

Within a month of the attack on the trade center, Archbishop Demetrios, primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, pledged that the four-story church would rise “on the same sacred spot as a symbol of determined faith.” Gov. George E. Pataki agreed.

But today, the church exists only on blueprints. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the agency overseeing reconstruction, has not finalized the exchange of land needed to provide the congregation with a new home near ground zero. Until that deal is completed, the authority cannot proceed with building the southern foundation wall for the entire site, and cannot draw up designs for a bomb screening center for buses and trucks that would go under the new church.

And because security is crucial, delays in the vehicle security center mean delays in other parts of the site.

A Canadian moderate Muslim speaks against the ground zero mosque

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Raheel Raza tells us Mayor Bloomberg and other bleeding heart white liberals like him don’t understand the battle that moderate Muslims are faced with when confronting radical Islam. Let’s add the bleeding heart white liberals in the National Council of Churches to that.