Tag Archives: St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church

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.