This is important and is a h/t to Marooned In Marin. Important because we hear all the time that this Imam eulagized Danial Pearl. Well, that fact has nothing to do with this debate, as Daniel’s father points out:
Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and beheaded (on video) by Khalid Shiekh Mohammed in 2002, has penned a piece against the Ground Zero Victory Mosque in the Jerusalem Post.
Excerpts:
I have been trying hard to find an explanation for the intense controversy surrounding the Cordoba Initiative, whereby 71 percent of Americans object to the proposed project of building a mosque next to Ground Zero.
I cannot agree with the theory that such broad resistance represents Islamophobic sentiments, nor that it is a product of a “rightwing” smear campaign against one imam or another.
Americans are neither bigots nor gullible.
…A more realistic explanation is that most Americans do not buy the 19 fanatics story, but view the the 9/11 assault as a product of an anti- American ideology that, for good and bad reasons, has found a fertile breeding ground in the hearts and minds of many Muslim youngsters who see their Muslim identity inextricably tied with this anti-American ideology.
THE GROUND Zero mosque is being equated with that ideology. Public objection to the mosque thus represents a vote of no confidence in mainstream American Muslim leadership which, on the one hand, refuses to acknowledge the alarming dimension that anti-Americanism has taken in their community and, paradoxically, blames America for its creation.
TheAmerican Muslim leadership has had nine years to build up trust by taking proactive steps against the spread of anti-American terror-breeding ideologies, here and abroad….
Here is a response to a conversation elsewhere. I originally was going to post this in multiple pieces on FaceBook, but it would have been too many posts. I post it here only because my comments section here at RPT and my response here are not limited to certain amounts of spaces or words. Enjoy, although as usual, I am long-winded. I should be a professor!
Sean, no one was lost at the Burlington Coat Factory (where the COMMUNITY CENTER, not “mosque” will be based). If we are to follow your logic, I guess no Catholic churches should be located within a few blocks of daycare centers, no? Anyway, I am a New Yorker and I also realize polls can be made to indicate almost anything. Most of the people I know think it is more important to hold up sacred tenants of our constitution than to cave in to very misguided xenophobia. There have been a LOT of people bussed in to protest and the anti-Islamic rhetoric is very damaging.
Thanks Nora for hopping into this conversation. This can be an emotional topic, so know that even though I cannot see your facial expressions, hear concern, humor, or consternation in your tone — I afford you the best of intentions. I do wish to, however, point out some mistakes in your thinking. I may take a post or two to do so as I respect where you are coming from… so bear with me. FIRST POINT, there will be a mosque in the community center. In fact, it will be the top two floors and be tall enough to view the site of the Twin-Towers. That’s number one.
NUMBER TWO, I wish to discuss this issue of molestation by priests that you intimated about.
School counselors, dentists, Buddhist monks, foster parents, and the like — all have abused children. Men who are pedophiles look for positions of AUTHORITY OVER [*not yelling, emphasizing*] children that afford MOMENTS OF PRIVACY with these same children. Dentists do not violate children or women in the name of dentistry. Buddhists monks do not sodomize children in the name of Siddhartha. School counselors in the name of psychology, foster parents in the name of Dr. Spock, etc, … you get the point. Likewise, priests do not violate children in the name of Christ. (The many terrorist attacks are in the name of something… can you tell me what Nora?)
So I hope you can see that mentioning churches next to schools is a non-sequitur, I think we can agree that any church moving priests (Catholicism) or pastors (Protestantism) from one parish or church to another is a problem that has to be dealt with. Just like teachers who have the same issues levied towards them are moved from district-to-district (N.E.A.).
When asked if they “support or oppose the proposal to build the Cordoba House,” New Yorkers said they oppose the facility, which is expected to cost $100 million, by a 63-27 percent margin. At the same time, by a 64-to-28 percent margin, New Yorkers say Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has the constitutional right to build it. A majority of every demographic group – by party, region, age, gender, political philosophy – agrees that there is a Constitutional right to proceed,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “Even a majority of those who oppose building the mosque agree by a margin of 51-42 percent that they have the right to build it.”
These polls hit to what I and almost all conservatives have said, “yes they can build their Constitutionally, however, they should — if truly wanting to build bridges — build a bit further away.” Not a building where they found pieces of bodies from the plane and Tower of that first strike, as well as pieces of the plane. But the people of New York are making their choice… and if the elite in N.Y. continue on the road they are, in November many of these Democrats will be out. As is it looks as if we may take back the Senate AND House. So, keep it up Dems.
c) Xenophobia has nothing to do with this argument. Everyone I know of (Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, [insert name here]) is making the same argument almost all moderate Muslims are making. To wit I would hope you look into this phenomenon, that is Muslims that stand against this mosque (Even More Muslims Come Out Against This Mosque). I included some links in that post to previous posts highlighting Muslims speaking out against this Mosques location. They are well worth reading/listening to. Obviously these religious Muslims are not xenophobic. It is similar to the stories I heard thrown in my face about heterosexual crimes (homophobia) committed against gays. However, what is often overlooked (like all the news stories of dentists, school counselors, Buddhists monks, etc — it is in the medias blood to highlight the Catholic version of these crimes) is that there are crimes committed by homosexuals towards heterosexuals as well. see for instance this story I posted quite some time ago:
These stories have no bearing on the morality (morally right or wrong) of racism, Homophobia, Heterophobia, Islamophobia, or xenophobia. So posting a story about a Muslim being stabbed would be like me showing the many stories of successful and attempted honor killings of women in the name of Islam, in America. The underwear bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, the family that converted to Islam and was stockpiling 27,000 thousand rounds of ammunition to commit Jihad. However, all those have no bearing on our particular dilemma [sorta]. Posting a stabbing also shows that this mosque is not building bridges, like moderate Muslims say it isn’t. (In other words, you would be proving my position.)
UPDATE (ANOTHER VIDEO ADDED):
This story has changed and I wanted to make sure people coming to this post are aware of it. I will post the video here as well as the insight as I posted it elsewhere:
Very quickly, I just posted on this Cabbie incident. He was stabbed by a leftist [that backfired a bit, both by whom did the stabbing AND that this mosque is not building bridges but causing film students to attack]:
Michelle Malkin and FOX & Friends discuss the medias proclivity to jump to conclusions in trying to blame the right… when in fact it is usually the left who is to blame.
This person who stabbed the New York cabbie was first reported to be a “right winger.” However, more-and-more information on this attacker that should have the book thrown at him is coming out. And he is anything but a “rightie.”
d) I wanted to deal with a few outlying issues here that are not necessarily geared towards you Nora.
i. More and more info has come out about this Imam even since the last time I said “more and more information has come out about this Imam.” (See for instance: Fact and Common Sense vs. Bad History and Analogies) So knowing what is plainly laid out in this and other places, what is the reason they want this place when they have been offered tax breaks, discounts, and offers of other properties close by. According to Muslims who have come out against this property it is to look (literally) at the spot that these Twin Towers were attacked and brought down. That is fellow Muslims words, not mine.
ii. Many people do not ask themselves this simple question about the founding of religions. “What were the founders of the major religions like.” Asking questions about the nature of these religions and their founder is not racist, xenophobic, etc. So let’s do this. Here is a favorite quote of mine:
The nine founders among the eleven living religions in the world had characters which attracted many devoted followers during their own lifetime, and still larger numbers during the centuries of subsequent history. They were humble in certain respects, yet they were also confident of a great religious mission. Two of the nine, Mahavira and Buddha, were men so strongminded and self-reliant that, according to the records, they displayed no need of any divine help, though they both taught the inexorable cosmic law of Karma. They are not reported as having possessed any consciousness of a supreme personal deity. Yet they have been strangely deified by their followers. Indeed, they themselves have been worshipped, even with multitudinous idols.
All of the nine founders of religion, with the exception of Jesus Christ, are reported in their respective sacred scriptures as having passed through a preliminary period of uncertainty, or of searching for religious light. Confucius, late in life, confessed his own sense of shortcomings and his desire for further improvement in knowledge and character. All the founders of the non-Christian religions evinced inconsistencies in their personal character; some of them altered their practical policies under change of circumstances.
Jesus Christ alone is reported as having had a consistent God consciousness, a consistent character himself, and a consistent program for his religion. The most remarkable and valuable aspect of the personality of Jesus Christ is the comprehensiveness and universal availability of his character, as well as its own loftiness, consistency, and sinlessness.
Robert Hume, The World’s Living Religions (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 285-286.
So this is where I like to ask persons if they would want followers of Christ to be more Christ like and followers of Muhammad to be more Muhammad like? When Peter cut the Roman soldiers ear off, Jesus healed it. Muhammad order the cutting of and personally engaged in the slitting of [700-to-900] men, women, and children’s throats. Jesus broke Jewish tradition by allowing children into the inner circles to exemplify them in regards to faith. Muhammad married a six-year old and consummated the marriage when she was nine. Did you need more examples?
iii. Comparison of Scripture. Some quick facts. Scripture in Islamic tradition is prescriptive. In the Biblical sense it is descriptive. This simple comparison goes a long way to explain why most of the terrorists in the world today are Islamic. Another explanation for this phenomenon is that in the Islamic fundamentalist tradition, verses in their Scripture. I guess the best way to exemplify this is with this final posting in a debate where a Muslim was trying to explain his faith to others. However, I showed him I had an in-depth understanding of his view of his scripture. Here is my response which is cataloged at my site Discussing God:
Kursat,
You see, unlike the Bible, the Qu’ran abrogates its “verses” and depending on what time period they were written (and depending on if the Muslim community was weaker than it was later), these later verses take over in importance (replaced with something “better”) in application for the Muslim.
So, Kursat, is this Sura Meccan? More specifically, is it the fifth and sixth years of the Prophet’s Mission? There is even a period after this in Mecca. After this period was Medina, right?
For those who are not aware of this abrogation (stated in the Qu’ran) and are use to thinking of Scriptures in a “Western” manner, this Sura you gave sounds great. But if one understands the full implications of 2:106 and 16:101. Then this changes the ballgame a bit, doesn’t it Kursat?
Obviously Kursat didn’t return because he was not a moderate Muslim. Moderates [who are very, very rare] look at the Qur’an as descriptive and they reject the idea that these verses in the Qur’an are placed in any chronological importance. THUS, the later verses about Jihad in Islamic fundamentalism DO NOT trump the one’s about peace. It is these types of moderates that are sounding the alarm over this Imam and placement of the mosque. It are these Muslims we should be supporting.
A recent CBS News poll found that 71 percent of respondents believe it is “not appropriate” to build the mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero, including a majority (57 percent) of Democrats. A Time poll found that 68 percent are following the issue “somewhat closely” or “very closely.”
When asked if they “support or oppose the proposal to build the Cordoba House,” New Yorkers said they oppose the facility, which is expected to cost $100 million, by a 63-27 percent margin. At the same time, by a 64-to-28 percent margin, New Yorkers say Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has the constitutional right to build it.
“A majority of every demographic group – by party, region, age, gender, political philosophy – agrees that there is a Constitutional right to proceed,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “Even a majority of those who oppose building the mosque agree by a margin of 51-42 percent that they have the right to build it.”
Flopping Aces posted a story (ultimately tracked to Atlas Shrugs) where hours of audio of the proposed Ground Zero Mosque Imam is showing his true colors:
The Mosque issue isn’t going away and it just got more interesting. Apparently Steve Emerson, Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism (a large storehouse of archival data and intelligence on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups), has unearthed hours of audio in which Imam Rauf sounds not so moderate after all. The audio hasn’t been released yet, nor the context, but from the sounds of it….the context won’t matter a whole lot:
Steve Emerson has unearthed 13 hours of audio tape of Imam Rauf. Emerson and his team of investigators has spent the past four weeks going through the newly found material. Rauf is a “radical extremist cleric who cloaks himself in sheep’s clothing.”
Among the shocking revelations Emerson’s team will reveal next week — they found Rauf:
Defending wahhabism – a puritanical version of Islam that governs Saudi Arabia
Calling for the elimination of Israel by claiming a one-nation state, meaning no more Jewish State.
Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project fact checks some of the positions in this radical audio, which some are positions the radical Left take as well. Audio of Emerson on the Bill Bennett show can be found here. Steve Emerson shows how Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf may have committed a felony. This is a growing story and my position that says this will bit the Dems in the ass is coming to fruition.
Daisy Khan, wife of Ground Zero Mosque developer Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, said on ABC News This Week that she’s worried about rampaging Islamophobia sweeping the United States.
“this is like a metastasized antisemitism… It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims.”
Syndicated radio talk show host Tammy Bruce, a pro-defense libertarian and gay rights activist responded with “Little Daisy Whines” on her blog TammyBruce.com:
Daisy Khan doesn’t seem to understand is that perhaps this isn’t about Muslims at all, but about Americans protecting and defending a site that is now precious to us. The malignant Narcissism of these people is astounding and so encompassing they, like the Obama admin in fact, cannot see beyond their own self-obsession. Little Daisy is loathsome–we didn’t start this, they did. We didn’t choose the location, they did. And the gall to claim opposition to the GZ mosque is “metastasized antisemitism” is the same as our own government calling Tea Party Patriots Nazis, UnAmerican, and the Mob. They’re all the same. There’s only one group of people who were mass murdered on 911 and that was Americans, not Muslims. And there has been only one group continuing to implement mass murder since then–Muslims. And there is one country that still calls for the mass extinction of Jews in the world, and it’s a Muslim country.
Thursday during the 1 p.m. hour, CNN’s “Newsroom,” this exchange took place between CNN reporter Ali Velshi andTime Magazine’s deputy international editor Bobby Ghosh:
VELSHI: The name Cordoba- some people are associating it with Muslim rule and bloody battles, when, in fact, Cordoba was one of the finest times in relations between the major religions.
GHOSH: Exactly right- in interfaith discourse-
VELSHI: Yeah-
GHOSH: And the great mosque of Cordoba that people are talking about and that Newt Gingrich was talking about- the man who built it, the Muslim prince who built it, bought it from a Christian group- paid money for it and bought it from a Christian group. And there was not a lot of alarm and anger raised then.
[….]
Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883), the great Orientalist scholar and Islamophile (i.e., by any objective standard, notwithstanding Ghosh’s uncontrolled spraying of the ridiculous charge of “Islamophobia”), wrote a four-volume magnum opus (published in 1861 and translated into English by Francis Griffin Stokes in 1913), Histoire des Musselmans d’Espagne (A History of the Muslims in Spain). Pace Ghosh’s distorted reportage, here is Dozy’s historical account of the mid-8th century “conversion” of a Cordovan cathedral to a mosque:
All the churches in that city [Cordova] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent, but the possession of this fane [church or temple] had been guaranteed by treaty. For several years the treaty was observed; but when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque. The [Muslim] Government having approved of the scheme, the Christians were compelled to hand over half of the edifice. This was clearly an act of spoliation, as well as an infraction of the treaty. Some years later, Abd-er Rahman I [i.e., the “Muslim prince” in Ghosh’s redacted narrative] requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral….
[….]
…the contemporary scholar J.M. Safran discusses an early codification of the rules of the marketplace (where Muslims and non-Muslims would be most likely to interact), written by al-Kinani (d. 901), a student of the Cordovan jurist Ibn Habib (d. 853), “…known as the scholar of Spain par excellence,” who was also one of the most ardent proponents of Maliki doctrine in Muslim Spain:
the problem arises of “the Jew or Christian who is discovered trying to belnd with the Muslims by not wearing the riqā [cloth patch, which might be required to have an emblem of an ape for a Jew, or a pig for a Christian] or zunnār [belt].” Kinani’s insistence that Jews and Christians wear the distinguishing piece of cloth or belt required of them is an instance of a legally defined sartorial differentiation being reconfirmed…His insistence may have had as much to do with concerns for ritual purity and food prohibitions as for the visible representation of social and political hierarchy, and it reinforced limits of intercommunal relations….
I have been arguing wrongly. It is not 600ft from Ground-Zero… IT IS GROUND-ZERO. It was hit by the plane and bodies from passengers of the plane and building employees. That IS Ground-Zero!
