A MAN with a sign that said “All I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11” was among several hundred people protesting this week about the plan to build a Muslim community centre two blocks away from Ground Zero. The rally was organised by “Stop Islamisation of America”, a group which holds that the centre would be disrespectful to those who died that day. Despite the abundance of American flags and the patriotic rhetoric used by the demonstration’s speakers—who included candidates on the campaign trail, a former firefighter and human-rights activists—the mood quickly turned thuggish. Two Egyptian men had to be protected by the police when some of the crowd threatened them after hearing them speak Arabic. The frightened men were Christian and were at the rally to oppose the project.
The “frightened men” episode was blown out of all proportion by, amongst others, Keith Olbermann, and the two men in question have made that very clear.
Cordoba House, the proposed centre, is to be a place of tolerance. ….
What, because Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told you so? Rauf is on record of being in favour of implementation of Shariah law in the US, which if it were achieved, would have to have overturned the Constitution. (“What’s right with Islam”, Harper Collins, 2005).
Cordoba? This is the Spanish town on which the first Great Mosque was built, in the wake of Islamic conquests of Europe.
… Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who will run it, hopes it will help improve relations between Muslims and the West. The 13-storey building will house a 500-seat auditorium, a swimming pool and an exhibition space as well as shops, restaurants and a place for prayers. Imam Feisal sees the 92nd Street Y, a community centre guided by Jewish principles but serving all faiths, as his model. Mark Williams, a tea-party leader, blogged last month that the centre would be a “13-storey monument to the 9/11 Muslim hijackers”. He was roundly condemned. “We are moderate. We are the anti-terrorists,” says Mr Rauf.
Anti-terrorist he may be. But what of anti-Islamist, anti the spread of Shariah law and of Islamic rule throughout the world: his book (above) suggests otherwise. He wants to show he's tolerant: he should study these "five points for attention", rather that spend his time on building a mosque trampling on the feelings of many Americans.
Fortunately, Cordoba House has many supporters in the neighbourhood. The local community board voted 29-1 to support the plan, and it has the backing of Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor.
This would be the Mayor who, in the wake of the Times Square bomb attempt, speculated that the perpetrator would likely prove to be a right-winger with a gripe about Obama’s health care reform. That mayor; the one who will twist himself into a New York pretzel to exonerate Islam of any and every wrong doing.
Construction, though, will not begin for a few years yet; the plans are not completed, and the centre’s funding is not in place.
What’s the betting the Saudi’s will be involved somehow? They have in virtually every other mosque in the US, some 2,300 of them and dozens in New York already.
Mohammed Ali warily watched the protest. He used to deliver food to the World Trade Centre. He still carries in his wallet his pass from Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that lost 658 people on September 11th. Today he operates a hotdog cart across the street from where the towers once stood. The demonstrators, some carrying anti-mosque placards, seemed to have no trouble buying water from a Muslim from Bangladesh.
Why wouldn’t they? Spencer et al have repeatedly said they’re against the supremacist doctrines of Islam, especially Islamism, not individual Muslims, most of whom will be peace-loving family people just like most other people.
