"Ground Zero" Mosque Imam Tries Warm, Cuddly Approach

I would love to say that a mosque does not belong anyway near the 9/11 site at all. It appears to me that Islam just wants to get closer to the American people so that they can get unsuspecting people to join their religion. I also believe that they want their religion to be the only religion in the world; they want to rule the world with their evil ways. They shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the 9/11 site because it is sacred and it is a long time remembrance of the innocent people who died because of hatred.

I was thinking of opening a pork store right next to that location think they would mind.

No, I don't think they would. I know many Muslims who eat pork. The same way I know many Jews who eat pork. And shellfish. And cheeseburgers. You are an idiot though, and I'm pretty sure you don't really have any plan to open a pork store next door.

Instead of Cordoba House, perhaps some rebranding would be in order...

Come on down!

We've got this Buddhist priest sleepin' in the bathtub

Teachin' night school down at NYU

We've got this African queen

She paints her eyelids green

And all night long she do the bugaloo

Come on down to my…

SoulPad™ - with the blue lights in the ceiling

SoulPad™ - you know the wall paint is peelin'

SoulPad™ - it's a room with a feelin'

Two Russian students hang out in the closet

Hung up on jazz and funk

They keep some incense burnin' in a sardine can

Beneath a picture of Thelonious Monk

Come on down to my…

SoulPad™ - we got prayer rugs for kneelin'

SoulPad™ - and if your soul needs healin'

SoulPad™ - it's a room with a feelin'

This FBI agent come to see us

Said his orders were to check out the freaks

He started with the poet in the pantry

And he's been with us now about fourteen weeks

Come on down to my…

SoulPad™ - with the blue light in the ceiling

SoulPad™ - where the wall paint is peelin'

SoulPad™ - it's a room with a feelin'

You can eat anything your heart desires

From organic rice to bagels and lox

We've got one more vote for one more soul

And you can sleep here in this cardboard box

Come on down to my…

SoulPad™ - the scene is so angelic

SoulPad™ - and we'll all get psychedelic

Hooooo! Come on down!

Perhaps some well-to-do New Yorker should consider acquiring some property opposite "The Cordoba House", and erect an electronic billboard which would display the names and faces of a) women murdered by their angry Muslim husbands and/or fathers, b) women stoned to death for 'adultery', c) schoolgirls who's faces have been disfigured by acid attacks (or other forms of mutilation) for trying to get an education, d) artists such as Theo van Gogh, murdered for using their talents to expose the barbaric practices which are inextricably bound to Islamic teachings and traditions.

I wonder if this would pass muster with the Professional Left? It would certainly take some of the luster off the gilded facade of this monument to Islamic arrogance.

Kudos to the clear thinking of New Yorkers on this issue. If The Cordoba House cannot be stopped, perhaps Ground Zero can become our spiritual 'line in the sand', defending our country and our Constitution from this assault by Islamic zealots.

Eric Rudolph.

Are you seriously suggesting that atrocities only occurr in Islam? And that Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism have not had their difficulties? Are Pro-Life murders of abortion doctors any different?

By judging an entire group by the actions of its worst, you are not to be taken very seriously.

I don't think I suggested that, no. I am suggesting that while atrocities occur in every culture, Islam is the only major culture/religion where they are not only accepted, but advocated and practiced openly.

As for 'pro-life murders of abortion doctors...', the last one of those took place in Kansas, Sunday, May 31st, 2009. Dr. George Tiller was murdered while working as an usher in his church, by Scott Roeder. The following day, numerous anti-abortion activists denounced the killing:

The Rev Patrick Mahoney, an anti-­abortion activist, also swiftly denounced the shooting: "No one should use this tragedy for political gain," he said.

A prominent anti-abortion organisation, Operation Rescue, said it was shocked by the news. "We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning," the group said in a statement.

FYI, Roeder was convicted of murdering Dr. Tiller in January of this year.

By way of comparison: January 1st, 2008, a Muslim man, Yassir Said of Irving, Texas took his two teenage daughters for a drive in a borrowed taxi-cab, ostensibly to get something to eat at a local restaurant. Instead, Said drove them 14 miles away, stopped the car, then proceeded to shoot them both to death as they sat next to him in the cab. His daughter Sarah, sitting in the back seat, managed to call 911 and told the operator that her father had shot her and her sister, and that she was dying. (Those were her last words as the call ended.) The bodies of the two girls were found a few hours later in the abandoned cab. According to Mr. Said's son 'Islam', the girls deserved to be killed because they were both 'dating Mexicans' at their high-school. Mr. Said disappeared, and is still a fugitive. FBI attempts to enlist the help of friends and family in the Muslim community bringing him to justice, have met with complete silence.

If you think this is an isolated case, visit YouTube and search on "honor killings" and "acid attacks", and you can spend hours reviewing the evidence in those two categories alone. If you do that, and still choose to believe these practices are isolated, rare and therefore irrelevant to the subject at hand, then you are the one who should not be taken seriously.

Reporting for duty, unretrofied. Anyway, I like this:

"Muslims and members of all faiths must work together if we are ever going to succeed in fostering understanding and peace. At Cordoba House, we envision shared space for community activities, like a swimming pool, classrooms and a play space for children. There will be separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and men and women of other faiths."

In other words, let's all be best friends forever until it is time to go pray to the magic dude in the sky, at which point we'll segregate ourselves and go off to our individual magic-dude-praying rooms. Not that that's how the problems got started to begin with or anything.

:) Thanks Jaime.

lolz

Sadly, Nothing the Iman says or does will matter to some people.

Regardless of what he says, people like Jim Riches (I'm sorry his son was killed) will always see Muslims as wolf in sheep’s clothing...

None of the legitimate goals expressed by Rauf require this project to be situated at the proposed location. His steadfast refusal to condemn terrorist groups by name, and to explicitly reject the barbaric practices condoned by Sharia Law, and Islamic cultural traditions, qualifies him for thorough investigation by the FBI, and possible classification as a terrorist organization. The most compelling proof of this man's hostile intent is his insistence on pursuing this project at the proposed location, to the exclusion of any others. As if that were not enough, the conceit of naming the project 'The Cordoba House' makes a mockery of the First Amendment. It would be roughly equivalent to naming our largest military base in Iraq "Lionheart", then trying to sell Iraqi's on our good intentions.

We would be well advised to get clear on the distinction between a religion based on faith, and a malignant political ideology which uses the trappings of religion to circumvent the normal and reasonable measures any sovereign nation must take to insure it's security.

Like, it would be like having a major military operation in the Middle East named after a Nazi or something else insulting. Like "Operation Desert Fox" or something.

Yes of course allowing a Muslim you don't agree with to exercise his private property rights is equivalent to instituting sharia.

For the record, Rauf is totally wrong when he says that wouldn't violate separation of church and state. So he is wrong, so what? I find what he said distasteful, but that does not mean due process goes out the window.

As long as you know you have no legal recourse and you're just venting your frustrations, I guess I don't have a problem with you either, but if you're trying to say there is a case for placing legal restrictions on the placement of mosques you are simply being un-american.

I'm glad you brought this up. Where I live, we aren't allowed to cut down a tree on our own property without approval of the city council. But this is worse...

I have a friend who is a real-estate developer, and he went through an extensive process of applying for a zoning variance on 50' of property he owned (for 40 years) in order to build a two-story parking structure on a residential street which had (over a period of 20 years) evolved into one of the most active and eclectic retail avenues in our city. After several public hearings, the City Council granted the variance. That was in 2002.

Since then, a group of about 10 'neighborhood activists' have managed to prevent him from building the parking structure by tying him up in land-use planning appeals, challenging a succession of rulings in his favor, including two which went all the way to the state supreme court. Having lost all of those, the last maneuver (by the former hippies from the granola district) was to challenge a favorable ruling by the historical landmarks commission, and appeal it to the City Council.

The project is still being litigated. Do you think maybe he should form a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and turn the project into a drive-in church?

Land-use planning and litigation is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country. Property owner rights are routinely discarded in the face of community opposition. How this particular project got summarily re-classified is a mystery that I would hope someone in the news gathering business out there would dig up and publish.

I stopped @ your first sentence. A tree is nowhere near analogous to a person's religious freedom.

"blah blah blah qualifies him for thorough investigation by the FBI, and possible classification as a terrorist organization."

This is pure horseshit. You can't designate someone a terrorist just because you may disagree with some things he has said. In this case, the positions you mention are non existent, the quotes that have been bandied about show no treasonous views or allegiances to terrorist organizations.

"the conceit of naming the project 'The Cordoba House' makes a mockery of the First Amendment. It would be roughly equivalent to naming our largest military base in Iraq "Lionheart", then trying to sell Iraqi's on our good intentions."

Equally idiotic.

1) Cordoba was a city of the highest cultural, scientific, philosophical achievements of the time, in which people of ALL religions, Muslim, Christian and Jewish lived and worked together in unprecedented harmony. In many ways unparalleled even today.

2) Are you not aware that most bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are in fact named with Christian names that are wholly offensive? Are you unaware that Abu Grhaib, the prison where our troops committed war crimes under direct orders from the Bush Administration including raping children in front of their parents, among other atrocities, was called Camp Redemption?

Perhaps my analogy between 'Lionheart' and 'Cordoba' was a little too subtle for you. As for your selective characterization of the symbolism behind 'Cordoba', I'll keep that in mind if I'm ever asked to write a politically correct multicultural text-book for Sophomores in High School.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/gingrich-cordoba-and-history.html

"As a Jewish American, I am offended by Newt Gingrich's suggestion that use the name of Córdoba by Muslims is insulting to non-Muslims. The height of Muslim rule the Iberian Peninsula, the rule of the Caliphate of Córdoba, was also the height of Jewish culture in Spain. It was the decline of the Caliphate of Córdoba that began the end of tolerance of Jews in the Muslim-ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula. Nevertheless, it was not until Christian rule was established over the entire Iberian Peninsula in 1492 that there was a concerted effort to eliminate the existence of Jews and Judaism in every part of Spain."

Such drivel. Maimonides was born in 1135 in Cordova. By about 1160 all Jews (i.e, dhimmis) were forced to choose between conversion, death or exile. Maimonides and his family fled Spain at that time, wandered across North Africa and ultimately settled in Cairo. He wrote rather extensively about life under Muslim rule and said that Islam was a curse for the Jews. I guess he knew what he was talking about.

I am perfectly aware of your misguided analogy. Lionheart was a reference to Richard Lionheart who led the crusades, during which many people were slaughtered. Yes, that would be offensive to Muslims. Cordoba, however, was the name of a city. Again, a city in which there was a celebration of peace, science, arts and multicultural understanding. Until the Catholics drove the Moors out. And, then shortly after, started the Inquisition, torturing and killing and expelling people by the thousands. You imbecile.

Wow, you are terrified of Muslims!

Once again: The only way the location of this center is offensive is if you equate all Muslims with those who attacked us on 9/11. If you do that, then I don't really take your opinions very seriously.

But I guess you're pretty up-front about your hatred for Muslims. Beware of calling Islam a 'malignant political ideology': a properly motivated individual could make the same arguments about any religion. And they'd be wrong.

Your comment is straight out of the liberal playbook: take specific criticisms, backed up by objective facts, and restate them in terms simplistic enough for you to ridicule and dismiss. (Obama has been falling back on this strategy quite a bit lately, since he knows he'd lose the argument on the merits.) But okay: I admit it, I hide out in my basement with my guns and my bibles, counting the hours till the next edition of the Glenn Beck Show.

As for deliberately blurring the line between 'a religious faith' and a malignant political ideology, the entrepreneurs of mayhem who operate in the name of Islam have developed this strategy to a modern art-form. I wouldn't say I hate them for it, I merely note that it is their defining strategy, and act accordingly.

I do find their sycophants in the western liberal community rather comical, believing as you typically do that these people would think twice before hacking your head off with a jack-knife (as they did to Nick Berg in 2004). It was not a pretty thing to watch, but probably mandatory viewing for anyone under the delusion that Islamic radicals somehow appreciate your enlightened world-view.

It's not what he says in his NYT editorial. Anyone can say nice things when trying to get something or make themselves seem benign. Thankfully, we have the internets and can look up what Rauf said in other contexts, when he wasn't trying to quiet the alarm over his mosque venture. For instance, in What's Right With Islam, Rauf said, "...the American political structure is Shariah compliant, for a state inhabited predominantly by Muslims neither defines nor makes it synonymous with an Islamic state." and later on, " ...(it) also would not be a violation of church-state separation to have a subsidiary entity within judiciary that employs religious jurists...to comment on the compliance of certain decisions...to provide guidance on how Shariah compliant these decisions are...

It can become truly Islamic only by virtues of a conscious application of the sociopolitical tenets of Islam to the life of the national, and by an incorporation of those tenets in the basic constitution of the country." (from American Thinker).

This is not some let's just get along with everyone, we don't want to supplant the US Constitution; just the opposite.

He is unwilling to distance himself from Hamas, the terrorist group; he helped fund the jihad flotilla; and then there's his assertion in the Ed Bradley interview that the US brought the attacks on itself.

He is definitely not some moderate (well, I guess in an Islamic context he is moderate, but that's more like saying he belongs to the SA and not the SS).

It sounds to me that his concerns with Sharia law are similar to Jews who want to keep Kosher. He seems to be saying that you can live a "Sharia compliant" life even within the US.

There's nothing sinister about it. Unless you think the Kosher laws or the Pope's latest encyclical "supplant" the Constitution as well?

Kosher is more like Halal, some things are nearly identical in many ways. Mostly concerns what to eat, what not to eat, how to eat it, how the animal must be butchered etc. Most people have no problems with either Halal or Kosher.

Sharia law on the other hand could only mesh with US law if it's not a strict interpretation, similar to the way Old Testament law simply cannot be a strict interpretation. Otherwise we'd have stoning of adulterers, stoning of homosexuals, stoning of children who disobeyed their parents, etc. Most of these punishments are in the Koran as well as Leviticus, and Deuteronomy etc.

Anyway, I haven't seen much evidence that Imam Rauf wants a strict interpretation like that.

Sure Kosher = Halal. But Jews and Catholics also subscribe to special rules about who can get married and divorced, for birth control, abortion, and childbirth, and for death and funerals. Again, this is not some sinister plot. It's normal and perfectly acceptable.

If you dig you could also find laws in Israel or Northern Island which would never fly in the US. But that doesn't prove that Jews and Catholics would succeed at imposing them here (or even necessarily seek to impose them.)

Find me some comparable laws in either N.I. or Israel to stoning of adulterers, stoning of homosexuals, lashings for drinking, etc etc. There is nothing on par.

That being said, I see no evidence that anyone related to Park51 wants to impose these kinds of things here.

Are you insane? Have you LOOKED at the Bible?

Sneaky sneaky reasonable people, how do they get INTO these threads!

Is it really so hard to understand how a person or nation's actions have consequences? Of course America didn't DESERVE 9/11, but that doesn't mean the attacks didn't partly result from some of our mistakes. Anyone will acknowledge that there are people out there who hate America for no good reason, and always will. But we can't do anything about them, except thwart, apprehend, or kill them. So we need to focus on avoiding the mistakes that make us vulnerable and turn moderates against us. Are you seriously arguing against that? Oh wait, asshats like you deny that America has ever made any mistakes, and that anything that has ever happened to us could be considered at least partly a consequence of said mistakes. Get real.

And the Imam's musings about the compatibility of limited Sharia with the American justice system? Pretty tame, and pretty irrelevant when one considers the number of Muslims in America: 7 million at MOST. 7/310 = .0225, or roughly 2%. Don't get your briefs in a bunch: Sharia in the USA isn't happening and will never happen. People are using your irrational fear of Islam to perpetuate jingoism for their own, selfish goals that have nothing to do with what's best for America. Wake the fuck up or shut the fuck up.

Given what passes for a progressive left's newfound tendency to enthusiastically support any kind of religious backwardness just as long as it comes from someone whose skin is brown and not white and has a Middle Eastern and not Southern American accent, I think it's a bit premature to say that Sharia will never happen here.

Given what passes for a progressive left's newfound tendency to enthusiastically support any kind of religious backwardness just as long as it comes from someone whose skin is brown...

Waaaah. As I've already explained to you, this is all about protecting a minority from the tyranny of an irrational and uninformed majority. Considering that we atheists are also a minority, you should be taking a personal interest in protecting these personal freedoms, rather than acting as an amateur critic of Islam.

If we let the majority arbitrarily block whatever they don't like, it's only a matter of time before concepts like evolution get written out of science curricula just because people don't like it. (2009 poll finds that only 39% say they believe in evolution). Then you can blame yourself, Jamie, for deciding that the separation of church and state is optional when it concerned somebody else's rights.

I'm most definitely not in favor of the majority's will being imposed on the minority - notice that I've never once even come close to arguing that Park 51 has anything b but a full legal right to do it. What bothers me is the current zeitgeist that any criticism of Islam or something that a Muslim chooses to do in the name of Islam, however valid, is automatically bigotry or 'Islamophobia.'

That's what's called a straw man argument, and the fact that you keep insisting on making it proves what a dishonest person you are.

Welcome to a conversation with liberals. If you say anything they don't agree with they can tell themselves it's because you're a 'racist' and then they don't have to clutter their soft little heads with those scary realities.

Back to my West Village wine bar where I can pontificate and make declarative statements on things I will never encounter or have any experience with. For I am liberal and I know best.

Sooooo, when you openly blame ALL Muslims for 9/11, properly calling you a bigot is some how a "Liburl" thing?

Riiiiiiiiggggghhhhhttttt...

they can tell themselves it's because you're a 'racist'

I love how people think being called racist is the worst thing in the goddamn world. Deep down virtually everybody's racist and fearful and profoundly selfish. The trick is to use your rational mind (you know, by "thinking") to transcend these base impulses.

(In case you missed it, I just called you both racist AND stupid.)

but according to you libtards it is. That's why it's your final solution to any debate... racism, islamophobia, bigotry. You know from time to time you can take a stance that doesn't toe the liberal party line. Like when an imam says 'all jews need to be exterminated by atomic bomb' you can say 'hey that's not good' instead of saying 'this man is a muslim and anything they say i will defend with my glasses and art history degree over the internet by declaring all his detractors to be racists! long live the liberal-muslim allegiance!' and then close your browser because you got a customer at the record store. Your libtard friends will still respect you at your next burning man. "hey did you hear about Handsome Devil" they will say, "he had an original thought. lets make him our new leader' and that's how Kerry almost became president...

but according to you libtards it is.

But that's simply not true. It's just synonymous with "wrong", just like other human frailties like selfishness. Saying "that's racist" is like saying "that's wrong, don't do that."

But for some reason conservatives are invested in their shit not stinking 100% of the time. You call a conservative racist and they are all like "How dare you! I go to CHURCH! I served in NAM! I'm a GOOD PERSON!" Yeah yeah, just stop complaining about how black people stole all your tax money for a second.

Excuse me, but your argument is phony. The arrogant assumption liberals make is that any substantive argument on any subject by someone perceived as 'Conservative', is not the real reason for their opposition, it's a cover for their primitive racially based hatred. So you dismiss the argument you can't refute on the merits, and substitute an accusation of 'racism' or 'bigotry'.

The message is not "You're wrong.." either. The actual message is: "Because I have divined your racist motives, you are also stupid, and therefore inferior."

Those of us who live, work and succeed in the real world, have no use for you, so you seek out people susceptible to believing they have been victimized, and cannot succeed without your help. Convincing them of that depends on them believing that we are 'stupid racists', and the only reason we have money and they don't is because we have found ways to cheat them out of it.

Having convinced them of that, you make it your business to exploit the political process on their behalf, and to do that, you have to find justifications for taking what we have earned, and distributing (part of) it to your clients. Caveat, most of it you keep for yourselves, so you can continue to 'protect people from the stupid racists'.

That sums up the business of liberalism pretty well:

"Let's make the stupid racists hand over the money they cheated us out of..."

It's the same narrative, regardless of the label: Marxist, Leninist, Socialist, Progressive (you pick). The last thing in the world you want is for your clients to figure out that they are only victims as long as they're willing to be.

Ironically, when times get tough like they are now, they are most likely to figure out that you're not just feeding off us, you're feeding off them too. That's why Obama is so desperate to keep the entitlement money rolling in to public employees and unions. But let's face it: the Professional Left doesn't really want to create jobs, they want to create dependents, so the money goes to pay people to do mostly manual labor (roads and bridges), not business creation.

The problem is, a nation of dependents eventually (and invariably) collapses. The issue to be decided this November is whether the majority of Americans are going to allow liberals to push it that far. We'll see...

Excuse me, but your argument is phony.

Well, look who I'm talking to. His last post practically screams "troll" with all the silly details. Of course I'm exaggerating.

The arrogant assumption liberals make is that any substantive argument on any subject by someone perceived as 'Conservative', is not the real reason for their opposition...

Except it's very easy to PROVE that most objections to Park51 are bigotry, plain and simple. As soon as somebody points to something that is not relevant to the people actually involved in the project (like, say, 9/11), they lose. They are assuming that all Muslims are the same, aka exercising prejudice at the expense of logic, aka being a bigot. This is one of those one-sided "debates" like gay marriage where there really isn't anything on the other side - there's just a bunch of deluded people insisting that their personal feelings are relevant.

It's not some pretense of looking into their souls, it's just looking at what they are actually saying. The arguments themselves are stupid, illogical, and often explicitly bigoted. You can't deny that, for instance, "They can build a mosque here when we can build a church in Mecca" is an incredibly stupid argument.

...you make it your business to exploit the political process on their behalf, and to do that, you have to find justifications for taking what we have earned...

Dude, I have no idea what you are talking about here. I don't do any of those things. I'm just the average guy who believes that government should help people and actually doesn't mind paying his taxes. The thing about black people stealing your taxes was obviously a joke that you took waaaaay too personally. But, why is that, hmmmmmm?

Actually 'Dude', we're long past the point where liberals are stealing anybody's taxes. Tax revenues are going down. Obama is borrowing $4-Billion a day to keep his government afloat, so what he's really doing is devaluing the dollar and setting the stage for an economic collapse. Welcome to the Union of Socialist States of America (dude).

PS:Do you really think a racist would have voted for Obama?

Do you really think a racist would have voted for Obama?

Hahahahaha of course I do. I just said above that I think most people are racist, deep down, and therefore I'd say MOST people who voted for Obama are racist (as well as most of those who voted for McCain.)

The very notion that doing one thing makes you not racist is pretty naive and absurd IMO. Next you'll be telling me about your black friend or biracial grandchild. More proof!

(Heck, I had a black girlfriend in college, and you know what I ultimately learned from the experience? That I was actually pretty racist. I thought I wasn't.)

Again - most people are racist. It's human nature. It's your duty as a civilized person to keep it in check as best you can.

My argument about conservatives isn't that they are more racist than liberals (in a way, they aren't), it's just that they (wrongly) believe that their shit doesn't stink and they protest way too much when racism is even suggested. Like you.

What bothers me is the current zeitgeist that any criticism of Islam or something that a Muslim chooses to do in the name of Islam, however valid, is automatically bigotry or 'Islamophobia.'

Way to have your cake and eat it too. The fact is that 100% of Mosque Fever 2010 is based on willful ignorance and the abandonment of logic. I wonder what anti-Park51 arguments exist out there that you would claim are reasonable or rational - there are none, because you and I both know that the "issue" is moot. So, how is it wrong to characterize the anti-Mosque partisans as irrational?

Basically you want to post repeatedly on any Park51 thread to defend your own personal take on Islam which you've pretty much pulled out of your ass, AND claim that you are somehow above Mosque Fever, AND also that the rest of us are dicks to apply a term such as "Islamophobia" which is in fact an accurate description of current events. This is your position?

Read a book.

You sound scared, need a blanky?

Do religious fanatics not scare you?

its people like riches (family members who lost people) who are the most powerful arguers against the mosque---and their arguments have no merit apart from that emotional impact. i feel for them but we can't make policy or law based on it. what if terrorists blow up a building up on 104th street? would we legally tear down the mosque that is nearby?

and now these inbreds are burning korans --- it feels like dangerous times are coming

This Jones idiot is basically a cult leader.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,716409,00.html

IMO, they are only Burning the Koran for the publicity and 15 minutes.

K guys, queue the typical suspects. John L, Ides, etypical, snickerdoodle, jaime, bashmentgirl, amanda, etc. Ok great - get in your places, alright good.

Queue the "It's not a mosque..." in 5 secs, followed by "ISLAM = EVIL!" in 10. OK? BREAK!