The Cordoba House Ground Zero mosque issue has drawn a line in the proverbial sand. With all that we now know, this issue is black and white. The only gray is the gray matter, or lack thereof, of Americans who cling to their liberal ideology as if it were a life raft slamming against 10-foot waves of logic and reason. President Obama finally stepped out on this bellwether issue. He states that Muslims “have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” and also: “this is America and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.” Not surprisingly, he is sadly misguided. He and the few remaining Americans who support this abomination are obfuscating the subject with the specious notion that this is about religious freedom.
The real issue here, of course, has nothing to do with religious freedom or American tolerance. This also isn’t a matter of American law; it’s a matter of Shari’a law. We finally have an issue that shines the bright light of day on the fact Jihad comes in two flavors, violent and nonviolent and most Americans are just warming up to this reality.
My introduction to the Cordoba Project occurred when I was in New York promoting my book Re-United States in May of this year. The television was on in the background of my hotel room when a representative of the Mosque project was interviewed on the local New York ABC affiliate station. He said, and I paraphrase, “If Americans are to learn tolerance, what better way than a mosque at Ground Zero?” With all due respect, it is not Americans who need a lesson of tolerance–it is these 200 million Muslims the world over (very much including America) whose textbooks, state-controlled media, royalty, and leaders of all walks teach and promote hatred, intolerance, anti-Semitism, Shari’a dominion over all peoples, and, not as rarely as many would have us believe, violence. I was shocked at the audacity of this man to lecture Americans on tolerance. There is no limit to the demands of so-called “moderate” Muslims here and abroad. In my estimation only a Muslim with an extremist ideology (nonviolent, perhaps, but extremist for sure) could ever support the building of a huge mosque at the 9/11 site. It is the height of insensitivity. To nonviolent Jihadists, who share the same goal of imposing global Islam as their terrorist counterparts differing only in their methodology, absolutely anything and everything that advances Islam everywhere on earth is not just acceptable, it is mandated.
Let’s review what we know about Faisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the Cordoba House Project.
Imam Rauf has promoted the center as a place to foster religious tolerance and a bridge to heal the divide between Muslims and non-Muslims. In fairness, he is known to have spoken out against the 9 /11 attacks, but consider all of the following comments made by Rauf:
Just weeks after the attacks, during a CBS 60 Minutes interview he said that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened [on 9/11] … Because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent [Muslim] lives dying in the world.” Later in that interview he added that that “in fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”
More disturbing is this comment: “The U.S. must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end.” Perhaps this is why President Obama is traveling the world apologizing for the supposed harm the U.S. has inflicted upon Muslims.
Even more recently during a June 18, 2010 interview with WABC radio, Rauf repeatedly declined to depict Hamas as a terrorist organization. In response to Aaron Klein’s question on whether he considered Hamas a terror group, he replied, “The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.” He went on to say that “there was an attempt in the ’90s to have the U.N. define what terrorism is and say who was a terrorist. There was no ability to get agreement on that.” When pushed again by Klein to agree with the State Department’s assessment that Hamas is indeed a terrorist group, the imam responded, “Look, I’m not a politician.” Any Muslim leader that does not categorically condemn Hamas and Hezbollah as terror organizations is, by definition, an Islamic extremist.
This mosque, if built, will likely broadcast the Muslim call to prayer within earshot of the Twin Towers Memorial and the grieving families of the loved ones lost on this now hallowed ground. Any reaction by Americans to this audacious Ground Zero mosque proposal other than complete indignation would be an abomination. This is political Islam cloaked in the protective garb of religion in America. It is politically correct appeasement to the point of madness. The time has come to finally check our conciliations to political Islam at the door. Blind tolerance of the pathologically intolerant blazes a path to self-destruction. Only when Americans finally reunite and persuade our leaders to demand that the silent majority of moderate Muslims join us in defeating the extremist ideology in their body politic, will we rid ourselves of this bane called radical Islam. Muslims will benefit from this exorcism at least as much as us infidels. The undeniable facts surrounding the Cordoba House Project provide a rare opportunity to shed light on “stealth Jihad” which is so truly black and white that it promises to “awaken the sleeping giant.” Let’s hope so.