The Dutch Connection: The Funding of the Ground Zero Mosque, Part 2

This is the second part of a three-part investigative report on the Dutch government’s contribution to the financing of the Ground Zero Mosque. It was translated by our Flemish correspondent VH from the Dutch-language section of the ICLA website. Part I here.

As described in Part 1, the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE) is a subsidiary of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), the organization behind the Ground Zero mosque. It was WISE that was the ostensible recipient of the Dutch government’s generous donation.

WISE has as its aim the self-determination and full participation of Muslim women in their communities. To achieve this goal, activities focus on among other things the reform of existing legislation, the design of new legislation, and training for women, activities that are oriented towards increased equality between women and men.

Concerning the “women empowerment” of WISE, Daisy Khan states the following in an article for the Rockefeller Fund:

It is my dream that 2009 will be a watershed year for Muslim women’s activism and organizing. To achieve this goal, WISE will offer lectures, panel discussions, and training sessions on effectively promoting women’s human rights within an Islamic legal framework [=sharia] at its 2009 conference. With these initiatives, WISE will continue to create a space where Muslim women from every field, branch of Islam, and region of the world can dialogue, debate, and collaborate.

That determination of the principles of WISE, which is within sharia, simply means that WISE does not want to question sharia itself, “laws absolutely incompatible with the principles of democracy, laws violating each and every human right you can think of, laws rejecting our basic civilizational concept of human dignity,” says Gandalf of the Alliance to Stop Sharia.

WISE thus in principle does not promote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, let alone those of women in general, but the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam of the OIC which is based on sharia, and for instance allows men and women the “right to marriage, regardless of race, color or nationality,” but not regardless of their religion. Moreover, women in the Cairo Declaration are granted “equal dignity,” but not equal rights in general, nor is apostasy recognized as a human right.

Another link (of the many) between ASMA/WISE and the “Cordoba Initiative is the co-sponsoring of conferences: The Cordoba Initiative, which co-sponsored the WISE conference, is a non-profit organisation with offices in New York and Kuala Lumpur. It is funded by the Malaysian government and other sources in both western and Muslim countries.”

They do this primarily in Afghanistan, Egypt and Pakistan.

That “greater equality between women and men” mentioned by the Dutch Minister has not led to much more than some meetings and conferences, like one in which Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf of ASMA most notably announced his “Shariah Index Project”:

Many countries are Islamic, but some may be more Islamic than others. Now moves are afoot to rate nations according to how closely they adhere to the principles of Islam.

From IIIT:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder and President of Cordoba Initiative briefed a select group of scholars and IIIT [International Institute of Islamic Thought] staff ^[3] on Friday, December 19, 2008 on the Shari’ah Index Project, a pioneering effort which aims at developing an index based on Maqasid al Shari’ah for the purpose of measuring the performance of Muslim countries in relation to the implementation of Shari’ah.

The Dutch Minister only lists Afghanistan, Egypt and Pakistan, and not Malaysia, which is remarkable. Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf an his wife Daisy Khan maintain excellent contacts with Islamists in politics and government within Malaysia, and they even have an office in Kuala Lumpur (The Cordoba Initiative/ASMA: travel expenses maybe paid for by the Dutch subsidy, see the Audit), and precisely that country is excluded from the list. The Dutch embassy sums up as target countries for The Cordoba Initiative/ASMA’s WISE project: “Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestinian Administrative Areas, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Turkey,” also leaving out Malaysia. A country with a increasing Muslim majority and increasing gender inequality and discrimination against non-Muslims. Is this country not in the WISE program because the Rauf family has such comfortable ties with the Islamists of Malaysia?

Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf for that matter is also a prominent member of the Malaysia-based Perdana Global Peace Organisation (PGPO), the largest donor ($366,000 as of June 2010) to the Free Gaza Movement [the Gaza Flotilla] which is also the coordinator of the flotilla’s operations along with the Turkish Hamas-affiliated organization IHH that was recently banned in Germany. The PGPO is also the founder of the “Kuala Lumpur International War Crimes Tribunal” that condemned the United States and Israel in 2003 for the invasion of Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict [source] Faisal Rauf is one of the signatories, along with the former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is the founder of the PGPO.

The lines therefore are short. Still, Faisal Rauf does no “bridge building” in Malaysia, nor stands up there for “greater equality between women and men” or “equal rights for [all, including] women.” On the contrary. Concerning the heated controversy about whether Christians in Malaysia were allowed or not to call their God Allah, the Netherlands-subsidized Imam Faisal Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative/ASMA wrote:

My message to the Christian community in Malaysia is that using the word Allah to mean the Christian God may be theologically and legally correct, but in the context of Malaysia, it is socially provocative. If you want to have influence with people in Malaysia, you must find a way to convey your message without provoking this kind of response.

If you want to reach the Malays, then use the Malay word for God, which is Tuhan.

About the burka, he explained away:

For Muslims, respect for the Prophet Muhammad is much more sacred than respect for elders. In fact, Muslims would not insult Jesus or Moses because they were prophets of God and demand respect. The same is true on the issue of the burqa, which covers the entire body and face, leaving just a slit for the eyes. In the Western world now, the right to wear almost anything has become a symbol of freedom. It is an expression of women’s equality. In the Muslim world, men and women dress so they are not provocative to one another.

Regarding the penalty for an Indonesian Muslim woman — who was sentenced to a fine and flogging because she was caught having a glass of beer in the company if a man — Imam Faisal Rauf does not consider this punishment medieval, neither does he see it as an expression of “violence against women” and think that sharia should be abolished, but simply advocates a little less punishment:

But if the Pahang Syariah court insists on establishing a penalty for the mere consumption of alcohol, why not replace the current law — a maximum penalty of a RM5,000 fine and six lashes of the rotan — with spending RM5,000 on feeding the poor and fasting for six days? Wouldn’t that be more in keeping with the letter and spirit of the Quran and the Prophetic Sunnah?

It is about programs to prevent genital mutilation, counteracting violence against women, and organizing training of women (including media, leadership).

It seems that ASMA/WISE promotes with especially great agility the introduction of sharia, and manages thereby to completely fool the Dutch Ministry. “Leadership” also refers to ASMA’s highly controversial MLT program, led by imam Faisal Rauf and Daisy Khan. Alyssa Lappen writes concerning this program:

[…] the Muslim leaders of Tomorrow also includes radicals like Yasir Qadhi — a favorite speaker at conferences of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and Dhaba “Debbie” Almontasser, who works closely with Hamas’ U.S. arm — the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), itself an unindicted co-conspirator in terror financing.

[3] The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), founded by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1981, is an Islamic “think tank” in the Washington area, dedicated to what it describes as “the Islamization of knowledge” [NRO].

The IIIT is co-editor of the American version of “Seruan Azan dari Puing WTC; Dakwah Islam die Jatung Amerika Pasca 9/11″ (Prayer Call from the rubble of the World Trade Center; Islamic Da’wa in the heart of America post-9/11), written by Faisal Rauf. The cleaned up U.S. edition is called “What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America.”

This IIIT has a far-reaching involvement in supporting Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood which, according to their charter, has destroying Israel as ultimate goal. The IIIT is listed by the U.S. Department of Justice as co-conspirator in a crucial case concerning the financing of terrorism [by the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development].

Imam Faisal Rauf has more ties to controversial Islamic organizations. In 2007 for example, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf promoted his book “Seruan Azan dari Puing WTC” at a meeting in Bandung, Indonesia of Hizb ut Tahrir, a fascist Islamic organization which strives to establish the sharia globally and is banned in several countries.