the Editors

9/11 Families Reject Towering Mosque Planned for Ground Zero Site

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 24, 2010
CONTACT: Debra Burlingame: 914.844.3146 Media@911familiesforamerica.org

9/11 Families Reject Towering Mosque Planned for Ground Zero Site

New York, May 24, 2010 — 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America (9/11 FSSA) adamantly rejects the plan for a mosque to be built atop a planned 15-story structure that would tower over the site where nearly 3,000 people were killed by Islamic terrorists.

According to the project’s leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the mosque and “Muslim-led community center” is to be called the Cordoba House, named after the historic period when the Islamic Caliphate in Cordoba ruled much of Europe and non-Muslims lived as second-class citizens under Islamic rule.

Victims’ families view the imam’s expressed plan to “leverage” the mosque’s proximity to Ground Zero to engage in proselytizing and to “grow the Muslim community,” as shockingly insensitive to the history of the site where their loved ones were slaughtered in the worst terrorist attack by extremist Muslims in America’s history; following the attack, 20,000 body parts were recovered in a nine-month operation to remove 1.8 million tons of rubble from Lower Manhattan.

“Imam Rauf is a Muslim cleric who, immediately after 9/11, blamed the attacks on U.S. treatment of Muslims, asserting that Osama Bin Ladin was ‘made in the U.S.A,'” said Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 FSSA, whose brother was the pilot of the American Airlines flight which was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. “We do not accept the Cordoba organization’s view that we need Imam Rauf to lecture us about religious tolerance in a city still dealing with the consequences of the attack that he claims we brought on ourselves.”

Last Monday, representatives of 9/11 FSSA met with Sharif El-Gamal, owner and CEO of Soho Properties, the corporation that purchased the two buildings where the mosque will be built at 43-45 Park Place, and asked him to name the investors in the mosque project. Mr. El-Gamal refused, citing the advice of his attorneys, stating that “this is private property” and that “we can build this ‘as of right.'” The property was purchased with $4.85 million in cash.

Imam Rauf is now publicly stating in a professionally-organized PR campaign that the building will be a community center, “not a mosque.” However, Mr. El-Gamal showed 9/11 FSSA members architectural renderings in which a mosque, located on the top floor of the 15-story building, would have a commanding view of the entire Ground Zero neighborhood.

Equally troubling is the fact that, while the stated purpose of the project is to engage in interfaith dialogue and cultural egalitarianism, Imam Rauf embraces Shariah, the Arabic word for Islamic law, a sociopolitical system of jurisprudence based upon the Koran which supersedes man-made law and which rejects the Constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state. Islamic countries that embrace Shariah and political Islam are known for brutal policies that discriminate against women, gays, and religious minorities. Shariah law is entirely incompatible with the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment and would violate 1st Amendment protections of speech, assembly and the free exercise of religion.

We feel that the attempt to use our loved ones’ deaths and the painful legacy of 9/11 still felt by New Yorkers to engage in a campaign to reverse America’s core doctrine of religious freedom — and to do so under the guise of interfaith understanding — is a gross insult to the memory of those who were killed on that terrible day.

9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America asks concerned Americans — regardless of race, color, creed, or ethnic origin — to join us in denouncing this effort to chip away at America’s bedrock principle of religious freedom.

Sign the Petition: We Oppose the Mosque at Ground Zero and We Urge You to Join Us in Opposition

9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America stands with Act for America in opposition to a mosque at Ground Zero. Together, we ask that you sign the following petition:

To the Elected Officials of New York:

Dear Friend,

Imagine the American response in 1950 if the Japanese government sought to erect a shrine to its World War II Emperor in Pearl Harbor, right next to the sunken wreckage of the USS Arizona.

Would “outrage” be strong enough to describe the response?

Fast forward to 2010.

Less than nine years after the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history, an imam who blames America for the 9/11 attack wants to construct a 13 story mosque and Islamic center 600 feet from “Ground Zero.”

This is an outrage!

Public opinion forced many New York officials, as well as officials in the Obama administration, to reconsider locating a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, in New York.

Now we need a tidal wave of public opinion to flood New York officials telling them that allowing a mosque to be built at ground zero is a slap in the face of the thousands of families who lost loved ones in that jihadist attack.

This is why ACT! for America is launching a nationwide petition that we will deliver to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, urging him and other New York officials to oppose the building of this mosque in this location.

To read and sign the petition please click here. Only your name and state will be included in the petition we send to Mayor Bloomberg.

9/11 survivors and their families are in disbelief at the insensitivity being expressed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his supporters who want this mosque at ground zero.

They are astonished that an imam who endorses sharia law, the same law system that motivated the jihadists to blow up the World Trade Center, would be so brazen as to erect a mosque at ground zero.

There are many other places such a mosque could be located.

What’s more, guess what day they are planning for the grand opening of the mosque?

September 11, 2011—the ten year anniversary of the jihadist atrocity.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! This grotesque symbolism, this spitting in the face of the families of the victims of 9/11, is going too far!

I urge you to join me in standing with the families of the victims of 9/11. Please sign our petition and forward this email to EVERYONE you know! Now is the time to ACT!

Always devoted,

Brigitte Gabriel
President, ACT! for America

Click here to sign the petition.

Debra Burlingame and Tim Sumner
Co-founders, 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America