New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said the following in response to yesterday’s press conference conducted by Rick Lazio, his potential opposition in the coming election for governor in New York state:

“If there is a criminal case, then there is a criminal case. But, if this is: I don’t like this religion, and I don’t like this religion on this block. Or: I don’t like this religion in this city. Then I agree with Mayor Bloomberg. Then I agree with the community board that approved the mosque. What are we about, if not religious freedom? What is the country about if not religious freedom? What is this state about if not religious freedom? Well, religious freedom except I don’t like this religion. But then, there might be another government, and they won’t like Catholicism, or they won’t like Judaism, or they won’t like Christianity, then what?”

Andrew Cuomo possesses a deeply troubling lack of information; Rauf is motivated by the same intolerance that spurred Mohammed Atta and his co-conspirators to slam commercial airliners into buildings.

At Ground Zero, in his Cordoba House “cultural center” and mosque, Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf would “peacefully” preach an end to religious tolerance in America and the end of our free society. Mr. Cuomo and others blindly pawn this off as a “freedom-of-faith” issue yet Rauf wants our Nation — in less than a generation — to be ruled by Islamic sharia law. Debra Burlingame explained yesterday what Rauf advocates:

“The practices which countenance and support wife beating, which would call for the execution of homosexuals, which would call for the ostracizing or the execution of apostates. [Imam Rauf] is a bit like mercury on the subject of sharia, a little hard to pin down in a conversation. But the fact of the matter is he has written extensively on this subject, particularly in the Middle East and Malaysia where he has offices.

“Malaysia is a country that is a Muslim-dominant pluralistic society that is a Muslim-dominant country where they have sharia law and sharia law is imposed on all Muslims. He would impose that system of governance here. That is very important to me because we just celebrated the 4th of July, our Independence, where the Founders of this country created something which had never existed before in the history of any human interaction, and that is consent of the governed, the powers of the government are derived from the people. Under sharia, the powers of the rulers are derived from the divine Allah. And that is what this man wants to bring to this country.

“His book ‘What’s Right About Islam’ was published in Malaysia under the title ‘A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Da’wah in the Heart of America Post-9/11?. Da’wah is proselytization. He means to use that site. And he has said so, we want to “leverage,” that’s his word, “We want to leverage our location and proximity” to that site to bring people to Islam. And he talks about a tipping point; ten years to have a no-going-back Muslim presence fully integrated into our society and a twenty-year tipping point where you have a Muslim-dominant America. That’s what he wants to do on the backs of 3,000 people who died in the name of Islam and religious intolerance. He would use their memory and that scared ground … to usher in a system of government that I know my brother and [Tim Brown’s firefighter] colleagues would find appalling.

“And I urge you as members of this media to ask this Imam, “What about the secular Muslims who come to this country to flee sharia?” This is the country of last resort where peaceful, secular Muslims will have no place else to go.”