El-Gamal

9/11 families and first responders: America didn’t ask for a Ground Zero mosque in NY rebuilding fund

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Contact: Media@911familiesforamerica.org
9/11 families and first responders: America didn’t ask for a Ground Zero mosque in NY rebuilding fund

When the American people forked over $20 billion to New York to rebuild, they answered the human carnage wrought by radical Muslim terrorists with compassion for the living and respect for the fallen. They could not have foreseen a “community center” being built with their money, just past the smoke, to explain the virtues of Islam.

Yesterday we learned the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will grant $17 million for “community and cultural enhancement.” The Park51 developers have asked for $5 million of that September 11 federal funding; they do not know the meaning of the word “insensitivity.”

John Avlon of The Daily Beast reports:

While news of the application has not previously been made public, developer Sharif El-Gamal outlined it in closed-door meetings, according to two individuals he spoke with directly. The thirtysomething, Brooklyn-born El-Gamal is motivated more by real estate ambition — one of these sources describes him as aspiring to be the next Donald Trump — than Islamic theology or ideology.

Part of the strangeness of the application is that it blows past the suggested range of $100,000 to $1 million that these grants are supposed to fall to within (I’m told the entire pool for this round of cultural funding will come in under $20 million). According to the two sources knowledgeable about the thinking behind the proposal, the strategy behind the $5 million ballpark was trying to yield a higher figure in the end.

But the project likely doesn’t qualify for a grant in the first place. Specifically, the grant criteria mandate a demonstration of a project’s financial feasibility, based on benchmarks set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The government will help complete development projects — but it does not provide seed capital. And in their last public financial statement, Park51 was found to have less than $20,000 in the bank for a project with a slated cost of $100 million.

Imam Rauf touts the center as a place for “interfaith dialogue” yet advocates for discriminatory sharia law to be imposed here. Dozens of other organizations have waited years to apply in the hope of completing viable and appropriate projects; the LMDC has a prior responsibility to them.

The New York Post reports:

“Why would we give them money ahead of so many other worthy groups?” fumed Tim Brown, a retired firefighter and first responder on 9/11 and a leading opponent of plans for a mosque two blocks north of the World Trade Center. “It’s so upside down,” Brown said of the project, which is a joint venture of real-estate developer Sharif El-Gamal and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. “They are the ones who insist the project is not at Ground Zero and then the next thing you know is they want to leverage 9/11,” Brown said.

Debra Burlingame, whose brother was a pilot on one of the hijacked airliners, cautioned against the use of any 9/11 funds for the mosque. “This is federal money, it was not intended to fund a propaganda issue,” said Burlingame. “If the LMDC gave them a penny, it would enrage everyone in lower Manhattan.”

Such grants require organizations to show “experience with comparable projects,” to demonstrate feasibility, and to have shown responsibility.

The Park51 developers owe $224,000 in unpaid property taxes on the existing building. A New Jersey judge recently ordered the low-income apartments Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf owns into temporary receivership due to infestations of bedbugs, roaches, and rats, despite Rauf having received $2 million in grants to fix up and maintain his buildings. In 1998, Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan were granted tax-free status to conduct religious service for “400 to 500” people at an address which turned out to be an 800-square foot apartment in Manhattan. The 37-year old property developer Sharif El-Gamal has been arrested seven times, including for assault in 2005. The main financial backer of Park51 donated thousands to an Hamas front group as he thought it “was going to an orphanage.”

In June, the Community Board 1 voted 29-to-11 to give Park51 their blessing. While CBI Chairwoman Julie Menin has a responsibility to the local community, she also serves the interests of the Nation as a LMDC board member which, in 2002, issued this statement:

“In the aftermath of September 11, the entire nation has embraced New York, and we have responded by vowing to rebuild our City – not as it was, but better than it was before. Although we can never replace what was lost, we must remember those who perished, rebuild what was destroyed, and renew Lower Manhattan as a symbol of our nation’s resilience. This is the mission of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.”

The American people shouldn’t have to help Imam Rauf promote sharia law overlooking Ground Zero or to further Sharif El-Gamal’s career.

Tim Brown
theBravest.com

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

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‘Orgasmic’ Christ; Where’s the outrage from the Muslim world? (Update: Allah depiction suspected; backlash expected)

The 9 News link came to me via my Google alert for ‘September 11’. As you will see, the museum also contains a gallery on that subject.

In a city-owned museum in Loveland, Colorado, where school children often make field trips, there is a 12-panel lithograph entitled “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals” which the artist defends and the city refuses to remove. Not everyone there is amused.

“It depicts clearly a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ engaging in an oral sex act with another person,” says Deacon Ed Armijo of St. John’s The Evangelist Catholic Church. Deacon Armijo and several members of the community went to the gallery to voice their opposition to the exhibit.

The exhibit has raised a question society and the legal system have wrestled with for years: When does art go too far?

“I think people need to come in and see it for themselves. It is hard to take one piece in isolation. It is in the context of an exhibit and this one particular piece is not a stand alone piece,” says Susan Ison, cultural services director for the City of Loveland.

I Googled the work’s title and found it online. It is far sicker and more disgusting than the article describes. The second panel appears to have the cut off head of a soldier in a basket along with other “fruits,” in keeping with the sexual theme. The fourth panel appears to portray a Holy nun in a “maid’s” outfit (some sort of sacrifice is depicted in the background and I’m loathe to speculate what the sub-panels portray). Panels 5 through 7 apparently are of Christ on his road-trip. (The images are a bit small so I am only guessing that is Barack Obama in the sombrero and someone is in a turban. What either has to do with it all is beyond me). The eighth panel has Christ’s head, more accurately his holiness, literally on fire in a bedroom praying to be delivered from the temptation of two “pigs” on the bed. In pane1 12, a cross-dressing transgender Christ is shown having oral sex performed on him/her with the word ‘orgasm’ above them. You need not be Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to recognize the pornography.

It offends me so BE WARNED BEFORE clicking on this link.

Ground Zero mosque developer Sharif El-Gamal told the Today Show’s Matt Laurer on Wednesday, “In order to be a Muslim, you have to be a good Jew and good Christian at the same time.” Sharif El-Gamal was arrested during his mid-20’s for soliciting a prostitute (one of seven arrests in his “youth”) so there is plenty in “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals” for him to recognize and be offended by. Maybe he will ask Imam Rauf to issue a fatwah, mention during his next State Department funded tour to the Muslim world that perhaps Allah was depicted, and go on Larry King Live to say if Loveland does not take it down, they’ll be another 9/11.

Where’s the outrage? Why aren’t all the “good Christian” Muslims out rioting, killing the innocent, and burning down churches?

Update: Someone pointed out to me the guy kneeling in the eighth panel is also wearing a turbin. So, the artist is surely not depicting Christ. That should earn Imam Rauf some more TV time and tells me this particular piece will soon make an early exit from the museum but it was okay when the artist was only offending Christians and potentially exposing children to smut.