Shariah

9/11, Cordoba House, Debra Burlingame, Ground Zero, Imam Rauf, sharia, sharia law, Shariah, World Trade Center

NY Post: ‘NYers wage jihad vs. WTC mosque’ (CB1 board approves Shariah ‘fun center’ at Ground Zero)

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That is quite a headline ‘NYers wage jihad vs. WTC mosque’ in the New York Post this morning with their third report on last night’s Community Board 1 meeting. Things got a little heated. But then, “things” were really heated on 9/11, in the Towers, and down in the Pit; 2,752 were murdered and 1,100 families have yet to receive even one speck of human remains after sharia-compliant Muslims slaughtered their loved ones.

Debra Burlingame addressed the board last night, “I am actually, in a way, glad that this has happened, this controversy, because finally, maybe, Americans, New Yorkers will start asking questions. Top of the list: What is Shariah?”

Was it political correctness, ignorance, or submissiveness to political Islam that led 29 board members (with one ‘nay’ and 10 abstentions) to vote in favor of Imam Rauf’s proposed Cordoba House?

The New York Post reports:

“We are Americans, we are Muslim Americans,” Rauf said. “Many of us were born in the United States. We have no higher aspirations than to bring up our children in peace and harmony in this country.”

But the crowd got ugly when he added, “Freedom of assembly is the right of all Americans.”

Amid boos, one woman shouted, “Not at the World Trade Center!”

Rauf’s wife, Daisy Khan, followed him to the microphone to pitched the planned community facility as “much needed party space and much needed venue space” for the area.

She was roundly booed.

Some audience members preached tolerance for the Muslim leaders.

Before the meeting, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a supporter of the mosque, stood in front of the site and said, “What we’re rejecting here is outright bigotry and hatred.”

Finally, a liberal politician we can agree with: Scott Stringer.

We reject the outright bigotry, oppression, and the savagery of Shariah that Imam Rauf and the money-men inside this Trojan Horse rolling towards sacred ground want imposed here in America upon women, gays, and all non-believers of Islam. And that is why we oppose a sharia-compliant “cultural and Muslim fun center” at Ground Zero two blocks north of the World Trade Center.

“Imam Rauf is now publicly stating in a professionally-organized PR campaign that the building will be a community center, “not a mosque.” However, [property owner] Mr. El-Gamal showed 9/11 [Families for a Safe & Strong America] 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.”

Some “cooler heads” preached tolerance last night. It is a good thing to hear the Word, especially from within ones own heart guiding each of us in our actions. We wish those men and women of God well as they bring their various faiths to Riyadh, Waziristan, Sana’a, Kuala Lumpur, Tehran, and Medina and openly preach to the people there. Godspeed!

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Notes:

More here and here from last night’s CB1 meeting.

Slide show of meeting (12 photos) from DNAinfo.

Our friend Michelle Malkin linked over and weighs in with a reminder of an elevator ride now forever gone.

Imam Rauf, via his allies the editors of the New York Daily News, was ready with his spin this morning. He has already received a lot of feedback in the comments. (Couldn’t the News have blown Rauf up (figuratively) a little larger in its graphic? Remember the grieving Lebanese mother in her black hijab showing up in front of more than one destroyed house during the last Israel-Lebanon war, each time claiming her home had been bombed by Israel? The News should have Photoshopped her in, along with a backdrop of the destroyed WTC, and had Rauf holding a sign saying “Backlash against Muslims; 300 murdered; ‘United States policies were an accessory to the crime.'”)

As I noted at 12:49 PM today in the comments to Rauf’s op-ed:

[The Cordoba House would be] two blocks from WTC 7, within the Ground Zero kill zone. Have you forgotten? A strut from UAL 175 crashed through the coat factory’s roof and the street and building were a foot deep with debris containing the shattered human remains of many. Representatives of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America … saw their Power Point, shown to them last Monday by building owner Sharif el-Gamal; it is 15-stories, not 13, and the renderings showed a 2-story mosque at the top of it. They continue to literally hide (and rhetorically deny) from the public that the faithful would overlook Ground Zero. The[y] have the legal right to build it there yet that does not make it right.

9/11, Cordoba House, Debra Burlingame, El-Gamal, Ground Zero, Imam Rauf, sharia, Shariah

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

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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.