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, Ground Zero, Imam Rauf, Islamists

Foreign Money Mosque; Arabs to Help Pay (Cordoba House near Ground Zero)

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Cordoba Initiative leader Imam Rauf had stated that the $4.85 million to purchase the Burlington Coat Factory came “from the community,” as if to indicate local money. Apparently, raising $100 million plus to build a 15-story mosque at Ground Zero just two blocks north of the World Trade Center requires he reach out a bit further, as a report this morning in the New York Post explains:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has insisted the project he’s spearheading is meant to build bridges between Muslims and other religions, but so far he has not been able to cite any specific sources of funding.

But in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Rauf told the newspaper that funding would come from Muslims in the United States and from overseas.

“Imam Abdul Rauf … told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Islamic center will be financed through contributions from Muslims in the US, as well as by donations from Arab and Islamic countries,” the newspaper reported.

Rauf did not return a call for comment.

In interviews with US media, Rauf has insisted funds would be raised here.

“We hope to raise it from a combination of gifts from the local Muslim community and perhaps from some combination of bonds or something like that,” Rauf told WABC Radio’s Aaron Klein last week.

Foreign funding raises red flags for Debra Burlingame, a member of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America, which is organizing to block the project that she says is really aimed at converting people to Islam.

“The money is very important,” said Burlingame, whose brother was a pilot aboard the hijacked jetliner that struck the Pentagon. “They can’t do what they do — I’m talking about Islamists — without the money coming from somewhere.”