Pamela Geller
World Net Daily has an excellent piece on the atrocity about to be built at Ground Zero. Hats off to WND. No other media will cover this issue in a forthright, honest, rational fashion. Shame on the elites and the information power brokers for submitting to a self-enforced sharia.
Sign the petition to stop the mosque here.
Islamic mosque at 9/11 Ground Zero sparks protest WNDPlease read it all.
A human-rights group is calling on Americans – especially family and friends of loved ones who were lost when Muslim terrorists murdered 2,751 people in the name of Allah on Sept. 11, 2001 – to fight construction of a 13-story Islamic mosque to be built just steps from Ground Zero.
The five-story building at Park Place, just blocks north of the former World Trade Center site, was the site of a Burlington Coat Factory. That was, until a plane's landing-gear assembly crashed through the roof on the day 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked the airliners and flew them into the Twin Towers in 2001.
Now Muslim worshippers currently occupy the building, and they plan to turn it into a major Islamic cultural center called the Cordoba House.
The group Stop Islamization of America, or SIOA, led by Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs blogger and columnist, is hosting a "No 9/11 Mosque" rally at Ground Zero June 6 at noon to protest the construction.
"What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack?" asked Geller, executive director of SIOA. "Any decent, American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn't dream of such an insult. It's a stab in eye of America."
As WND reported, the building – previously vacant since that fateful day when time stood still as millions of Americans grieved the loss of loved ones, friends, family members, co-workers and strangers – was purchased last July by real-estate company Soho Properties, a business run by Muslims. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, or ASMA, was an investor in that transaction.
Rauf has announced his plans to turn the building into a complete Islamic cultural center, with a mosque, a museum, "merchandising options," and room for seminars to reconcile religions, "to counteract the backlash against Muslims in general, " Speigel reported. The project may cost as much as $150 million. Plans for the facility also include a 500-seat performing arts theater, fitness center, swimming pool, library, public conference rooms, basketball courts and restaurants, according to the Tribeca Tribune.
Imam Rauf, born in Egypt, has written three books: "What's Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West," "Islam: A Sacred Law" and "Islam: A Search for Meaning."
WND reported in 2003 when, at least four times that year, the FBI's New York field office held all-day sensitivity training sessions, not far from Ground Zero, featuring Rauf.
Speaking for about two hours each session, "he gave an overview of Islamic culture and some of the differences between what fundamentalist terrorist groups say are the teachings of the Quran and what he believes, as a student of religion, the Quran actually says," said special agent James Margolin, spokesman for the FBI New York office.
Rauf asserted that the Quran "certainly doesn't counsel terrorism, murder or mayhem," Margolin said. And he said terrorists have misinterpreted the Quranic term "jihad" to mean violent, or armed, struggle against nonbelievers. Rauf claims it means internal struggle.
Rauf was invited to speak in Sydney, Australia, by Premier Bob Carr in 2004. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, he said the U.S. and the West must acknowledge the harm they've done to Muslims before terrorism can end.
He said the West must understand the terrorists' point of view – and he blamed Christians for starting mass attacks on civilians.
"The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets," he said.
