Posted on January 15, 2011 by creeping sharia
The Muslim leader behind the beleaguered Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero is being sidelined as part of a major leadership shakeup, organizers of the controversial project announced yesterday.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will no longer be the chief religious figure in the project — though he will still play a lesser, behind-the-scenes, role in support of the planned 13-story, $100 million facility, officials said.
Rauf’s replacement, Imam Abdallah Adhami, who has been active in New York’s Muslim community, will now handle religious programming for the project, known as Park51.
Park51 organizers downplayed Rauf’s diminished role — emphasizing the imam has just launched a nationwide tour on interfaith relations. He will address the Islamic Society in North America’s diversity conference today in Detroit.
They also note he remains on Park51′s board of directors.
There’s been speculation since the summer that relations had soured between Rauf and Sharif El-Gamal, the president and chief developer of Park51.
“It is an honor for me, personally, to welcome Imam Adhami to our team. I look forward to his leadership and assistance in the development of Park51,” El-Gamal said.
Born in Washington, Adhami has a degree in architecture from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute.
AP photos
Critics of the project pointed out that Adhami has a link to Imam Siraj Wahhaj, of Brooklyn, whom prosecutors fingered as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wahhaj also was a character witness in the trial of convicted terror plotter Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.
Adhami designed Wahhaj’s Brooklyn mosque, Masjid al Taqwa. Wahhaj also is highlighted on an Adhami-created Web site, Sakeenah.org.
Adhami called the appointment “an extraordinary opportunity to be a key adviser on a project going forward that has enormous creative and healing potential.”
Tim Brown, a retired firefighter who responded to the 9/11 attacks and has sued to block the mosque, said it sounded like Park51 and Rauf “got a divorce.”
“Imam Rauf can’t raise money needed for the project. He’s toxic. He’s only hurt the 9/11 survivors, not built bridges,” Brown said.
Brown was troubled by Adhami’s link toWahhaj.
“Siraj Wahhaj is as radical as you can get,” he said.
We’ve covered Wahhaj many times including his speeched inciting Muslims in the U.S. to wage jihad.
Wahhaj’s profile from Discover the Networks:
In a 1992 address to an audience of Muslims in New Jersey, Wahhaj expressed his desire to see Muslims seize control of the United States and replace its constitutional government with an Islamic caliphate. “If we were united and strong,” Wahhaj said, “we’d elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him…. [T]ake my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.”
Listen to this Siraj Wahhaj speech where he states Islam commands jihad of the true soldiers of Allah (SoA)…and says Muslims all over the world are getting their butts kicked, except those Muslims in Afghanistan.
More on Wahhaj in these previous Creeping Sharia posts.
Even dhimmi Mayor Bloomberg knows that Siraj Wahhaj is as radical as you can get. Unfortunately, Bloomberg was friendly with Wahhaj until it was pointed out that Wahhaj is an unindicted co-conspirator and long-time supporter of the convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind. Bloomberg regrets greeting ’93 WTC ‘plotter’.
Does Adhami support sharia as feverishly as Rauf and Khan? What lurks in his background?
He was listed as a speaker at another unindicted co-conspirator and Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamist group’s 2010 conference as we posted on here, ISNA’s annual convention, over July 4th, a Who’s Who of Islamist’s and jihad supporters. Expect more of the same under a different name
Note:
We will be tracking this issue until someone in Washington with an understanding that this project is an insult to all Americans is able to stop the building of this mosque on the ashes of our dead - or, until the Muslims grasp that no amount of speeches about "tolerance" will change the hearts and minds of Americans. On Sept. 11th and for the past ten years, Americans are at War with Terrorism, due to Islamic ideology and hatred towards the West and our allies.. Nothing changes history, and Americans shall "never forget". No memorial to Islam is acceptable at Ground Zero.
