Ground Zero Mosque

Before I get on to talking about Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, I was just listening to "On Point" with Tom Ashbrook (sp?).  They topic was essentially American adventurism and the subtext was wouldn't we be better in trying something else?

A woman called and seriously proposed that by quadrupling the Peace Corps, we could send brave Peace Corps volunteers to remote places in Afghanistan and elsewhere, people just as brave as our soldiers, and get far greater bang for the buck.  The guest speaker, a former military guys (probably supply corps) hemmed and hawed and agreed that it would be a good idea but perhaps of limited effect in places like Afghanistan.

Herein lies one of the great problems: Liberals, while maybe "having their heart in the right place" fundamentally do not understand Islam or America's enemies.  The sort answer is that if you send Peace Corps types to rural Afghanistan, they will not return. They will die, most of them horribly. And someone who should know that is too chicken to come out and say that for fear of the Political Police -- listening to NPR, you are unlikely to ever hear anyone "tell the truth." Instead of accepting that somehow if we listened to "them" we could give them what they want -- NPR listeners need to hear a bit of history and then cold facts.

Islam means "submission" and a Muslim is one who submits (a "masdar noun" of the root from which "Islam" also comes ... salama). That is whole gig right there. Submission, completely and wholly does not brook "acceptance" and "understanding" -- the Qu'ran is also clear about spreading the submission and subjugating those who don't. There is NO acceptable tolerance ... the very notion would be an incomplete submission to the word of the Prophet (may his name be praised).  There is no going back either: if born to a Muslim father, you are Muslim ... period. If you worship another God or practice another faith, while considered to be Muslim, you are apostate. The penalty is death. In this way, God and the Prophet come before any silly notions of nationality and sovereignty. Islam above all else.  Read this link:

http://www.answering-islam.org/Hoaxes/salamislam.html

From this you can see that if you are a true believer, the eventual spread of Islam over the world, and then the Universe is the only possible path.   The Saudi financed Mosque is about the future while remembering the past.  In some way, Christianity never quite achieved that level of control -- Islam requires 5 prayers each day.  Everyday speech is peppered with references to the Prophet, while only in the most devout would one hear mention of the Lord as routinely as the Prophet in the Islamic world.   To be sure, there are hypocrites in Islam, Saudi playboys, drunk Gulfies (ghaleegees), but the willingness to die for the literal word of the Prophet is something long past in Christianity, and even then, it was more likely about personal gain than something like 72 virgins.

To our Western minds it would seem preposterous that lands that they were kicked out of in conquest some thousand years ago would still be considered to be sacred and indelibly part of an Islamic state ... but placed into this context, the Palestinian / Jewish question makes a lot more sense. We Americans do not have a religious attachment to the land, some sort of grant or right by God -- excepting, perhaps the Mormons. Even the Europeans -- whose history is an unending series of conquests and counter-conquests have a nationalism, but not a religious identity as the common bond. Even at the height of Catholic domination, nations still fought each other over territory and as religion faded into obscurity with enlightenment (education and industrialization), national identity became paramount and religious affiliation a sidebar.

That has never really happened in Islam. A Muslim is first, foremost and always Muslim. Maybe the sects fight over territory and control of "belief", but as against the infidel (us) it is "kill the infidel." TO a certain extent Saddam Hussein was post-Islamic -- and the Shah of Iran, too. But in hindsight, it does not appear to have "taken": witness the state of post Baathist Iraq or the Iranian theocracy.  The Western loss of religious fervor is consistent with educational levels rising within the population. In Islam, religious education comes first -- and the Saudi fund madrassas (Islamic schools) all over the world. Other education, comes a distant second and for women, in many places, not at all.  Only the elite are really educated in the way that we know, far better to rule the great seething masses bent on the violent spread of the Prophet's word.

So to Rauf. Rauf apparently wants this mosque to  be a center for inter-faith understanding -- this is the spin that Mayor Bloomberg and his Liberal cronies buy into. But Rauf has recently also preached -- within 400 yards of the ex-Word Trade Center that Muslims did not commit the atrocity, rather it was U.S. policies that were "an accessory to the crimes that happened ... that Osama bin Laden was created in the U.S."  He further states that terrorism will only stop when the West accepts blame for the harm done to Muslims and accept that Christians started it.   Just as an aside, why was the United States Navy created?  Look it up!!!

Rauf created the Cordoba initiative -- and the Sharia Index. That measure is an estimate of how closely any given society follows Sharia. The goal is 100%, worldwide. The mosque to be is the "Cordoba House" -- named after the golden age of the Ummayad dynasty, the benevolent rule of Muslim caliphs of a large empire centered on Cordoba.  During that period, Jews and Christians were tolerated only so long as they paid their infidel tax, but in all respects were second class citizens.Very benevolent, if you happened to want to be Muslim. Also note that the Qu'ran also dictates that everone must live under Sharia whether they are Muslim or not. So Rauf wants that for us, here, too. Clearly, that cannot co-exist under or with the Constitution of the United States, which means that, by definition, he must seek to overthrow our rule of law. His Cordoba initiative is precisely that, and consistent with CAIR's objectives too  -- CAIR, if you remember is the Council on American Islamic Relations that supports Hammas (and was, until Eric Holder squashed it, the subject of a DOJ investigation of funding terrorists) and has openly planned the eventual Islamic take-over of the United States.

Hidden, too, is the source of funding of the Cordoba House -- although only an idiot could fail to see Saudi pockets in the background -- the website ackowledges funding from Malaysia and Saudi. Just under $5 million to buy the land and air-rights and a further $150 million to build.  Saudi Arabia has consistently funded Islamic initiatives and mosques throughout the world and here in the U.S. A previous Rauf project, Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, was openly funded by Saudi Arabia. For a sovereign nation to meddle with something so deeply offending to the United States (and Saudi Arabia a place where mere mention of the Bible can get you a police questioning) shows a supreme disregard for our system and way of life.

Complete idiots like Bloomberg, the NYT editorial staff and our [p]resident of the United States see this as a sign to the world of our tolerance. Our living up to our "religious freedom" claims.  So stupidly superficial is that "tolerance," that is is hard to explain how they got elected. Unlike, say Buddhism, Islam seeks absolute control of the government's administrative apparatus. Islam is more a political and economic machine, a hybrid between a nation-state and a religion -- more like the Vatican in the 16th Century, but without the Pope (although the Saudi King, the various Ayatollahs and Imams might each like that role).  The point here is that this threat is not something like a bad dream involving the Spanish Inquisition, but its here and now.

So there IS greater symbolism -- and strategy --  involved that the mere construction of a mosque.  And Islam is NOT just another religion.