NYC board OKs ground zero mosque
By ASSOCIATED PRESS 05/26/2010
NEW YORK— After hours of contentious public comment, a New York City community board voted late Tuesday to support a plan to build a mosque and cultural center near ground zero.
"It's a seed of peace," board member Rob Townley said. "We believe that this is a significant step in the Muslim community to counteract the hate and fanaticism in the minority of the community."
The vote was 29-to-1 in favor of the plan, with 10 abstentions. The move by the Manhattan Community Board 1, while not necessary for the building's owners to move forward with the project, is seen as key to obtaining residents' support.
The organizations sponsoring the project say they're trying to meet a growing need for prayer space in lower Manhattan, as well as provide a venue for the dissemination of mainstream Islam, to counter extremism.
"The moderate Muslim voice has been squashed in America," said Bruce Wallace, who said he lost a nephew in the Sept. 11 attacks. "Here is a chance to allow moderate Muslims to teach people that not all Muslims are terrorists."
Others at the meeting had a different view.
"We think it's an insult," said Pamela Geller, executive director of Stop Islamization of America. "It's demeaning to non-Muslims to build a shrine dedicated to the very ideology that inspired 9/11."
The plan, which would include areas for interfaith activities and conferences and an arts center, has attracted political and social opposition.
Conservative tea party activist Mark Williams has called the proposed center a monument to the terror attacks. And some Sept. 11 victims' families say they're angry it would be built so close to where their relatives died.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who has been the target of disparaging remarks by Williams for supporting the plans, defended his position and denounced offensive speech directed at him or at Muslims.
"What I want people to do is to take a look at the totality of what they are proposing," Stringer said. "What we're rejecting here is outright bigotry and hatred."
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said there were no security concerns about building a mosque in the area.
Stringer said he understood the sensitivities of the families of 9/11 victims.
"I don't think anybody wants to do anything to disrespect those families. They made the ultimate sacrifice," he said. "At the same time, we have to balance diversity and look for opportunities to bring different groups together."
The American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, the organizations sponsoring the project, have said that they bought the building in 2009 and planned to break ground later this year. It could take up to three years to build the Cordoba House. A Friday prayer service has been held at the building since September 2009.
SIOA at Manhattan Community Board meeting on the 9/11 Mosque -- the fix was in
Tonight Community Board 1 in lower Manhattan held a hearing to discuss the proposed thirteen-story (some reports say fifteen-story) mosque to be built at Ground Zero. It was a curious exercise, since the Board has no power to vote the mosque up or down, but since it offered citizens an open forum, it became an opportunity for people to voice their opposition to the mosque project -- and mosque proponents were up to the challenge, ready with speakers, a Power Point presentation, and prepared statements from politicians, including Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer and Congressman Jerrold Nadler. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader of the Cordoba House Mosque initiative, and his wife Daisy Khan were there, along with a large number of their supporters.
The leadership of Stop Islamization of America -- Pamela Geller and I -- was there as well. Hindu activists were there. Jewish activists were there. Christian activists were there. An ex-Muslim spoke via a cellphone held up to the microphone. It was a wonderful display of the unity among those threatened by jihad and Islamic supremacism that I've been calling for for years.
The atmosphere was rowdy, with tempers running high. The mosque proponents and the politicians were primarily responsible for this, as they immediately began to brand the opponents of the mosque initiative as racists and bigots. The local city councilwoman, whose name I believe was Chan, characterized all opposition to the mosque as hatred and bigotry, and said that to support the mosque was simply a matter of tolerance and pluralism. Mosque proponents distributed a written statement from Stringer, favoring the mosque and saying: "I for one never want to see our country or our city abandon religious tolerance as the result of an act of violence, even one as unspeakable as the 9/11 attacks."
This kind of talk angered the mosque opponents in the crowd, and there were many. There was a great deal of catcalling and booing of the multiculturalist platitudes and self-righteous moralizing, and the schoolmarmish chairperson of the Community Board repeatedly warned catcallers in the crowd that they would be held "out of order" -- but their threats were as toothless and empty as their moralizing, and the indignation of the crowd would break out repeatedly throughout the evening whenever another bemused liberal or smooth-talking Muslim would excoriate "hatred" and "bigotry" and extol "tolerance." Daisy Khan showed a brief Power Point presentation that said, among other things, that the Islamic Center would help non-Muslims to integrate.
Interesting word choice. Not help Muslims to integrate into the American secular fabric, but to help non-Muslims to integrate. Into...a Sharia state? Is that the goal?
Those who wanted to speak filled out forms giving their names and their planned topics, and were each allotted two minutes, although pro-mosque speakers were frequently given much longer. Feisal Abdul Rauf must have taken ten minutes, and Daisy Khan about that long. I put down on my form something like "Sharia law" as my topic, and turned it in. It became clear as soon as speakers started being called that the people running the show planned to call only supporters of the mosque initiative first -- apparently so that as the speakers started to make the same points that had already been made by earlier speakers, and people started to leave the hall, the s ide that would be given short shrift would be the mosque opponents. So imagine my surprise when, very early in the meeting, when several people had already spoken for the mosque and scolded the "bigotry" of its opponents, the Board called as just the fourth or fifth speaker...Pamela Geller.
Pamela, who is always a dynamic speaker, gave the speech of her life -- I am hoping that video will be posted soon. She explained how historically Cordoba was actually a place where Jews and Christians were oppressed, and a pogrom against the Jews saw thousands murdered in 1011, and so for the mosque organizers to dub their initiative "Cordoba House" was not quite the tolerant, multicultural signal that everyone was taking it to be. She spoke about respecting the sensitivities of the 9/11 victims, and a great deal more. Her speech seemed to rattle the Board chairperson, who apparently hadn't expected a mosque opponent -- and particularly such a passionate and eloquent one -- to speak so early in the program, and shut down the speakers in favor of a lengthy and tedious discussion of parliamentary procedure and just what could and could not be decided by the Board that night.
Afterward, when I told Pamela how surprised I was that she got to speak in the first part of the program, amidst all the mosque supporters, she said it was because she wrote as her topic "Outreach." So she was chosen as one who would speak out in favor of the mosque, and didn't deliver quite what they had expected -- although her topic certainly was "outreach," all right, as in the reaching out of Sharia and Islamic supremacism.
The meeting dragged on. After a long dry spell, the speakers were called again. Several speakers spoke powerfully about how their opposition to the mosque wasn't hatred and bigotry at all, and criticized the Board and the pols for saying otherwise. Some said they opposed it because it was an insult to the victims of that terrible day. Some said they opposed it because while they'd have no problem with a mosque anywhere else, they thought it was insensitive to put it at Ground Zero. Some quoted some of Abdul Rauf's statements blaming America for 9/11 and supporting Sharia. A few did say that a realistic appraisal of Islamic doctrine would make any non-Muslim suicidally stupid to support a mosque in his neighborhood. Some said they opposed it because the mosque leaders and Board members were not being honest -- and that was certainly true. One Board member early on said that the Islamic Center at Ground Zero would contain no mosque. But then Abdul Rauf said that it would contain a "prayer area." And then Daisy Khan, apparently forgetting the smoothly deceptive script, asked the crowd (to multitudinous catcalls), "There are 200 mosques in New York. What's the problem with another?"
The circus atmosphere continued throughout the evening. Someone distributed pretzels to the crowd. At one point a man in a clerical collar appeared and would blow loudly on a shofar whenever a speaker who opposed the mosque finished addressing the crowd. The crowd never let the befuddled liberals of the Board and the smiling deceivers from the Muslim group get away with anything. But as the meeting neared the three-hour mark and talks grew repetitive and tedious indeed, Pamela and I both left, even though I hadn't yet been called to speak. After all, the Board can't decide anything. And it is abundantly clear that whoever really holds the cards on this issue has made his decision already.
At around 10:30, according to Jamie of HRCARI, after a five and a half hour meeting, the Board voted, 29 for, 9 against, one abstention, to approve the mosque. Many Board members took the opportunity to say that they had never seen such hatred spewed at their meetings, etc. -- and they didn't mean the Sharia supremacists. Immediately after the vote the press was given a written statement from Stringer congratulating the Board for voting as they did, which indicates that he knew all along the way the vote was going to go.
But that doesn't mean that the 9/11 Mosque is a fait accompli. Oh, no. The people in that room tonight who knew that they were being lied to and sold a bill of goods are not going to take this lying down. This is why it is all the more crucial for you, if you possibly can, to attend our June 6 rally at noon at Zucotti Park in lower Manhattan. This is our last chance to make our voices heard. And we will be heard.
9/11 Mosque imam tells U.S. media that mosque funds would be raised here, then tells Arab media that mosque will get funding from Muslim countries
A smooth deceiver is caught out. "Foreign mosque money: Arabs to help pay," by Tom Topousis for the New York Post, May 25 (thanks to Twostellas):The imam behind a proposed mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero will turn to Arab and Muslim nations around the world to help finance the estimated $100 million project, he has told a London-based Arabic newspaper.
Plans for the project, a proposed 13-story building at 45 Park Place, has generated enormous controversy among some 9/11 families who say it's too close to Ground Zero.
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....
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