Mosque to be Built Near Ground Zero

You don't speak for the American people, Hawk. Never will.

Just heard that the pastor in Florida will continue with the Koran burning on 9/11

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They have the US Constitution, the 9-11 (200) families, and the zoning commission of NYC on their side. Who's on yours? The teaparty?

The American people

So amazing that that needs to be mentioned!

Many Muslims are also American people.

Cicerone Imposter wrote:

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They have the US Constitution, the 9-11 (200) families, and the zoning commission of NYC on their side. Who's on yours? The teaparty?

Hawkeye responded:

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The American people

Intgrepid wrote:

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Many Muslims are also American people.

Who has denied this?

So, are you saying that the American Muslims agree with you

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So, are you saying that the American Muslims agree with you

I assume that American Muslims are as reported divided on this project going forwards. Also it is my belief that the number of citizens who are Muslim is less than 1%,so their opinion is statistically insignificant when one is speaking of what the opinion of America is.

The Mosque at Ground Zero, a Muslim View: Planting a Flag on an Islamic Conquest
by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
May 27, 2010

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1346/mosque-at-ground-zero-muslim-view



As a believing Muslim, it is hard to see a mosque at Ground Zero in New York City as anything other than another horror-- a kick on the face to everyone who is still heavy with shock at the tragic death of 3,000 people killed by Islamist militants during the attack on 9/11. The mosque will cost over US$ 100 million; by now, money is already being shifted in the fund for its construction. Incidentally, a major segment of this money is coming from Arab nations, especially Saudis.

At this time, the largest mosque and cultural center in Manhattan is The Islamic Cultural Center of New York. This $17 million dollar center opened on April 15, 1991, just after the First Gulf War ended. Since September 11th, 2001, a number of controversial statements have came from at least two of the Center's leaders, both of them blaming the Jewish population for the attacks and denying any Muslim involvement.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is planning the Islamic Community Center and mosque near Ground Zero says his critics are bigots, and that the project will stamp out terrorism -- not fan the flames: "We condemn terrorists," said Rauf, who is leading the charge to build the Cordoba House, as it is called. "We recognize it exists in our faith, but we are committed to eradicate it. We want to rebuild this community. This is about moderate Muslims who intend to be and want to be part of the solution."

However, Rauf is also on record telling CNN, right after the 9/11 attacks, "U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime that happened. We [the U.S.] have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. Osama bin Laden was made in the USA."

Elsewhere, Rauf has stated that terrorism will end only when the West acknowledges the harm it has done to Muslims. And that it was Christians who started mass attacks on civilians

NEW YORK — American Muslims who support the proposed mosque and Islamic center near ground zero are facing skeptics within their own faith — those who argue that the project is insensitive to Sept. 11 victims and needlessly provocative at a time when Muslims are pressing for wider acceptance in the U.S.

"For most Americans, 9/11 remains as an open wound, and anything associated with Islam, even for Americans who want to understand Islam — to have an Islamic center with so much publicity is like rubbing salt in open wounds," said Akbar Ahmed, professor of Islamic studies at American University, a former Pakistani ambassador to Britain and author of "Journey Into America, The Challenge of Islam." He said the space should include a synagogue and a church so it will truly be interfaith

The answer to radical Islam is liberal, pluralistic, democracy. There’s a reason for that. Islam itself is screwed. No major Islamic leader in the world today preaches a message even remotely close to what most of the new American “let’s build the mosque” crew would find even barely tolerable.

Let me do this the short way. Al-Azhar is the world’s leading center of Islamic scholarship. I was mooching around there the other month myself. One of the faculty there, for want of a better term, has just given an interview in which he mentions the ground zero mosque. As it happens he is one of those “Islamophobes” who is opposed to the building. But not for the obvious reasons. Dr. Abd Al-Mu'ti Bayumi, a member of Al-Azhar's Islamic Research Academy, said that the mosque's construction was a mistake because it could link Islam to 9/11. The good doctor says it's a mistake to make that link, and suggests that even the building of the mosque is yet another extension of an ingenious plot organized by—come on, you can guess it—the Jews

The debate over building a Muslim community center so close to where terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam killed more than 2,700 people has attracted the intense views of political and religious leaders, victims’ families and pundits. But the outcome could have its most lasting impact on the estimated 600,000 Muslim residents in New York and its suburbs.

Many of them expressed a welter of mixed feelings in interviews this week on street corners, in stores and in mosques: Some said they felt embittered or hurt by criticism of the project, and of Islam in general, yet understood opponents’ misgivings. Others said Muslim-Americans should continue to push for the center’s construction as a means of asserting their full citizenship rights — but not too hard, lest they draw even more resentment. A few said they wished the project had never been proposed in the first place.