Mosque to be Built Near Ground Zero

green, with purple and orange polka dots.

Were those dots in celebration
of what he did on Sept. 1, 1939?





David

Here is evidence that 5 Israelis were celebrating the WTC attacks.

http://killtown.blogspot.com/2005/11/dancing-israelis-on-911.html

"August 25, 2010

Looking at Islamic Center Debate, World Sees U.S.

By THANASSIS CAMBANIS

For more than two decades, Abdelhamid Shaari has been lobbying a succession of governments in Milan for permission to build a mosque for his congregants — any mosque at all, in any location.

For now, he leads Friday Prayer in a stadium normally used for rock concerts. When sites were proposed for mosques in Padua and Bologna, Italy, a few years ago, opponents from the anti-immigrant Northern League paraded pigs around them. The projects were canceled.

In that light, the furor over the precise location of Park51, the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, looks to Mr. Shaari like something to aspire to. “At least in America,” Mr. Shaari said, “there’s a debate.”

Across the world, the bruising struggle over an Islamic center near ground zero has elicited some unexpected reactions.

For many in Europe, where much more bitter struggles have taken place over bans on facial veils in France and minarets in Switzerland, America’s fight over Park51 seems small fry, essentially a zoning spat in a culture war.

But others, especially in countries with nothing similar to the constitutional separation of church and state, find it puzzling that there is any controversy at all. In most Muslim nations, the state not only determines where mosques are built, but what the clerics inside can say.

The one constant expressed, regardless of geography, is that even though many in the United States have framed the future of the community center as a pivotal referendum on the core issues of religion, tolerance and free speech, those outside its borders see the debate as a confirmation of their pre-existing feelings about the country, whether good or bad.

“America hates Islam,” said Mohaimen Jabar, the owner of a clothes shop in Baghdad, Iraq.

“If America loved us, it would help the Palestinians and stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said. “It would stop Iran and Israel from distorting the image of Islam.”

Interestingly, leaders in Iran, Afghanistan and even occasionally prickly rivals like China and Russia — both of which have their own tensions in some of their heavily Muslim regions — have refrained from making much of the Park51 debate.

China’s state-run news media has used the story to elaborate on the need for a secular state strong enough to police extremism, a matter near and dear to its own ideology.

American diplomats are selling the controversy as Exhibit A in the case for America as a bastion of free debate and religious tolerance.

But “the harmonious image of the melting pot, of the ability to integrate all immigrant ethnicities is tottering dangerously,” Federico Rampini wrote in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

That was echoed by Pierre Rousselin, a French columnist writing in Le Figaro: “America is discovering that its Constitution and liberal principles don’t protect her from the debates that the practice of Islam stirs up in our countries.”

In Thailand, which has contended with its own Islamic insurgency, an editorial in The Nation worried aloud that America’s handling of the cultural center would affect relations worldwide between Muslims and non-Muslims. “If the era of former President George W. Bush tells us anything, it is that how the U.S. deals with the Muslim world affects us all,” the editorial said.

Far more common, however, was a sort of shrug of the shoulders from clerics and observers accustomed to far more unpleasant debates. While extremists have presented the controversy as proof of American hostility toward Islam, some religious leaders have taken quite a different stance, arguing against placing the center close to ground zero.

Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Grande Mosquée of Paris and one of the most senior Islamic clerics in France, told France-Soir: “There are symbolic places that awaken memories whether you mean to or not. And it isn’t good to awaken memories.”

A senior cleric at Egypt’s Al Azhar, the closest equivalent in the Sunni Islamic world to the Vatican, said that building at the proposed location sounded like bad judgment on the part of American Muslims.

“It will create a permanent link between Islam and 9/11,” said Abdel Moety Bayoumi, a member of the Islamic Research Institute at Al Azhar. “Why should we put ourselves and Islam in a position of blame?”

That is not to say that the language in the United States has not agitated some observers, like Aziz Tarek, who wrote on the Saudi Web site Watan that America was in the grip of “intolerance and racism.”

He referred to Newt Gingrich’s widely reported statement that there should not be a new mosque in Lower Manhattan until Saudi Arabia allows construction of churches or synagogues.

“How can they compare building a mosque in N.Y. with building whatever in Mecca?” Mr. Tarek wrote. “I thought they viewed themselves better than that country of Saudi Arabia with its many human rights violations, as they love to put it.”

One Cambridge University researcher, writing in the Palestinian daily Al Ayyam, said Muslims could win their case for a center near ground zero in a court of law, only to end up losing in the court of public opinion.

“Provoking the other side will eventually create public opinion that will undermine the very laws that the Muslims evoke today,” wrote the researcher, Khaled al-Haroub, adding that many Muslim states do not tolerate Christian or Jewish houses of worship: “We keep increasing our religious demands vis-à-vis the West, while refusing to meet even a few of the demands made by religious minorities living among us.”

Paradoxically, the public reaction has not been heated in Lebanon, a country with 18 recognized religious sects where Muslims and Christians have a long history of occasionally violent coexistence.

If the mosque were built, many Lebanese commentators said, it would increase the influence of the ideal of the secular state. Many Lebanese, however, seemed more interested that Miss U.S.A., Rima Fakih, a Lebanese-American, had suggested that Park51 seek another location, than in the debate itself.

“Let’s be honest, it is kind of weird to build it there,” said Samer Ghandour, 33. “But the U.S. is also incredibly polarized and does not tolerate Islam.”

Mahmoud Haddad, a history professor at the University of Balamand in Lebanon, said that “the Muslim community should take the high moral and political ground” and agree to move the center, even though it has every right to build near ground zero.

“They should show they are more concerned about the general good of all Americans,” said Mr. Haddad, who studied and taught in the United States for two decades. “American society refuses to accept Muslims, even of the Westernized type, and consider them as a potential risk at best.”

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the project leader, has been speaking about his Cordoba Initiative on a two-week tour of the Persian Gulf sponsored by the State Department, although he has gingerly avoided discussing the Park51 location.

“What’s happening in America is very healthy,” said Muhammad Al-Zekri, a Bahraini anthropologist, after spending an evening with the imam.

The United States, he said, was still assimilating historical influences, including Islam, into its inaccurate self-image as a solely Judeo-Christian nation. The construction of Park51, Mr. Zekri believes, will help shape that.

“We pray for the people of New York, for peace,” Mr. Zekri said solemnly. “And if it matters, we apologize for what those people have done on 9/11.”

Thanassis Cambanis reported from Bahrain. Reporting was contributed by Anthony Shadid from Baghdad, Maïa de la Baume from Paris, Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem, Nada Bakri from Lebanon, Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome, Mona El-Naggar from Cairo and Thomas Fuller from Thailand. Li Bibo contributed research from Beijing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/26islamic.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globaleua4&pagewanted=print

New York cab driver stabbed after saying he was Muslim

I wonder if he will claim the "Fox News" defense.

What is really disappointing about this article is that it draws a connection between the cultural center and the attack that is not supported by any facts. The attacker did not mention the mosque, nor did the cab driver say it was a factor. The attacker could have been motivated by any number of perceived offenses, but this story goes off into the ground zero story line.

Is that related to the Twinkie Defense?

A
R
Too much "sugar" or "artificial sweetener?"

I was of the same opinion as you. Until, I read a statement from the victim.
"I have been here more than 25 years," Ahmed H. Sharif said in a statement. "I have been driving a taxi more than 15 years. All my four kids were born here. I never feel this hopeless and insecure before. Right now, the public sentiment is very serious (because of the Ground Zero Mosque debate.) All drivers should be more careful."

Still, I guess the connection helps their headline. Also, they seem to be connecting the timing of the attack and the timing of the protests rather than the Mosque situation being the cause of the attack.

It does seem clear that the attack was because the victim was Muslim, regardless of whether the Mosque situation was a motivating factor.

Fair point, but I think more generally speaking it does support the case that tensions are high and anti-Muslim feelings are prevalent. Whether the taxi driver would have been stabbed without the Park51 issue is unknown, but it does seem apparent that he was targeted specifically for being Muslim.

A
R
T

Actually I think the article said the attack came as tensions over the Mosque have heated up (or words to that effect.) I don't think the article said the Mosque was a factor.

What is really weird is apparently this guy has done work with interfaith dialogue and volunteer work in Afghanistan.

They are now denying that he ever worked for them.

The article went on to describe the cultural center site (with picture) and discuss protests at the proposed site. I thought it was clearly trying to make a connection between the two events that is not supported by the facts of the case. If the perpetrator says he was motived by the controversy, then I think the article is fine, but that hasn't happened yet.

I don't think they were trying to infer a connection, merely pointing out the heated tensions in NYC right which has been brought on by the Mosque controversy. I don't see anything wrong with it and it would have been kind of weird not to bring up Mosque controversy with this event considering all the debate we have been having in the whole country concerning Islam as a religion and all Muslims being thought of as terrorist ever since the story broke.

Bingo! Hate and intolerance knows no boundaries; it's blind. I still remember the Indian shop worker who was killed after 9-11 in Arizona, because he looked like a Muslim.

I believe that the article predates the attack in time.

Attacks on Sikhs post 911

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/imam-rauf-and-moderate-islam/?pagemode=print

"AUGUST 25, 2010, 7:34 PM

Imam Rauf and Moderate Islam

To some extent, the controversy surrounding the Cordoba Initiative’s Lower Manhattan venture is really a controversy about how non-Muslim Westerners should relate to the would-be spokesmen for a moderate (or “moderate,” depending on your point of view) Islam. One school of thought, prominent among conservatives but associated with liberal thinkers like Paul Berman as well, holds that anything short of an absolute commitment to Enlightenment values is unacceptable from such figures, and that moderate Muslims must demonstrate this commitment, and prove their secular bona fides, by making a frontal assault on Islamic culture as it currently exists. To this school, explicitly-liberal figures like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Irshad Manji represent the beau ideal of moderate Islam, because they’re forthright in their critiques of Muslim societies’ failings, and unstinting in their insistence that the Western way of faith and politics is ultimately superior. A high-profile bridge-builder like the ubiquitous Tariq Ramadan, on the other hand, is much more suspect, and possibly beyond the pale — because he tends to use different language and strike different notes depending on his audience, because he often seems to be making excuses for illiberalism in the Islamic world, because he’s less-than-forthright in his condemnations of certain kinds of extremism, and so on down the line. To his critics, such bobbing and weaving is proof enough that his “moderate Islam” project is really just a flowery fraud and a Trojan Horse for Wahhabism, with no redeeming value whatsoever. And this critique is easily extended to many other self-described moderates as well — including, lately, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who arguably has a stronger claim to moderation than Ramadan, but who seems to share some of his more evasive qualities when the conversation turns to, say, Hamas or the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This school of thought strikes me as misguided. Manji and Hirsi Ali are brave and admirable, but what they’re offering (Hirsi Ali especially) is ultimately a straightforward critique of Muslim traditions and belief, not a bridge between Islam and the liberal West that devout Muslims can cross with their religious faith intact. If such bridges are going to be built, much of the work will necessarily be done by figures who sometimes seem ambiguous and even two-faced, who have illiberal conversation partners and influences, and whose ideas are tailored to audiences in Cairo or Beirut or Baghdad as well as audiences in Europe and America. That’s how change — religious, ideological, whatever — nearly always works. I hold no particular brief for Tariq Ramadan, and his critics have provided ample evidence of his slipperiness over the years. But we have to be able to draw intellectual distinctions on these matters, and if we just lump a figure like Ramadan — or any Muslim leader who has one foot solidly in the Western mainstream but a few toes in more dangerous waters — into the same camp as Islam’s theocrats and jihadists, then we’re placing an impossible burden on Muslim believers, and setting ourselves up for an unwinnable conflict with more or less the entirety of the Muslim world. The Andy McCarthy conceit, which holds that anyone (like Ramadan, and like Rauf) who cites or engages with illiberal interpreters of Islam automatically forfeits the title “moderate,” seems out of touch with the complexities of religious history; moreover, it’s a little like insisting circa 1864 that Pope Pius IX’s critique of religious liberty and church-state separation requires American Catholics to immediately sever all ties to the pope. It’s both dubious in theory and self-defeating in practice.

But making these kind of distinctions doesn’t require us to suspend all judgment where would-be Islamic moderates are concerned. Instead, dialogue needs to coexist with pressure: Figures like Ramadan and now Rauf should be held to a high standard by their non-Muslim interlocutors, and their forays into more dubious territory should be greeted with swift pushback, rather than simply being accepted as a necessary part of the moderate Muslim package. (This is particularly true because Westerners have a long record of seeing what they want to see in self-proclaimed Islamic reformers, from the Ayatollah Khomeini down to Anwar Al Awlaki, and failing to recognize extremism when it’s staring them in the face.) And what’s troubling about some of the liberal reaction to the Cordoba Initiative controversy is that it seems to regard this kind of pressure as illegitimate and dangerous in and of itself — as though the First Amendment protects the right of Rauf and Co. to build their mosque and cultural center, but not the right of critics to scrutinize Rauf’s moderate bona fides, parse some of his more disturbing comments, and raise doubts about the benefits (to American Islam as well as to America) of having him set up shop as an arbiter of Muslim-Western dialogue in what used to be the shadow of the World Trade Center.

So Jonathan Chait, in a representative post, suggests that what’s at stake in the Cordoba debate is whether American Muslims “should be presumed to be terrorists unless proven otherwise … or whether they should be afforded the same general presumption of innocence enjoyed by other religions.” But surely these two options don’t exhaust the ways that non-Muslim Westerners can react to a figure like Rauf, and a project like the Cordoba mosque. Surely respecting Muslim Americans doesn’t require pretending that all religious cultures are identical, or that the intellectual climate in contemporary Islam is no different from the intellectual climate in Judaism or Christianity, or that the West doesn’t have a particular reason to worry about what’s said and done by high-profile clerics in high-profile mosques. Surely in an age of Islamist terror, there’s a particular kind of scrutiny that’s appropriate to religious entrepreneurs who insist that they can represent the Islamic world to the West, and the West to the Islamic world. And surely, when it comes to a seemingly complicated and now extremely high-profile figure like Feisal Abdul Rauf, we can trust but also verify."

As I started to read your article into the first paragraph, the thought popped into my head that what most people expect from other groups are/were dormant in their own. I've heard over the years their excuses that they were "too busy" with their own lives.

However, they seem to have plenty of time now to challenge other groups what they themselves failed to do when failures by our government or other organizations failed to act on community concerns.

Is that what is called "hypocrisy?"

c.i.

Please restate what you said. Either I am being unbelievably dense or there is some lack of clarity in your post.