Free Republic

Yet another news flash on the whereabouts of the self-described “bridge-building” couple behind the Ground Zero mosque:Last week, Daisy Khan was poised to travel to the Middle East, planning a $12,000 taxpayer-funded jaunt to join her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in the United Arab Emirates, Aug. 29-Sept. 2, courtesy of the State Department. But she didn’t go. According to a staffer at the Manhattan office shared by Khan and Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative and American Society for Muslim Advancement, Khan is still in New York, though when I called she was unavailable for questions because she was “in a meeting.” The U.S. Embassy in the UAE...

WEBTODAY EXCLUSIVE (August 24, 2010)-- QUESTION: Who really was speaking on that historic day of June 4th 2009 in Cairo, Egypt? President Obama or the Imam of the proposed Ground Zero Mosque, Feisal Abdul Rauf? ANSWER: Feisal Abdul Rauf! Link to audio of Rauf's admission The Shoebat Foundation obtained this shocking audio recording of Rauf's own voice boasting in Arabic that Obama’s historic Cairo speech was provided by the Imam and the Cordova Initiative in what the Imam called “The Blue Print” which he said was the solution to the Islamic-American divide. Rauf claimed Chapter 6 of the Imam’s work...

On Friday, Ryan Mauro wrote an article criticizing Jon Stewart for not understanding why 70% of Americans are against the Ground Zero mosque. While I agree with Ryan’s critique on Stewart’s dismissal of his fellow citizens’ concerns, I do believe the segment Stewart ran has something to teach us. The first lesson is that the message we want to send to Imam Rauf is disjointed, and the second is that the way some conservatives portray their concern about the mosque is rather unproductive. The second problem, in particular, is worrisome enough because it could allow the left to distort it,...

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the soi-disant Cordoba Initiative, has gotten all the attention he deserves for his astonishingly insensitive attempt to build a 13-story mosque and community center at the site of Ground Zero. Rauf has largely escaped attention for his efforts to build a sawed-off version of the same on the grounds of the venerable and historically Christian Chautauqua Institution in western New York State. Although the resistance to Rauf at Chautauqua has not made the news, it is deeply felt, and it is coming from both Christians and Jews. As shall be seen, the forced feeding...

Yes, fresh from denouncing America on national television as a place rife with “hate of Muslims,” a place so Islamophobic that “it’s beyond Islamopobia,” Daisy Khan, co-planner of the Ground Zero mosque project, will soon be hopping a plane at taxpayer expense, courtesy of the State Department, to jet from New York to the United Arab Emirates and deliver to the Emiratis her views about Muslim life in America. This is what the State Department calls “public diplomacy” — a program that enlists about 1,200 Americans each year to fly with plenty of leg room to foreign lands and tell...

New audio has surfaced of the imam behind the controversial mosque near Ground Zero allegedly telling an audience overseas that the United States has been far more deadly than al-Qaeda. "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims," Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a 2005 lecture sponsored by the University of South Australia. After discussing the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Rauf went on to argue that America is to blame for its testy relationship with Islamic countries.

The real battle for religious freedom lurks beneath the Ground Zero mosque controversy. It is sadly ironic that our public debate presents the mosque proponents as the partisans of liberty: That includes everyone from imam Feisal Rauf, the project’s sharia-touting sponsor, to President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, and the rest of the Islamist-smitten Left, to the GOP’s own anti-anti-terrorist wing. Yet, wittingly or not, when they champion this mosque and its sponsors, it is the agenda of an alien and authoritarian Islam that they champion — an Islam against which many American Muslims chafe. When it comes to liberty, no one...

In an unusual move, the Associated Press has publicly released an advisory memo to its reporters on how to cover of the Ground Zero mosque story - and the first rule is that journalists must immediately stop calling it the "Ground Zero mosque" story. "We should continue to avoid the phrase ‘Ground zero mosque' or ‘mosque at ground zero' on all platforms," reads the advisory, which was issued by the AP's Standards Center. Instead of the "Ground Zero mosque," AP recommends that reporters use the terms "mosque 2 blocks from WTC site," "Muslim (or Islamic) center near WTC site," "mosque...

WASHINGTON (AP) - American taxpayers will pay the imam behind plans for a mosque near the Manhattan site of the Sept. 11 attacks $3,000 in fees for a three-nation outreach trip to the Middle East that will cost roughly $16,000, the State Department said Wednesday. The department said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will get a daily $200 honorarium for the 15-day tour to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which is intended to promote religious tolerance. Airfare is included, as well as the standard federal government per diem for expenses and lodging in each of the cities he will...

Intolerance is not just part of al-Qaeda, it is part of Islam Non-Muslims are barred from entering the cities of Mecca and Medina — not merely barred from building synagogues or churches, but barred, period, because their infidel feet are deemed unfit to touch the ground. This is not an al-Qaeda principle. Nor is it an “Islamist” principle. It is Islam, pure and simple. “Truly the pagans are unclean,” instructs the Koran’s Sura 9:28, “so let them not . . . approach the Sacred Mosque.” This injunction — and there are plenty of similar ones in Islam’s scriptures — is...

WEBTODAY.COM (August 12, 2010, 12:14 am ET)-- Just who is ‘moderate’ Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf? He’s no moderate at all. He’s the funder of the controversial Ground Zero Mosque in New York and a financier of the Turkish Flotilla, along with the Turkish government that funded the terrorist group IHH which has ties to al Qaida and Hamas in Gaza. What’s more, Iman Rauf is calling for a worldwide return to the most radical form of Islam in history, turning the hands of time back to an era when Muslims ruled much of the known world. See eye-opening article below...