Taiba at Ground Zero?

Family Security Matters ^ | August 20, 2010 | Rael Jean Isaac

[Ooh-Ah]

In the furor over the proposed mosque at Ground Zero, the chief argument against it has been all but overlooked: it will be a huge security risk. Indeed “risk” is the wrong word: it is virtually guaranteed to become a potent engine for future attacks against this country.

              

How can we know this? From experience. Just as the experience of RomneyCare in Massachusetts (a sharp rise in health care costs) foretells that ObamaCare will have the same result because of the close similarities between the two, so the Taiba mosque and Arab-German cultural center in Frankfurt (closed down last week by German authorities) foretells what the Cordoba mosque and cultural center will bring to New York.  

              

The Taiba mosque (then called al-Quds) was the hang-out of Mohammed Atta and several other 9/11 hijackers. Although it is unprepossessing (a small run-down building in a poor neighborhood—no $100 million iconic structure like the one proposed for New York), it became a magnet drawing enthusiasts for jihad from around the world. Die Zeit editor Josef Joffe writes in The Wall Street Journal: “Why so? Manfred Murck, the deputy chief of Germany’s domestic security agency explains: ‘Because it has the aura of the 9/11 assassins.’ Devotees of the 9/11 killers have come from all over on a tour of jihadism that starts in Hamburg, then proceeds to Madrid, then to London, where dozens were murdered in the tube in 2005. ‘Hey I prayed where Mohamed Atta did…’”

                   

Not surprising, it also drew Islamic zealots not content with celebrating jihad but determined on acting it out. Moroccans, Bosnians, Saudis, Egyptians, Moslems from Chechnya and Pakistan--and most worrying to the German authorities--German converts to Islam prayed and plotted together and then set off to on their “mission from God.” In March 2009 11 would-be Hamburg jihadists went to Pakistan for terrorist training. Precisely because of its Nazi past, Germany is reluctant to take action against religious institutions. But the situation was getting out of hand. Time quotes Christoph Ahlhaus, Hamburg’s Interior Minister, “Behind the scenes, an alleged cultural organization has shamelessly exploited the freedoms of our constitutional democracy to promote the cause of the ’holy war;’…[Hamburg] must not serve as the incubator for Islamists willing to use violence.”

                     

If the mere “aura” of Mohamed Atta has proved so powerful in Hamburg, can you imagine what a magnet a mosque at the site of their greatest triumph over the infidels would be? In the imagination of the jihadists it will be almost as good as a mosque in the actual footprint of the towers, for the Burlington Coat factory site on which it will go up was badly damaged when landing gear and fuselage from one of the planes that tore into the World Trade Center crashed through the roof. It would indeed be, as real estate investor and key figure in developing the mosque Sharif El-Gamal, puts it “an iconic building that will have people come and visit from around the world”—unfortunately it will be the same kind of jihadi pilgrims that flocked to the Taiba mosque and cultural center.

                        

It is because the mosque’s Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, El Gamal and the potential Middle East funders understand this all too well that the prospect of an alternative site—on the surface an easy way to put the controversy to rest--is so unappealing to them. And that’s why those behind the mosque might reluctantly accept New York Governor Patterson’s offer of an alternative site on state-owned land only if, despite the political and media elites, public pressure should become overwhelming. 

           

At any other site Imam Rauf would be unlikely to raise anything like the $100 million he can plausibly promise to obtain in the space of a year for what the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs aptly says “will be widely understood in the Moslem world as a battlefield monument in the name of Islam.” It took Rauf’s father (who died in 2004) decades to raise the $25 million for the mosque he established in 1991 on East 96^th Street in Manhattan. Stephen Schwartz has pointed out that this mosque, of which the current Rauf is a long-time trustee, also has a less than stellar history: shortly after 9/11 its imam Mohammed Gamei’a left the U.S. for Egypt where he told an Egyptian website: “The Jews were behind these ugly acts [9/11] while we, the Arabs, were innocent.” His successor at the 96^th Street mosque, Imam Abu-Namous has been cagier, saying he could not rule out possible perpetrators “whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish.”(http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rauf-radicals)

 

While New York’s mayor Bloomberg calls opposition to the mosque a disgrace to the memory of the firefighters who died on 9/11(!), Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, director general of Al-Arabiya TV, underscores the folly of such rhetoric. In the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat he writes that the mosque “will become an arena for the promoters of hatred, and a monument to those who committed the crime.” Says Al-Rashed: “I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a monument of a place of worship that tomorrow may become a source of pride for the terrorists and their Muslim followers…”                                    

          

The views of the mosque’s imam (or imams) will clearly have a major impact on the character of the mosque. In the case of the Taiba mosque, one of the imams was Mamoun Darkazanli, dubbed “the hate preacher.” Joffe writes that German investigators call him the “elder statesman of jihad” and bin Laden’s man in Germany. Spain, which believes he helped the Madrid train bombers of 2004, asked for his extradition but although the Germans arrested him on a Spanish warrant, the German constitutional court released him on the grounds that extradition would violate his rights as a German citizen.

               

The smooth-talking Imam Rauf is very far in style from Darkazanli. He is much more like Tariq Ramadan, the urbane and articulate Swiss born academic whose role as an alleged “moderate” has made him a fixture of the “commentariat” on Islam on European television and even secured him an invitation from the British Prime Minister to serve on the government’s task force on preventing extremism. (Rauf’s supposed moderation has won him a State Department gig as roving ambassador to the Middle East, particularly convenient now since it gives him an all-expenses paid opportunity to spot and tap likely funders for his mosque.) But as French journalist Caroline Fourest documents extensively in her book Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (now translated into English) Ramadan, grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Moslem Brotherhood, says one thing to his Islamic followers, another to his Western audience. (The U.S. banned Ramadan from coming to the U.S. in 2004 under the provisions of the Patriot Act that allows the U.S. to keep out anyone suspected of supporting terror—the Obama administration recently lifted the ban.) 

               

Rauf is very much in this slippery tradition. But, as in the case of Tariq Ramadan, it doesn’t require massive research to recognize that he is an Islamic extremist, not, as he portrays himself, a bridge-building interfaith pioneer in the Muslim community.  The project with which he is most closely associated is the “Shariah Index Project” which measures how closely each country approaches the ideal of complete conformity to Sharia law in governance and society and distributes literature promoting sharia compliance. (Christine Brim on bigpeace.com, on the basis of copious since-deleted pages on Rauf’s website which she provides for readers deduces that a number of floors of the proposed mosque building are to be devoted to the Shariah project, making it what she calls “the base for a project to institutionalize Shariah in America.”

          

In 2007 Rauf attended the conference of Hizb-ut-Tahir (Islamic Party of Liberation) in Indonesia, an outfit banned in eight countries (including Germany), whose goal is to unify all Muslim countries in an Islamic caliphate under Islamic law and from there proselytize the world.

             

Rauf wrote a book, which in English carries the comforting title What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America.   But it was published in Malaysia under the very different title A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa [Proselytizing] in the Heart of America Post 9-11.

 

Taiba at Ground Zero?

            

Only days after 9/11 Rauf was interviewed by Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes. Rauf declared “U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime.” Challenged to explain how, Rauf replied “Because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most most direct sense, Obama bin Laden is made in the USA.” (For our government and media it is apparently enough for a Moslem to say 9/11 was a crime for him to earn the sobriquet of “moderate”—it doesn’t matter if he says “the Jews” or “the U.S.” was the real culprit.) 

              

The very name Rauf has given his plan for the mosque “The Cordoba Initiative” tells a Muslim audience his true attitudes. The Cordoba cathedral was converted to a mosque after the Moslem conquest of Spain in 711 and the city of Cordoba, in which it stands, was at the heart of the great cultural center of Andalusia (Al-Andalus to Moslems), which Islamists aspire to reclaim. 

                 

And while Rauf has assembled a gaggle of rabbis in support of his project, he dodges when asked directly if he condemns Hamas terrorism: “the issue of terrorism is a very complex question.” 

             

Whatever one may say about Rauf’s “right” to his beliefs, he is deceitful when he says the mosque “sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.” Moreover he is clearly not the person to block or discourage those who would use his mosque at Ground Zero as a rallying place for Islamic triumphalism.

            

Once a radical mosque is in operation, it becomes extremely difficult to close it down. German authorities have shut down the Taiba mosque temporarily but the courts may decide otherwise. Radical Muslim leaders are adept at casting themselves as victims. Last year the Taiba association (Time reports) claimed it was the “victim of a big media campaign, a bad secret-service plot and a concocted political farce.” 

               

In The Nation Katha Politt writes that Cordoba House “will be a showplace of moderate Islam, an Islam for the pluralist West—the very thing wise heads in the United States and Europe agree is essential to integrate Muslim immigrants and prevent them from becoming fundamentalists and even terrorists.” Once the mosque at Ground Zero turns out to be Wahhabi Central, it will be too late. The Nation, the ACLU and assorted useful idiots can be counted upon even then to believe the assurances of Imam Rauf and his like against the evidence of their lying eyes. 

              

All of which means the time to stop the mosque at Ground Zero is now.

 

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Rael Jean Isaac is co-author (with Erich Isaac) of The Coercive Utopians.

 

Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (1) | Sign Up for FSM Updates!

[FlingWingFlyer]

Some dizzy *itch has been on FOX all day saying that people of all religions will be allowed to go to the Ground Zero mosque to worship. I’m not very gullible. Am I supposed to really believe that?

[Honorary Serb]

EVERY mosque run by the muslim Brotherhood, the Wahhabis, the Iranians, etc. is a security risk!!!!

[Honorary Serb]

Even if the muzzies in the 9/11 mosque allow me to worship there, my own (Orthodox) church will not allow me to do so. And that’s for my own good!!!!

Rebuild the lovely, holy St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at the Ground Zero site, and make it bigger and more beautiful than before. It will be a beacon of God’s love for all Americans.

Do NOT build that evil mosque!!!!

[WilliamofCarmichael]

If it can be proved that Iran money is helping to build the mosque (even if it is built elsewhere) why can’t the military consider it an enemy emplacement? and take the appropriate action.

[rockinqsranch]

The only legitimate reason to construct ANOTHER mosque in that area of New York is to rub our noses in the Jihadi’s success in destroying the WTC, a symbol of Western Power.

The Mosque, whatever it is named will most certainly draw the crazies just as the author of this article predicts. It happened in Germany, and it will happen here as well.

Primarily its construction, its very existance is as a symbol of the Power of Islam over the infidel. It is to symbolize, and celebrate Americas defeat at the hands of Islam.

Islam is NOT a religion. It is a Totalitarian Militant Political Ideology under the guise of a religion. It does NOT qualify as a non-taxable religious sect due its political nature in this country.

And about that John Brown style militantcy.......

[cradle of freedom]

Cal Thomas did an excellent column on Islam. He quotes part of a sermon from a Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Arifi on Egypt's Al-Rahma TV, July 19, 2010:

“Devotion to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer...The Koranic verses that deal with fighting the infidels and conquering their countries say that they should convert to Islam, pay the jizya poll tax, or be killed. If the Muslims had implemented this, we would not have reached the humiliation in which we find ourselves today.”

Have you ever heard of a another religion that tells its followers to do these things? Can you imagine turning on an American tv channel and hearing these words coming from an American religious leader? This is on Egyptian television! This is not the beliefs of a small fringe renegade group of Muslims - this was sanctioned by Egyptian television. This is clearly a broadly accepted view in Egyptian society or it would not be condoned by the government. I hope Americans finally get it into their heads that not all cultures are like our own.

[cradle of freedom]

Nothing succeeds like success. The more the jihadis see muslims triumphs over the infidels, the more blood thirsty they will become.

[cradle of freedom]

What they really mean is that they will invite into the mosque useful idiots and American traitors who will conspire with them to undermine our country. They would like nothing more than to divide us and pit us against each other. Already there are too many American who are eager to call other Americans bigots.

[Merta]

The most intolerant religion in the world starting up an interfaith center? Sorry I cannot buy that.

[American Dream 246]

I just received this email - they don't even hide it. How stupid can we be...:

Subject: Prison Ministry - The Muslim Question

I have never seen this presented so clearly. This is excellent.

This is a true story and the author, Rick Mathes, is a well-known leader in prison ministry.

The Muslim religion is the fastest growing religion per capita in the United States , especially in the minority races!!!

"Last month I attended my annual training session that's required for maintaining my state prison security clearance.

During the training session there was a presentation by three speakers representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths, who explained each of their beliefs.

I was particularly interested in what the Islamic Imam had to say. The Imam gave a great presentation of the basics of Islam, complete with a video.

After the presentations, time was provided for questions and answers...

When it was my turn, I directed my question to the Imam and asked:

'Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that most Imams and clerics of Islam have declared a holy jihad [Holy war] against the infidels of the world and, that by killing an infidel, (which is a command to all Muslims) they are assured of a place in heaven. If that's the case, can you give me the definition of an infidel?'

There was no disagreement with my statements and, without hesitation, the replied, 'Non-believers!'

I responded, 'So, let me make sure I have this straight. All followers of Allah have been commanded to kill everyone who is not of your faith so they can have a place in h eaven Is that correct?'

The expression on his face changed from one of authority and command to that of a little boy who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.'

He sheepishly replied, 'Yes.'

I then stated, 'Well, sir, I have a real problem trying to imagine Pope John Paul commanding all Catholics to kill those of your faith or Dr. Stanley ordering all Protestants to do the same in order to guarantee them a place in heaven!'

The Imam was speechless!

I continued, 'I also have a problem with being your friend when you and your brother clerics are telling your followers to kill me! Let me ask you a question:

Would you rather have your Allah, who tells you to kill me in order for you to go to heaven, or my Jesus who tells me to love you because I am going to heaven and He wants you to be there with me?'

You could have heard a pin drop as the Imam hung his head in shame. Needless to say, the organizers and/or promoters of the Diversification' training seminar were not happy with Rick's way of dealing with the Islamic Imam , and exposing the truth about the Muslims' beliefs.

In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President!

I think everyone in the US should be required to read the above email - also read about Sharia law and be afraid - be very afraid

[American Dream 246]

Islam is NOT% a religion. It's a political cult. Please read:

Islam is the new communis

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2575591/posts

[American Dream 246]

Islam is NOT a religion. They hide behind the "religion" curtain to have us fooled and accuse us of intolerance. It's a political cult with sharia law.

Please read:

Islam is the new communism - American Thinker

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2575591/posts

[American Dream 246]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2575591/posts

[livius]

There’s already a mosque 4 blocks from Ground Zero. They don’t “need” another one under any pretext.

[algernonpj]

If it can be proved that Iran money is helping to build the mosque (even if it is built elsewhere) why can’t the military consider it an enemy emplacement? and take the appropriate action.

Unlikely ... the pentagon just released a report on Fort Hood labeling it on work place violence.

[rockinqsranch]

“They don’t “need” another one under any pretext.”

Correct, and MY POINT IS America doesn’t need to recognise Islam under any pretext as it’s NOT a religion, but is a Totalitarian Political system operating under the guise of a religion. Another damned Muslim lie.

[combat_boots]

6 floors of unaccounted for description. The WTC itself mysteriously slow in rebuilding & without a purported client list.

There’s your base, your university, your holtels for the hajj, your museum, your administration of Sharia finance in the US, your no-go zone, like MECCA, to infidels. The lot of it.

Add in even the Flight 93 memorial and its muezzin tower of ‘voices.’ What, multiple, different people calling to prayer?

[lentulusgracchus]

You could have heard a pin drop as the Imam hung his head in shame.

Tired old apocryphal story, it's all over the net, I've received it in e-mails. UrbanLegends, Snopes dispute the facts asserted by author Rick Mathes. (Note: UrbanLegends is an About.com service, owned by The New York Slimes. And Snopes's bias is known on FR.)

UrbanLegends disputes the facts held out here, citing and quoting:

However, a different version of events was reported in an article by Greg Kearney of the Lee News Service in which a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Corrections, which sponsored the training session, stated that the "imam" Mathes refers to above was a prison inmate and ordinary Muslim, not a trained cleric, and that although the inmate did answer various questions about his faith to the best of his ability, the issues of jihad and violence against non-believers were neither raised nor discussed during the exchange.

Also on Ning.com, Facebook, Yahoo News, and you name it.

Please don't spam.

[lentulusgracchus]

the pentagon just released a report on Fort Hood labeling it on work place violence.

I caught that as it went by on the news last night.

"Workplace violence" -- <snort!>

Guess it's just a case in point of what Janet Napolitano tried to warn us about last year, huh? All those bitter clingers and veterans out there ..... who knows what they'll do?

<puke, barf>