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Cashing In On Ground Zero
Forbes ^ | 08.24.10 | Claudia Rosett

Posted on 08/23/2010 9:49:00 PM PDT by Ooh-Ah

A test of tolerance, or a grating exercise in self-promotion?

Among the prime planners of a $100 million Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero, it's not just Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who is visiting the Middle East this summer at U.S. taxpayer expense. The State Department is also about to send Rauf's wife and Cordoba Initiative fellow director, Daisy Khan, on her own taxpayer-funded "public diplomacy" trip to the United Arab Emirates. ...

The U.S. Embassy in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi has posted on its website an announcement of the impending visit by this husband-wife team. Rauf and Khan will be there, the announcement says, "to engage foreign audiences and build people-to-people ties" and to "discuss their experiences as Muslims living and working in the United States."

...

A majority of Americans then dared to disagree with this particular prescription of the self-described "Founder and Visionary" of the Cordoba Initiative. And now, the televised statement reverberating from Khan--on the eve of her $12,000 taxpayer-funded trip to join Rauf in the marble halls of Abu Dhabi and Dubai--is a denunciation of America as a Muslim-hating place, "beyond Islamophobia."

What's going on here is not a gauge of American religious tolerance. It has become a test of the extent to which Rauf, Khan, and their partners and donors, seen or unseen, are willing for their own aggrandizement to cash in on the agonies of Ground Zero. In this scheme, the thousands of Americans murdered on Sept. 11 in the name of Islam have by now become a backdrop for Daisy Khan's claim that she is the victim of a Muslim-hating America. There's an old name for this kind of stunt, and it isn't bridge-building. It's carpet-bagging.

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: daisykhan; feisalabdulrauf; groundzeromosque; mosque

1 posted on 08/23/2010 9:49:03 PM PDT by Ooh-Ah
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To: Ooh-Ah

I forgot. Rauf has a mosque 6 blocks north.


2 posted on 08/23/2010 10:01:17 PM PDT by rmlew ("To put an end to amnesty once and for all...it is time to 'regularize' the status of John McCain.)
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To: Ooh-Ah

Daisy has a severe case of Ameriphobia.


3 posted on 08/23/2010 10:03:13 PM PDT by FlingWingFlyer (DemocRATS! America's Taliban!)
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To: Ooh-Ah

I have no problem saying that there are some things I do not tolerate.

If a person tells me that I must reject my own faith, and either accept his, or else he is commanded to kill me ... well, I’m just not going to tolerate that!

So if that makes me intolerant, so be it.


4 posted on 08/23/2010 10:10:09 PM PDT by airborne (Why is it we won't allow the Bible in school, but we will in prison? Think about it.)
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To: Ooh-Ah

Now this is more like it. A reporter who actually knows a thing or two.

So Imam Feisal has been making a fine living in the world of taxpayer-funded “outreach” for some time now.

I will never forgive GWB for his frantic, indiscriminate, ill-conceived search for “good Muslims” to bestow the White Housekeeping Seal of Approval in the days after 9/11. Yes, I know the theory about Islamist shill Grover Norquist having his ear.


5 posted on 08/23/2010 10:16:25 PM PDT by sinanju
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This is like Manna from heaven-—send the wife! Spend another $12,000 of taxpayer money after she just called us haters. Oh, the American public is going to love this. Where the hell is Hillary? Seems she has miraculously disappeared.


6 posted on 08/23/2010 11:03:50 PM PDT by NOBO2
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To: Ooh-Ah

Where’s your burqua, beyotch?


7 posted on 08/23/2010 11:05:20 PM PDT by 38special (Remember in November!)
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To: Ooh-Ah

Pay your taxes.

These people deserve the money. :)

:(


8 posted on 08/23/2010 11:10:39 PM PDT by Tzimisce (No thanks. We have enough government already. - The Tick)
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To: Ooh-Ah

Hmm, Muslim carpetbagging. Kinda catchy.


9 posted on 08/24/2010 12:11:43 AM PDT by TheThinker (Communists: taking over the world one kooky doomsday scenario at a time.)
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To: Ooh-Ah

These two grifters will hustle millions from wealthy sheiks then flee to some country that doesn’t honor U.S. extradition. Ain’t America great?


10 posted on 08/24/2010 12:33:37 AM PDT by Brad from Tennessee (A politician can't give you anything he hasn't first stolen from you.)
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To: Brad from Tennessee

If that’s all they did - fleece investors and run away - I’d be happy. But they’re going to use that money to extend Islam in the US; the Muslims have been buying properties all over the place and converting them into mosques and “dawa [conversion] centers” and this money will be used likewise. There’s so much money, of course, that it provides Rauf and Daisy with a lavish lifestyle, but that’s typical of Muslim leaders.


11 posted on 08/24/2010 3:30:04 AM PDT by livius
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To: rmlew

btt


12 posted on 08/25/2010 9:43:30 AM PDT by opentalk
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To: SunkenCiv; dennisw

ping


13 posted on 08/25/2010 10:05:10 AM PDT by rmlew ("To put an end to amnesty once and for all...it is time to 'regularize' the status of John McCain.)
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To: rmlew; AdmSmith; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; bigheadfred; blueyon; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks rmlew.


14 posted on 08/25/2010 3:32:22 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Democratic Underground... matters are worse, as their latest fund drive has come up short...)
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