Blaming America

NY Post ^ | August 27, 2010 | John Podhoretz

[Scanian]

There's a great deal of confusion about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the founder of the Ground Zero mosque. His fiercest critics, like Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online, say he's intent on muddying the meaning of 9/11 and using it to further the goals of worldwide political Islam.

There are those who hear in his words and even see in his writings -- I'm referring to Todd Gitlin here, writing at the New Republic's site -- the mystic chords of the Declaration of Independence itself.

I hear something else, and it may help explain why secularists from Gitlin to Mayor Bloomberg -- people who might otherwise shy away from a cleric who is, after all, trying to build a gigantic religious facility -- have come to Rauf's defense.

What Rauf really sounds like, in the speeches and writings unearthed since the controversy began, is a Western leftist specializing in offering analytical defenses and sociohistorical explications of the Arab-Islamic position.

For Gitlin and others, therefore, Rauf doesn't seem like an "other." He seems far more like them than do many protesting the mosque's construction.

Rauf doesn't rant and rave like a second Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rather, he muses and theorizes like Juan Cole of the University of Michigan or John Esposito of Georgetown University.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Rauf? The name sounds familiar.. was he with The Champs?

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Taqiyya
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[griswold3]

One must always remember why the left loves Sharia. Power, mindless Power.