If You Can Blackmail Yale, Why Not Blackmail New York City? (Imam Rauf's subtle threat)

American Thinker ^ | 09/11/2010 | Joseh Sprayregen

[SeekAndFind]

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf unashamedly told CNN that relocating the Ground Zero Mosque will proximately cause havoc: "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack. But if you don't do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world." He predicted that "the reaction could be more furious than the eruption of violence following the 2005 publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad... Our national security now hinges on how we negotiate this.[emphasis supplied]."

The Imam chooses his words carefully. Let's look at the "reaction" he recalled to publication in a Danish newspaper of 12 cartoons depicting Muhammad. In summary, more than 200 people were killed and many more injured as embassies and churches (yes, churches) were burned. As late as 2008, eight people were killed in a bombing outside Denmark's embassy in Pakistan. Where energized Muslims could not find embassies or churches to attack, they found other targets, i.e., a U.S. airbase in Afghanistan, the Italian embassy in Libya, an anti-government dissident in Yemen, fast-food restaurants elsewhere. This is the carnage which the Imam promised (I didn't say "threatened"--draw your own conclusions).

Silencing Yale With Threats of Violence

Four years later, the violence intimidated Yale University, one of my almae matres (the other is Northwestern, which retains a Holocaust denier on faculty in deference to academic freedom). Last December, I unforgettably attended a meeting at Parliament in London, sponsored by the Henry Jackson society (named for our sorely missed late Senator from Washington). The speaker, Danish-born Brandeis Professor Jytte Klausen, discussed her book about the cartoon controversy, titled The Cartoons that Shook the World. She lamented that, despite her insistence, Yale University Press, her publisher, deleted the cartoons from the book. Yale publishing chief John Donatich said he had consulted "a range of experts," each of them anonymous, who "all confirmed that republication of the cartoons by the Yale Press ran a serious risk of instigating violence (Italics supplied by me)." Note carefully the publisher's chosen verb: Instigate! Christopher Hitchens acerbically observed in Slate:

"Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility. This involves inverting the honest meaning of our language as well as our concept of moral responsibility...What shame that the campus of Nathan Hale should have pre-emptively run up the white flag and then cringingly taken the blood guilt of potential assassins and tyrants upon itself."

Granting a Veto to the Mob

In my callow youth, I was an ACLU lawyer, in the halcyon days before the mission of the organization became preventing the United States from eliminating terrorists who murder our citizens. Defending the First Amendment, we successfully assailed "the heckler's veto (a phrase invented by my one-time colleague, brilliant University of Chicago Professor Harry Kalven)," i.e., the notion that speech can be suppressed for fear of violent reaction. Could any force in the world -- other than Islam -- have successfully blackmailed Yale? Can you imagine Yale's censoring portrayals of Shylock or Iago if Jews or Blacks threatened violence? The Imam now "suggests" that refusing to relocate the mosque will produce "reaction....more furious" than that which took 200 lives. There are plausible arguments on both sides of the Mosque controversy. But what does it tell us about the Imam's brand of Islam that he explicitly invokes the heckler's veto to coerce the decision?

I inveterately rely on Justice Holmes' teaching that, in seeking to understand a complicated problem, "a page of history is worth a volume of logic." In trying to understand the Imam, I recalled Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa mandating death for Novelist Salman Rushdie for his portrayal of Muhammad in The Satanic Verses. The British authorities commendably guarded Rushdie. But the toll elsewhere was gruesome. Rushdie's Japanese interpreter was stabbed to death, his Italian translator was beaten and stabbed, his Norwegian translator was shot, 37 people died in a hotel fire in Turkey which targeted his Turkish translator, and The Riverdale Press, a Bronx weekly, was fire-bombed for editorially defending the right to read the novel. But in this instance the hecklers -- some would call them murderers -- did not succeed in their demands that the book be expurgated.

Will American Public Policy be Decided by Threats of Muslim Violence?

Will the threats of violence which intimidated Yale likewise resolve the locating of the Mosque, as the Imam seems to urge? If threatened violence decides this issue, when will the next occasion arise when threats of Muslim violence will be unleashed to influence our public debates? The Imam could have rested his case on the reality that he has the support of influential cheerleaders in the White House and Gracie Mansion, as well as at the New York Times and CNN.

I understand that the prestigious blocking backs for the Ground Zero project call it an "Islamic cultural center," rather than a mosque. But in the Muslim world, it is always called a mosque, and one is entitled to speculate whether Muslim mobs will kill for a "cultural center." I publish this in full awareness that opposition to the Mosque is routinely derided -- by people who should know better -- as bigotry. I suspect that the articulate Imam will find a way to refine his "predictions." Are those Americans who insist that the Mosque should not be relocated comfortable with threats of violence? Are President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg dismayed -- as I am -- by the stark failure of the Imam to say that it is totally impermissible to commit mass murder in support of his project?

[FlingWingFlyer]

It sounds like there are a heck of a lot more “extremist” muzzies out there than there are “moderates”.

[Da Coyote]

D*mn right it’s under attack.

And properly so.

I will NOT put up with idiots who kill people for burning books.

Grow up, Imams.

Get a brain.

And while you’re at it...get a God.

[elpadre]

“...anger will explode in the Muslim world...”

communicated by the vast network of Muslim Imans through the hundreds of thousands of mosques throughout the world.

These mosques are the provocateurs and center of all violence, not some terrorist living room. And how many mosques have been built in the USA since 9/11/01???

[Patton@Bastogne]

Nuke ‘em ... Nuke em from Orbit ... starting with Mecca ...

[dagogo redux]

“But if you don’t do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world.”

And if we do it right, all kinds of other things will explode in the Muslim world.

Aren’t we looking to reduce our nuclear stockplies anyway?

[cripplecreek]

Personally I didn’t think the threat was all that subtle.

Do what I want or extremists will attack.

[Vaduz]

Mosque building a scam Jessy Jackson missed kicks self.

[FrdmLvr]

The only good muzzie is a Christian convert.

[RummyChick]

Don’t exercise your first amendment Constitutional rights or the muzzies will attack.

today it is Koran burning...tomorrow....don’t say anything bad about Muslims...

Our rights are going to get trampled for fear of the Muzzies attacking innocents.

[nj patriot]

There are no moderate muslims. It is the duty of all muslims to create an all muslim world. Some seek this goal in a more violent manner, but all seek the same goal of world domination. One can not be a muslim without accepting this gospel of the Qur’an. For those muslims not willing to kill they are told to lie and cheat non-muslims. It is also a mandate to populate the non-muslim world.

Make no mistake about it this is a war; an inter-generational war that has the goal of the elimination of all other faiths.

It is way past time for non-muslims to read the Qur’an. It is a violent, hate filled sexist, manual for world domination. There is no quarter given for differing viewpoints.

[RummyChick]

Listening to the words of Bush
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBLFii7vsVM

it is inconceivable to me how in the world we got to this place 9 years later where a Muzzie can threaten the US with his Victory Mosque. We will build it or you will pay...and not only you...but countries all over the world will feel the wrath.

Why didn’t this happen under Bush??? They wait until a Muzzie is in office.

I am glad I am not a young person in America today.

It looks so bleak.

[Republic]

LOL.

Geeeez. Dirtbag muslim terrorists have already made air travel miserable. For everyone in the world.

Now they want to threaten America with mayhem IF a victory mosque is not built near 9/11 so muslims can go and gloat over the most sacred, sad, horrific remembrance of cowardly slaughter of innocents our nation has ever experienced?

Subtly threaten us to get the liberals in our nation to pee in their pants and cower like wimps?

Too bad bloomberg the appeaser and uhbama the appeaser and all brain dead liberals don't have the moxy to tell the creep heading up the mosque construction something like this:

'Yeah- you can build the mosque, a ONE STORY community center there IF you open YOUR DOORS to mecca for the rest of the world to preview. Oh, and IF you allow women to enter and worship in the center (mosque) freely.

In America, we believe what is JUST for the goose, is JUST for the gander, so to speak. And you ARE on American soil and bound by OUR LAWS which are NOT to be diminished by sharia crap. That is unconstitutional and our LAWS WILL NOT BE POLLUTED by your political islamic barbaric system.

Because, you see in America, it is AGAINST the LAW to discriminate against women-the folks you deem dirtier than dogs. Literally.

So you give and we give, talk it over with your cordoba buddies and see if this compromise fits into the islamic political system you represent.

If not, go blow your threats up your ass.' :^)

[rovenstinez]

Remember Bunker Hill. Tyranny never had a place on American Soil. If the Muslim’s world view does not allow for peaceful co existence with peaceful citizens of a different deity, than I think the next War has begun.

[ridesthemiles]

I , for one, am sick & tired of being blackmailed or extorted by a bunch of 7th century thinking cave dwellers who cannot actually think a whole thought beyond swinging a sword to behead anyone they don’t agree with.

The Nov election has to include some candidates with a spine.

[CoastWatcher]

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is suppose to be a shining example of a moderate Muslim. The Imam’s play everyone the fool by claiming they are peaceful, but are concerned that the uncontrollable rabid dog Muslim street will go on a worldwide murderous rampage if the ‘peaceful’ Imams are not appeased. How long will the ignorant left allow the Muslim leaders play this game?

WAKE UP - this is a thugocracy ruled by cruel poobahs who have effective combined the Crusades with the Inquision into a viral form of Islam that will anyone or anything that stands in its way of world domination.

Note that these people have blown themselves up inside opponents Mosques to dominate other Muslims. Any resemblance between Islam and a ‘peaceful’ religion can only be found in Non-Muslim countries.

There will be war against Islam and the longer the world waits the bloodier it will be!

[RummyChick]

I have spent most of the last nine years in some sort of state..not ambivalent...dont know how to describe it other than perhaps not worrying about it too much because I felt like we were protected.

Now I feel rage over what is happening to this country.

Obama saying,

"I want to make sure that this country retains that sense of purpose [of religious equality], and I think tomorrow is a wonderful day for us to remind ourselves of that."

While the Imam threatens us with violence if we don't let him build his Victory Mosque..is making me ill.

I came across something on Michelle Malkin's site today
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/09/11/911-remembrance-set-your-alarms-and-steel-your-resolve/

Watch that Cosgrove video and just listen to the last few seconds.

That is what they want to do to all of us. Lan astaslem: Arabic for “I will not submit/surrender” to those SOBs

[Vaduz]

Agree thr pi$$er is how the msm helps Islam,they still use the old play book of anything to take down the American way of life they will not win.

[nolongerademocrat]

We should have nuked Mecca on September 12, 2001.

[CitizenM]

The contrast between a strong leader, as Bush was, and Obama is so apparent every passing day. Bush might have had his critics, but we always knew the world respected him and feared the American might while he was CIC.

It is absolutely sickening that gullible Americans elected this weakling, Muslim sympathizer, and treasonous man to the White House. A scared, pantie waist sits in the Oval Office now who is not at all capable or inclined to say what needs to be said...which is:

Listen, Iman Rauf - you do not stand in our country, on our land, and threaten our people! Your threats will not be tolerated. You can make your plea for building your mosque, but you do not tell Americans they can expect harm, retaliation and " the eruption of violence..." if your plans are not accepted. You can just get out of our country if you want to make those statements. You want us to believe that Islam is a "religion of peace," and then you threaten us if we do not want your mosque near our hallowed Ground Zero? We are calling your bluff, iman. Either you accept the will of the American people peacefully, or you leave. If you think we are fooling, just try and test us again. We will deal with you and your threats in the most American way if you and your religion continues to advocate, promote or threaten violence to our people.

That is what a real man and strong America loving president would say. Obama simply bows down to them. He has most blatantly shirked his responsibility as our president.