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I have been trying hard to find an explanation for the intense controversy surrounding the Cordoba Initiative, whereby 71 percent of Americans object to the proposed project of building a mosque next to Ground Zero. I cannot agree with the theory that such broad resistance represents Islamophobic sentiments, nor that it is a product of a “rightwing” smear campaign against one imam or another. Americans are neither bigots nor gullible. Deep sensitivity to the families of 9/11 victims was cited as yet another explanation, but this too does not answer the core question. If one accepts that the 19 fanatics...

Islamofascism: New dots are emerging from the probe into who's behind the Ground Zero mosque, and the radical Muslim Brotherhood is coming into view. While a couple of U.S. nonprofits — the Cordoba Initiative and its sister, the American Society for Muslim Advancement — are coordinating the New York project, they hardly give the full picture. A Saudi charity has sunk more than $300,000 into ASMA. It's called the Kingdom Foundation — headed by Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince whose 9/11 relief check was rejected after he blamed the attacks on U.S. foreign policy. Bin Talal is a major...

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...

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...

The New York imam behind the Ground Zero mosque has struck a partnership with the founder of the so-called 9/11 mosque in the Washington suburbs that gave aid and comfort to some of the 9/11 hijackers, WND has learned. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf counts the lead trustee of the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center among partners in his Cordoba Initiative, which features a 13-story mosque and a "cultural center" for his project to bring shariah, or Islamic law, to America. Families of 9/11 victims oppose construction of the proposed site so close to Ground Zero. Jamal Barzinji, one of the founders...

The imam behind the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero surfaced yesterday far from the controversy -- in Bahrain, where he's on a taxpayer-funded trip to the Middle East to spread good will. Appearing in public for the first time in weeks, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, speaking at a mosque near Bahrain's capital of Manama, said he wants to "Americanize" Islam -- but dodged questions about the uproar over his planned mosque and community center. This is Rauf's fourth US-sponsored trip to the region

With the shocking report by Christine Brim revealing that the folks involved in planning the Ground Zero Mosque are heading a major push to get Shariah law forced upon the United States, one has to wonder why this startling fact has not become the talk of the town among the Old Media and the chattering classes? One would think that this news would be a final nail the coffin of legitimacy that this GZ Mosque plan ever had. Brim asked an interesting question about the Ground Zero Mosque building's actual blueprints. What are the six currently unassigned floors going to...

NEW YORK (AP) -- As vulnerable congressional Democrats weigh how to respond to President Barack Obama's statements on Muslims' right to build a mosque near ground zero, those in New York and closest to the controversy are staying silent or scrambling away. Democrats control both Senate seats and 27 of the state's 29 Congressional districts, but analysts believe as many as eight House Democrats in the state may be headed to defeat this year. Republicans, hoping to ease Democrats' grip on the state, insist the economy remains the major campaign issue but say the mosque flap could also help move...

Yousef doesn’t mince words as he refers to Imam Rauf as a crazy person who is trying to put a ‘rock of division’ in the US that will cause lots of problems and violence. Yousef says that as a former x-Shin Bet officer he believes every mosque posses a danger to America. Wow.

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...

The organization planning to build a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero denied reports Tuesday about a scheduled meeting to discuss the matter with New York Gov. David Paterson. The group reaffirmed that it has no intention of moving the controversial project. Earlier Rep. Peter King (R.-N.Y.), a vocal critic of the plan, said Paterson told him during a phone conversation that he planned to meet with the developers later this week to discuss the possibility of an alternative site. The project is the brainchild of Feisel Abdul Rauf, an Islamic cleric who heads the Cordoba Initiative, an organization...

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...

Where exactly is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the $100 million Ground Zero mosque project? I keep asking because weeks after he stopped answering any questions about his “Cordoba House” plans, there is still no answer. By now, there is information in Rauf’s silence. He launched his Ground Zero mosque and Islamic center project in the name of “dialogue,” “outreach” and “bridge-building” in lower Manhattan. In doing so, he trampled on raw feelings, and set off a divisive debate. Rauf’s apparent dismissal of public questions as not worth his time, while he travels to the Middle East on U.S. taxpayer money, suggests enormous contempt for the American public.Rauf dropped out of sight...

One wonders about the symbolism of the Cordoba Initiative. Was Cordoba selected because in a multicultural context it represents a blending of harmonious cultures? If so, I’m not sure history quite supports such a usage. The city was founded by Romans and remained Western in some sense until conquered by Muslim invaders in 711, when it soon became a capital of what Muslims called al-Andalus, the Islamic foothold in southern Europe, the recurrence of which is so nostalgically evoked by bin Laden and Co. The president’s Cairo speech cited Cordoba as a beacon of tolerance during the Spanish Inquisition (“Islam...

NEW YORK — After the epic disaster of , one might imagine the United Nations would tread carefully before launching any new and controversial efforts. Hardly.Still reeling from scandals on many fronts, the U.N. has launched another questionable initiative, called the , which is due to hold its first meeting this weekend in Spain. The program has been widely touted by U.N. Secretary-General as a bridge across cultural and religious divides, but it involves a daisy-chain of dubious associations that casts serious doubt both on the project itself and on the U.N.’s ability to cut loose from the scandals of the past...

Traveling abroad on his first trip as president, Barack Obama tacked a visit to Turkey onto the tail end of a trip to Europe. "Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message," he told the Turkish Parliament. "My answer is simple: Evet [yes]. Turkey is a critical ally." On the same visit, however, the president showed that he considered Turkey more firmly part of the Islamic world than of Europe. "I want to make sure that we end before the call to prayer, so we have about half...

It is time for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to step up to the plate and investigate Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who is currently touring the Middle East at the expense of American Taxpayers as an envoy of her Department of State. Claudia Rossett, one of America's premier journalists, today reveals several disturbing facts that more than warrant an official investigation: ...what's going on with the web site of his Cordoba Initiative? Last week, after someone in his Malaysia office referred all questions back to his office in New York, the phone number and address of his office in Malaysia...

Slightly more absurd than any other political argument today is the concerted defense of a proposed mosque at Ground Zero. An Islamic entity known as the Cordoba Initiative, funded by shadowy interests, is looking to erect an ornate mosque and community center at the site of the 9/11 attack in Manhattan, and its proponents in America have deemed it an innocent act of freedom of religion and Islamic outreach while proclaiming that detractors are guilty of religious intolerance. Most notably guilty of this fallacy is New York Mayor Bloomberg, whose sight is so dulled by political correctness that he cannot...

If Mayor Michael Bloomberg ever decides to stop buying his way around New York City’s term-limit law, he’d be a perfect fit at the State Department. Hizzoner was not content with having embarrassed himself by predicting that the attempted bombing of Times Square — the heart of a city that has been a jihadist target for 17 years — would prove to be the work of a disgruntled right-winger upset over the health-care bill. Bloomberg has now treated us to a cri de coeur in favor of the Ground Zero mosque. Funding sources for this project, originally known as the...

By Ilario Pantano, Republican Candidate for Congress, NC-07 June 17, 2010 Also published at The Daily Caller and Military.com. Reprinted with permission. “Cordoba Center” sounds comfortably Latino and almost familiar in a multi-ethnic city like New York. The name’s Spanish origin has a little bit of history too: the Cordoba Mosque in Spain symbolized a gateway to Muslim conquest of Western Europe – a conquest that today is unfolding in real time. But as disturbing as the sharia invasion of the European Union might be, my concern is the new $100 million mosque that will sit smugly just 600 feet...