Free Republic

Its proposed location isn’t precisely “ground zero” and it isn’t exactly a mosque. Its meant to be a few blocks away and is designated a “cultural center.” Sharif El-Gamal wants to tear down a building that was permanently damaged in the in-the-name-of-Islam mass-murder attack of 9/11, and on the site he wants to build a not-quite-a-mosque center for Muslims to, we can suppose, culturally and peacefully associate. The equivalent to this would be if evangelist Pat Robertson were to trudge into Irag—following in Mr Obama’s now victorious footsteps—and propose building a Christian church just around the corner from Saddam’s Baghdad...

It took a Manhattan taxi driver called Ahmed Sharif to speak out for America, which is being vilified as bigoted and Islamophobic because of the controversy generated by opposition to the so-called "Ground Zero mosque". The United States was his dream country, he enthused, and he loved New York City. "I feel like I belong here. This is the city actually [for] all colours, races, religion, everyone. We live here side by side peacefully." Which was a pretty noble sentiment coming from a man whose throat had been slashed by a drunken, deranged passenger who had inquired whether he was...

While much attention has been focused on questions surrounding the Ground Zero mosque and the appropriateness of the State Department funding Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s trip to the Middle East, little attention has been given to the fact that U.S. taxpayer money is funding mosque development around the world. Just a cursory search of the term “mosque” on the State Department’s list of “projects” reveals 26 examples of federal funds going to fund construction, renovation, and rehabilitation of various mosques abroad. The benefiting countries include Bulgaria, Pakistan, Mali, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Benin, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Egypt, Tunisia, the Maldives,...

President Barack Obama and New York officials don't understand that for many Americans, especially New Yorkers, building a mosque near Ground Zero is the equivalent of waving a Confederate flag at a Dr. Martin Luther King anniversary ceremony. I have no interest in visiting a mosque because I'm not a Muslim. I wouldn't wave a Confederate flag because my great grandfather who was a sergeant in the 72nd Indiana Regiment in the Civil War might turn over in his grave. I have nothing against those who wave the Confederate Battle flag (or Rebel flag) that Confederate soldiers carried when they...

Daisy Khan is one of the brainiacs behind the Ground Zero Mosque the Burlington Landing-Gear Receptacle That Place in Lower Manhattan Everybody Is Talking About. She also has perhaps the most confusingly evocative name ever. This morning, she appeared on This Week with Christiane Amanpour. Displaying the cool impartiality and journalistic rigor that are making viewers everywhere call for the return of Jake Tapper, Amanpour asked Khan if America is Islamophobic: “This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism, that’s what we feel right now,” Khan said. “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia; it’s hate of Muslims. And we are deeply...

Stop the presses! This just in: The Associated Press “standards center” has issued a “staff advisory” on covering what is to be known from here on out as “the New York City mosque.” From now on, the AP “staff” – and, therefore, everybody who still actually reads newspapers that still actually use the wire service’s copy – is supposed to conform to what amounts to the Muslim Brotherhood narrative about the Islamic cultural center formerly known as the “Ground Zero mosque.”AP’s Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production, Tom Kent, sent this “guidance” out to his colleagues [last Thursday], with...

New York City imam Feisal Abdul Rauf claims that the proposed mosque at Ground Zero is an attempt by the Muslim community to “build bridges“. It is named after Cordoba in southern Spain, a city where between the eighth and 12th centuries, Muslims, Jews and Christians intermingled freely. In fact, during the 10th century under the Moorish caliphate, Cordoba became a major global city and boasted the world’s biggest library. Is the imam telling the truth? Catholic history indicates a different picture. According to our records, things started out rather bad under Muslim rule, by today’s standards, and went downhill...

Now that Barack Obama has decided to be for the Ground Zero mosque before being implicitly against it (perhaps), discussion about his faith has once again reached a fever pitch. To many, his stance proves he's a Muslim, with a recent poll showing that almost 20 percent of Americans hold that opinion; to others, it just reflects a desire to be faithful to the Constitution (now, that would be change). The truth, however, is a bit more nuanced. Obama is not religiously Muslim. Culturally, though...well, that's a different matter altogether. In reality, calling Obama a "Muslim" gives him too much...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.FP: Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.I would like to talk to you today about the proposed mega-mosque next to Ground Zero and how Obama is handling it.First, what do you make of the controversy surrounding the mosque in general?Hanson: Thanks Jamie. Almost everything about the controversy is disingenuous. Mr Rauf, the Kuwaiti born, Western educated physicist, and self-described Sufi cleric, heretofore has had a...

Over the past few weeks, we have heard plenty about the bigotry of the American people. The recent debate about an imam’s plans to locate a large mosque at Ground Zero has highlighted, as never before, the liberal elite’s utter contempt for the sensibilities of regular Americans. From the President on down, those in favor of the mosque’s construction at Ground Zero have characterized the opponents as ruled only by emotion – especially animus toward all Muslims. So outrageous were some of the aspersions cast on mosque opponents that even liberal former DNC Chair Howard Dean was moved to point...

When arguing against those who support building the Islamic mosque in close proximity to where the Twin Towers fell - engulfed in flames and dust from the Jihadist attack - because Liberals feel it is the Constitutional right of Muslims to build it: Just employ the “KISS” (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. Just give them the facts: - New York City has more than 100 mosques. - There are over 2,000 mosques in the United States. - Other NYC property to build the Cordoba mosque has been offered, free of charge to the planners. - No one is denying them,...

...Among the golden nuggets of evidence produced during the trial of the United States vs. The Holy Land Foundation et al is a document that should end any ambiguity concerning the true intent of Feisal ABDUL-RAUF in his quest to construct an Islamic center at Park Place. In fact, it should be cause to reexamine all Islamic centers and mosques that fall within a certain criteria. Cataloged as “Exhibit 003-0085” by the U.S. federal government, a document translated from Arabic to English...details the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Feisal ABDUL RAUF is indeed an adherent and promoter of...

The real issue behind the controversy that has erupted over plans to build a 15-story cultural center, mosque and madrassa a few yards from Ground Zero is not only about the mysterious funding behind the Cordoba Center initiative, or whether or not its founders and backers have malign intentions. It is primarily about understanding how Muslims across the world, in particular Islamists, would view the conversion of the site of the greatest Muslim attack on U.S. soil into a Muslim house of worship. Given the long history of mosque-building following Muslim military victories, the building of the Cordoba House on...

ATLAS EXCLUSIVE! GROUND ZERO MOSQUE IMAM FEISAL'S EXTREMISM EXPOSED: IN HIS OWN WORDS: "THE UNITED STATES HAS MORE MUSLIM BLOOD ON ITS HANDS THAN AL QAIDA," ELIMINATION OF ISRAEL, THE N-WORD, "FAHRENHEIT 91 The media frenzy to destroy good, decent Americans who oppose a 15-story mega-mosque on Ground Zero is rabid. Even for them. Despite red flags everywhere and the nationwide grief caused by this grotesque act of Islamic supremacism, why isn't the media doing its job, investigative journalism? Instead, the morally ill media is in full-on operational smear machine mode in the raging war of ideas, the information battle...

Thanks to the hard work and research of Christine Brim of the Center for Security Policy, along with her team, we now have an alarming report that further exposes the hidden and likely motivations behind the developers of the Ground Zero mosque. Many of us have been trying to warn you that these Ground Zero mosque people are not who they portray themselves to be. And now, in the first article of what will be a three-part series published on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace website, [http://bigpeace.com/cbrim/2010/08/17/ground-zero-mosques-hidden-websites-follow-the-shariah/] Brim reveals a shadowy plan going back to 2006 (and surely before that) which...

A lot more voters are paying attention to the plans to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, and they don’t like the idea. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 85% of U.S. voters say they are now following news stories about the mosque planned near Ground Zero. That’s a 34-point jump from a month ago when only 51% said they were following the story.

A lot more voters are paying attention to the plans to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, and they don’t like the idea. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 85% of U.S. voters say they are now following news stories about the mosque planned near Ground Zero. That’s a 34-point jump from a month ago when only 51% said they were following the story. The new finding includes 58% who are following the story very closely, up from 22% in mid-July. Now 62% oppose the building...

JUST LOOK at how close the disengenuous 5th-columnists of the Obama Administration are to the "moderate" Imam behind the Ground-Zero mosque... like try paying him with our tax dollars to go on a Middle East tour on behalf of the US! 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...

77% of mainstream Americans oppose the Ground Zero Victory Mosque. But, Barack Obama thinks it’s a nifty idea. (LA Times) More Americans than ever are opposed to the Ground Zero Victory Mosque now that President Obama weighed in on the controversy. 77% of mainstream voters are opposed to the mosque while 68% of the political class are in favor of building the victory mosque. Rasmussen reported: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 85% of U.S. voters say they are now following news stories about the mosque planned near Ground Zero. That’s a 34-point jump from a month...

New audio has surfaced of the imam behind the controversial mosque near Ground Zero allegedly telling an audience overseas that the United States has been far more deadly than al-Qaeda. "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims," Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a 2005 lecture sponsored by the University of South Australia. After discussing the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Rauf went on to argue that America is to blame for its testy relationship with Islamic countries....