Free Republic

The infamous Ground Zero Mosque project is officially dead. We won. We the People.Crains New York reports that the unsavory developer behind the Ground Zero Mosque initiative, Sharif El-Gamal, is now making different plans: “Mr. El-Gamal’s Soho Properties has proposed a 667-foot condominium tower at lower Manhattan’s 45 Park Place. The glass skyscraper, which has yet to break ground, will include at least 15 full-floor units of 3,200 to 3,700 square feet, and average prices higher than $3,000 a square foot, according to plans released to Bloomberg by the developer.”If El-Gamal hopes to snag $3,000 a square foot, there is...

A piece of landing gear believed to be from one of the planes destroyed in the Sept 11 attacks has been discovered wedged between the infamous "Ground Zero Mosque" and another New York building. The part includes a clearly visible Boeing identification number, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said. The twisted, rusted metal part has cables and levers on it and is about 5 feet tall, 3 feet wide and 1.5 feet deep. The piece was discovered Wednesday by surveyors inspecting a lower Manhattan Islamic community centre on behalf of the building's owner. The spokesman said the inspectors...

Centuries after Christian building was put at the centre of Córdoba's mosque, Vatican hears Spanish appeal to allow Islamic worship there Muslims across Spain are lobbying the Roman Catholic church in the southern city of Córdoba to make a symbolic gesture of reconciliation between faiths by allowing them to pray in the city's cathedral. Córdoba's renaissance cathedral sits in the centre of an ancient mosque complex, and local Muslims want to be allowed to pray there again. They have appealed to the Vatican to intercede on their behalf. Zakarias Maza, the director of the Taqwa mosque in neighbouring Granada, said...

Trouble erupts as tourists break ban on Muslim prayers in Spanish cathedral which was once world's second biggest mosqueA confrontation between Muslim tourists and guards employed by the Roman Catholic bishop at the world-famous Cordoba mosque saw two people arrested and two guards injured last night. Trouble broke out when the visitors knelt to pray in the building, a former mosque turned into a Christian cathedral in the 13th century, where a local bishop, Demetrio Fernández, recently insisted that a ban on Muslim prayers must remain. Half a dozen members of a group of more than 100 Muslims from Austria...

Cordoba, 28 Dec. (AKI) - The Bishop of the southern city of Cordoba, Juan Jose Asenjo, has turned down a request from its Muslim community to be allowed to pray with Christians in its cathedral - a former mosque. Asenjo was quoted as saying the joint use of consecrated places of worship would "generate confusion" and lead to "religious indifference". Asenjo also said that the Bishopric had valid legal documents entitling the Catholic Church to sole use of the building. Moreover, while Catholics are able to live in peace with other faiths, and the Cordoba Diocese wants to maintain its...

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer Spencer and I are speaking at Temple University next week (where the craven quislings tried to silence Geert Wilders after trying to ban him). Thought you might like a look at the open minded "Democratic Socialists" at Temple. Here is the note from the brave organizers: At a State of the Campus Address in which at least 280 leaders from all student organizations were present, the Democratic Socialists announced that they were organizing a protest against TU Purpose's Islamophobic event next week. They concluded by calling TU Purpose and me Bigots. Atlas readers heads up....

At the Shanksville, PA memorial to the incredibly brave United Flight 93 passengers and crew, the same memorial that was changed from a Muslim crescent to a large bowl when thousands protested this added outrage, Michelle Obama said yesterday, “a scar in the earth has healed”. She is wrong. There will be no healing until Muslims stop murdering and harassing Americans and other Christians here and around the world. There will be no healing until American Muslim leaders stop excusing atrocities and blaming the victim, America, for them.

The reaction of the Florida pastor to 9/11 and to the proposed “victory” mosque at “Ground Zero” is idiotic, but understandable. As I have said before, the anger of ordinary Americans at Muslims is increasing daily due not only to Muslim atrocities, and to outrageous statements by American Muslim leaders, but due also to the stupid policies of the Obama administration favoring Islam over Christianity. This is not a Muslim country, as Obama has implied, and we do not take kindly to bowing and kow-towing to Muslims here and abroad. We do not take kindly to granting American citizenship rights...

The more we learn about the developer the less likely it seems the mosque will get off the ground. The NY Post reports that Gamal has a signficant unpaid tax bill : Sharif El-Gamal, the leading organizer behind the mosque and community center near Ground Zero, owes $224,270.77 in back property tax on the site, city records show. El-Gamal's company, 45 Park Place Partners, failed to pay its half-yearly bills in January and July, according to the city Finance Department. The delinquency is a possible violation of El-Gamal's lease with Con Edison, which owns half of the proposed building site...

The developers behind the Islamic center planned for a site near Ground Zero won't rule out accepting financing from the Mideast -- including from Saudi Arabia and Iran -- as they begin searching for $100 million needed to build the project. When asked if they would then turn to foreign donors, Sultan replied, "I can't comment on that." Pressed on whether the developers were willilng rule out accepting donations from the governments of Saudi Arabia or Iran, he repeated, "I can't comment on that." Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, the cultural organization behind the mosque is...

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...

To quote the old proverb: “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck.” So it is with Islam. There is no radical Islam, no hijacked Islam, no corrupted Islam, no extreme Islam and no moderate Islam: There is simply Islam. Listening to White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, answering questions from reporters about the planned 15 story high mosque mere yards from ground zero was revealing. He said: “I think you’ve heard this administration and the last administration talk about the fact that we are not at war with a...

Opponents of the proposed construction of a controversial mosque just blocks from Ground Zero "ought to be ashamed of themselves" for opposing it, Mayor Bloomberg said this morning. Bloomberg said he also doesn't care where the people behind the mosque and Islamic cultural center will get the money to build. "People say, 'Do they have the money? Can they raise the money? Where does it come from?' " Bloomberg said during an appearance on his WOR-AM radio show.

The enlightened class can't understand why the public is uneasy about the Ground Zero mosque. Americans may have lacked for much in the course of their history, but never instruction in social values. The question today is whether Americans of any era have ever confronted the bombardment of hectoring and sermonizing now directed at those whose views are deemed insufficiently enlightened—an offense regularly followed by accusations that the offenders have violated the most sacred principles of our democracy. It doesn't take a lot to become the target of such a charge. There is no mistaking the beliefs on display in...

Imam Khalid Latif, a chaplain for New York University and the New York Police Department, recently appeared on CNN. He suggested that the New York public schools should close for at least two important Muslim holidays each year. I could not agree more. Latif suggests that American Muslims are trying to develop their own contemporary identity as the religion of peace and tolerance. In his view, closing schools for major Muslim holidays would help that process since an Americanized modern and moderate Islam would benefit all Americans. However, I would alter Latif's suggestion slightly. We should treat the various Muslim...