This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/4433
June 30, 2010
By WILLIAM MAYER
June 30, 2010 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNew.org - Showing signs that he is feeling the heat from an increasing chorus of serious voices demanding a stop to the building of a proposed mega-mosque within throwing distance of the 911 ground zero site, Mayor Bloomberg has issued a clarifying statement regarding his support for the project.
"If somebody wants to build a religious house of worship, they should do it and we shouldn't be in the business of picking which religions can and which religions can't. I think it's fair to say if somebody was going to try to on that piece of property build a church or a synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming. And the fact of the matter is that Muslims have a right to do it too. What is great about America and particularly New York is we welcome everybody and I just- you know, if we are so afraid of something like this, what does it say about us? Democracy is stronger than this. You know, the ability to practice your religion is the- was one of the real reasons America was founded. And for us to say no is just, I think, not appropriate is a nice way to phrase it."
Bloomberg's statement is not at all surprising because supporting Rauf's project takes the path of least political resistance, it's the easy way out...at least at the current juncture, and therefore such a response is consistent with someone who apparently has few core beliefs aside from trying to cultivate a touchy-feely multicultural image. Primarily, he errs in treating Rauf's proposal as if it was just another mundane project, removing it from the context necessary to properly weigh the issue.
The context is as follows:
Rauf is an Islamist, he believes in political Islam, extending, through the imposition of Islamic religious law, the reach of Shari'a. He believes that Shari'a should be integrated into the American system of governance, a position which by necessity dictates a consequent diminution of the foundational principles - especially the Judeo-Christian ethic - upon which this country and by extension the West, was built.
In his 2006 book, "What's Right with Islam," he states, "for America to score even higher on the 'Islamic' or 'Shariah compliance' scale, America would need to do two things: invite the voices of all religions to join the dialogue in shaping the nation's practical life and allow religious communities more leeway to judge among themselves according to their own laws..."
For a glimpse of where this logic can take a culture, one need only look at the UK where now, because of a reliance on the same simplistic relativism Bloomberg is employing, there exists a de-facto bifurcated society, one aggressively Muslim, the other passively post Judeo-Christian with an officially recognized, two-tiered system of jurisprudence, one for Muslims another for everyone else.
There is nothing of the classic melting pot here; there is not only no possibility of compromise with the Islamists who are running this effort, but the Brits are instead faced with increasing demands for even more "religious accommodation," a process whereby its adherents hope to incrementally but inexorably supplant civil law with that of Shari'a.
While those in the UK must decide whether that is acceptable in their society, the idea is entirely antithetical to the essence of this country. The U.S. Constitution was never intended to be a doomsday device, giving noisy minorities harboring concepts alien to Americanism, the right to overthrow an entire system from within - the hoped for endgame by people such as imam Rauf.
Despite his claims as a peace builder, Imam Rauf curiously can't bring himself to condemn Hamas, despite it having been declared, since 1995, by the State Department as a "foreign terrorist organization." [source, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/45323.pdf]
Similarly, when given an opportunity to condemn the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian terror organization which created Hamas, he also deferred.
It's possible to say this because imam Rauf was pointedly asked to condemn these two organizations in a recent radio interview conducted by World Net Daily journalist, Aaron Klein. [source, http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=168797]
It's odd that Mr. Bloomberg, for all his acumen is still apparently entirely unaware of some of the most important forces and ideas at play in this matter.
Central to this is the Muslim tradition of supremacist/triumphalist demonstrations, of a concrete nature, made subsequent to its conquests.
As Frank Gaffney characterizes the hidden text behind Rauf's mosque project:
There should be no doubt, not even in the Mayor's mind, that the wreckage which resulted from the Muslim attacks on 911 is seen worldwide by jihadists in the same manner that savages might appreciate bloody scalps taken from their enemies.
Ground zero then is symbolic, an icon for those who wage religiously sanctioned warfare against us as signifying a great victory over the non-believers.
It is entirely consistent with past practices then - since it's not possible to build a mosque directly on the spot where the World Trade Center used to stand - to do the next best thing, to construct a huge, in your face Muslim house of worship not only overlooking this site...but within spitting distance of it.
Mr. Bloomberg must ask himself if it would be appropriate - though "legal" - for the German government to build a cultural center, containing pamphlets attesting to the "softer" side of Nazism, next to Buchenwald, Dachau or Treblinka?
It is the question then of appropriateness upon which this matter turns.
Judging by his recent statement, Mr. Bloomberg believes that simply because something is nominally legal [ignoring the serious administrative issues still pending, such as the landmark status of the Burlington building] that status equates to it being appropriate.
The only way Mr. Bloomberg can justify his taking the easy way out here - simply rolling over - is to completely ignore everything surrounding the controversy.
1. Rauf is an Islamist who wishes to supplant the U.S. Constitution with the alien religious body of Islamic law called Shari'a.
2. He is unwilling to condemn either Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist groups responsible for the deaths of over 5,000 Israelis, many of them women and children, killed during the second Intifada, or Hamas' patron organization the Muslim Brotherhood which serves as the intellectual/theological/ideological foundation upon which all modern Islamic terrorism is built, including that of al-Qaeda.
3. Mr. Bloomberg avoids probing the troublesome history of Islamic supremacism, especially the practice of building mosques on sacred sites in a triumphalist manner, signifying a great victory,
4. He pretends that there is no baggage attendant Islam, at least the way it is practiced by more than a few, as if this proposal was a planned orphanage presented by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York instead of one advanced by a private individual who publicly advocates Shari'a incrementalism, seems to be comfortable with terrorist organizations and has thus far refused to disclose the source of his funding for this project. Mr. Bloomberg can only reasonably support Rauf's murky Cordoba Initiative [again Mr. Bloomberg should ask imam Rauf why he chose to so name his effort, given the symbolic nature that the Muslim conquest and subsequent subjugation of Spain for nearly 700 years, constitutes among radical Muslims] if he continues to deceive himself.
Bottom line?
Rauf's Corodoba Inititiative is a Trojan Horse, a breaching of the gates. Consequently, if the Mayor wants to ultimately go on record as defending this monstrous effort, then feigned ignorance is his only defense, a dodge certainly, but one which will not be judged terribly well in retrospect.
© 2010 PipeLineNews.org LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=raufopen6.30.10%2Ehtm This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/4433"The supremacist program authoritative Islam calls Shariah is big on symbols. Arguably, none is more effective than its practice of building mosques on its conquests' most sacred sites. In Jerusalem, triumphant Muslims built the Al-Aqsa mosque on top of the Jews' revered Temple Mount. They transformed what had been for a thousand years the largest cathedral in Christendom, Constantinople's magnificent St. Sophia basilica, into a sprawling mosque complex. And the Moorish Ummayad dynasty in Spain, made the city of Cordoba its capital, and installed an immense mosque on the site of an ancient Christian church there."