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By Star Parker
UrbanCure.org
The "Ground Zero" Mosque project should not go forward and let's
hope that Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf that is behind this $100 million project gets
this message and backs off.
But given what he is hearing from the
liberals in New York, including the city's Mayor, the congressman in whose
district Ground Zero sits, and the New York Times, it's hard to be optimistic
that he will change his mind.
Opposition to the Mosque is being
portrayed, as the New York Times editorial page put it, as abandoning "the
principles of freedom and tolerance." But the Times makes its own
tenuous grasp of reality clear as it goes on in its editorial embracing the
Mosque and Islamic Center to say that "The attacks of September 11 were not a
religious event."
We can only wonder what those at the Times
think was motivating the young Muslims who, while embracing their Korans and
chanting to Allah, committed suicide, taking 3,000 innocent Americans to their
deaths along with them.
The website for the project, the Cordoba
Initiative, advertises itself as "Improving Muslim-West Relations", and
"steering the world back to the course of mutual recognition and respect and
away from heightened tensions."
But if Feisel Abdul Rauf is primarily
motivated to "reduce heightened tensions," why would he do something as
obviously provocative as building a Mosque and Islamic Center a few feet away
from 9/11 Ground Zero?
It's fine and well that he wants to improve
Muslim-West relations. But why must he choose the place where thousands of
Americans were murdered by Muslim terrorists to do his outreach?
Critical to grasp here is the suggestion of the need for dialogue. That the
existence of Islamic terrorism is the result of problems with Americans as well
as problems that may exist in Islam. And it all would be fixed if we understood
each other better. This is simply false.
Americans don't need any
lessons about freedom and tolerance.
Several million Muslim Americans
live, prosper, and practice their religion freely and without interference in
our country. According to a Google search, there are about 2,000 Mosques in the
United States.
We have one Muslim American member of the United States
Congress, who took his oath of office with his hand on the Koran.
Probably every major American university has programs where students can learn
about Islam to their heart's content. Including universities, such as Columbia,
that are in the heart of New York City.
In a Gallup poll earlier this
year, only 9 percent of Americans said they feel a "great deal" of prejudice
against Muslims. Given recent history, this is an astounding statement of the
beauty of the character of the American people.
As we know, President
Obama brought with him to the presidency a conviction that we Americans somehow
bore some responsibility for the antipathy towards us in the Islamic world and
that outreach would help.
But, of course, this is false. As Johns
Hopkins University Middle East Scholar Fouad Ajami pointed out in a Wall
Street Journal column, President Obama's outreach program has accomplished
only diminished respect for us in the Islamic world.
Antipathy
continues to run high and unchanged and it's not because there something wrong
with us. It's because, as Ajami points out, it's a convenient "scapegoat" for
nations and rulers that refuse to address their own real problems.
Of
the 17 nations that Freedom House rates the "worst of the worst" regarding their
state of freedom, 6 are Islamic nations.
Feisel Abdul Rauf should
spend his $100 million, wherever he is getting it from, to advance the cause of
freedom in Islamic countries. That is where the problem is. It's certainly not
here.
The fact the he insists on provocatively erecting a Mosque at
Ground Zero raises legitimate suspicion that he is more a symptom of rather than
a solution to this problem.