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ADRIAN MORGAN: THE GROUND ZERO MOSQUE…GOING MAD IN HERDS?

Posted By Ruth King on August 23rd, 2010

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7136/pub_detail.asp

Maureen Dowd, writing in the New York Times on Friday, described the responses of the “irrational nation” of America to the Ground Zero Mosque. In typically liberal terms, she stated:

“The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown, with the right spreading fear and disinformation that is amplified by the poisonous echo chamber that is the modern media environment.

The dispute over the Islamic center has tripped some deep national lunacy. The unbottled anger and suspicion concerning ground zero show that many Americans haven’t flushed the trauma of 9/11 out of their systems — making them easy prey for fearmongers.”

There is something rather patronizing about this position. It acknowledges that 9/11 has scarred the American psyche like no other event. Pearl Harbor was a similar traumatic event but it was met with proportional force. Admittedly the American military machine went into Afghanistan and routed the Taliban’s terror-supporting regime, and denied Al Qaeda a safe seat of operations. But Al Qaeda is only one of the many heads of the Islamist hydra. Cut off one head, and more will grow from the stump.

The reaction of the left and so-called “progressives” to the rage of the opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque assumes that because time has elapsed, the site of the seminal event that was the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center should not be treated with great importance. Some have argued that – even though plane wreckage damaged the roof of the proposed site of the Ground Zero Mosque – Park51 is sufficiently far away from the scene of where 2,605 lives were extinguished. Such geographical distance, liberals argue, mean that there is no cause to get upset at any perceived insult to the memories of those who d many of whom still have parts of their pulverized remains still embedded in the site of Ground Zero.

Such reasoning does not calculate into its equations the actions of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. He himself has been capitalizing on the fact that, by being near 9/11, there will be an added significance to “interfaith” harmony.

There are many claims in the media that the proposed mosque is set to open on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the attacks. Admittedly, I cannot find any direct quotes from Rauf himself on confirming that particular day for the proposed inauguration date. Indeed, in an interview published on May 26, Rauf denied that the mosque/Islamic center would be opened on that date. However, in the same interview, he suggested that the 9/11 victims would be commemorated in the mosque:

In the interview, Rauf said his own congregation was affected by 9/11. “We had 200 people who bled and died on 9/11. We gave water to firefighters; doctors from the community volunteered to be medics. We are part of the 9/11 family,” said Rauf, reiterating his plans to put a memorial inside the Islamic center with the names of 9/11 victims.

By talking of commemorating the names, Rauf is consciously connecting his mosque site with 9/11. The messages that Rauf presents appear to change, depending on where these messages are produced. As pointed out by Andrew McCarthy, Rauf wrote a book called “What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right With America.” The same book, in its Malaysian edition, is called “A Call to Prayer From the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11.” (Seruan Azan dari Puing WTC Dakwah Islam di Jantung Aamerika Pasca 9/11). Dawah means “missionary activity” for Islam. It does not mean “interfaith activities”.

Much is made of Imam Rauf’s being a Sufi, as if that is a guarantee that he is a “moderate”. It should be remembered that Ibn Taymiyyah (1263 – 1328), the man whose writings would inspire the intransigent Wahhabist doctrine of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 – 1792), also saw himself as a Sufi.

One should also remember that Tamerlane (aka Timur-e-Lang Tamburlane, 1336 – 1405) was another historical Sufi. When he invaded Isfahan in Iran in 1387, he exterminated the entire population of the city. 70,000 people were murdered, and their heads were piled into columns outside the city gates.

The issue of 9/11 is important to people, and those who try to dismiss people’s concerns as being “rightwing hysteria”, such as the folk at “Media Matters for America,” ignore their own leftist hysteria.

The mainstream media has acknowledged that the Ground Zero Mosque is a newsworthy subject. Yesterday hundreds of protesters gathered in New York, not far from the WTC site. There were counter-protesters who supported the mosque, and the two factions were separated.
The headlines from some in the media have been inflammatory. An article by Mike Lupica in NY Daily News is titled: “Scary fanatics like Newt Gingrich turn Ground Zero mosque debate into ugly, stupid spectacle.” Lupica does not mention the interference of the president in creating a climate of hysteria. Maureen Dowd’s Friday article was titled: “Going Mad in Herds.”

When American citizens read such contempt for them, over an issue that successive polls have shown the vast majority of citizens oppose the construction of the Ground Zero mosque, they will become more angry. They are not going to go quiet because some arrogant urbane columnist within the Beltway sneers at them like they are ignorant proles. These columnists of the progressive media are equally “guilty” of stoking up the tensions. And these tensions are having reverberations far beyond New York, far beyond America.

The issue of the Ground Zero Mosque has spread into the mainstream media of countries such as Britain and Europe. It is also being discussed in the Middle eastern press. The LA Times discusses this more interesting, and perhaps more worrying, perspective, claiming:

The heated debate across America over construction of the so-called ground zero mosque is reverberating across the globe, with the potential of creating a worldwide black eye for the United States.

Many Muslims abroad are miffed by the stateside debate, largely conducted by non-Muslims, that has grown so loud as to become a topic of discussion on talk shows and newspapers from Bali to Bahrain, from Baghdad to Berlin. The proposed Cordoba House has become a symbol of America’s fraught relations with the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.

Raymond Ibrahim, associate director of the Middle East Forum and a frequent contributor to Pajamas Media, had written on August 19 that Al Azhar University, the Cairo-based leading Sunni theological institution in the world, has also taken issue on the Ground Zero Mosque. Mr. Ibrahim’s translation of an article that originally appeared in Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm includes the following:

A number of Al Azhar ulema expressed their opposition to building a mosque near [where] the events of September 11 [occurred], convinced that it is “a conspiracy to confirm a clear connection between the strikes of September [11] and Islam.” Dr. ‘Abd al-Mu’ti Bayumi, a member of the Islamic Research Academy [of Al Azhar] told Al Masry Al Youm that he rejects the building of any mosque in this area [Ground Zero], because the “devious mentality” desires to connect these events [of 9/11] with Islam, though he maintains that Islam is innocent of this accusation. Instead, it is a “Zionist conspiracy,” which many are making use of to harm the religion. Likewise, Dr. Amna Nazir, professor of doctrine and philosophy at Al Azhar, expressed her rejection that a mosque be built near the World Trade Center, saying: “Building a mosque on this rubble indicates bad intention — even if we wished to shut our eyes, close our minds, and insist on good will. I hope it is a sincere step, and not a new conspiracy against Islam and Muslims.”

This issue has been a source of contention right from the start. New York Governor David Paterson has offered to provide land to relocate the site of the Islamic center envisaged by Imam Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan away from the Ground Zero site.

The refusal by Rauf to acknowledge the legitimacy of the opposition to the mosque – even as the hysteria goes international – shows stubbornness and indicates that he does not care if it damages America both at home and abroad.

The statements of support for the mosque from Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, have ratcheted up the climate of anger. When Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich complained about the site of the mosque, they were pilloried in the “progressive” mainstream media. When Pelosi suggested that the funding of the opponents of the mosque should be investigated, the mainstream media paid scant attention.

The issue of the Ground Zero Mosque is now a source of national division, an issue that polarizes the political camps, and threatens to cause upset in the Middle East.

Imam Rauf has been in the Middle East, dispensing words of reassurance that America is a place of tolerance for Islam. Sadly, the American government is taking taxpayers’ money to promote Imam Rauf’s jaunts to the Middle East, and yet it is bound by the terms of the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act not to report back to the American public what is done in its name.

Imam Rauf’s trip to the Middle East has spectacularly failed, it seems, if the controversy has now hit the media in the Middle East, presenting America as being “intolerant” of religion. He has either not succeeded in his mission to present an image of America as a tolerant nation, or he has not tried hard enough.

The Ground Zero Mosque issue has never been about religious intolerance but about the positioning of a mosque, requiring £105 million to be completed, close to the site where 2,605 died as a result of the actions of Muslim religious extremists. The events of 9/11 were acts of war. Trying to pretend that a mosque can smooth over the traces of an act of war, when that war against America is still being fought by Islamists across the globe, is an act of folly.

Imam Rauf seems to know exactly what he is doing. A man who on September 30, 2001 had claimed that America was an “accessory” to the horrors of 9/11 is someone who already conceives America as being partly “guilty.” If he still sees America as guilty for the events of 9/11, then it seems that by creating a debate that is crossing the world and igniting passions in the Muslim world against America, he also seems to be punishing America.

An archive of all of Family Security Matters’ recent Ground Zero Mosque articles can be found here.

The Editor, Family Security Matters

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