YOUSEFF IBRAHIM: MOSQUE AT THE WTC: MUSLIM RENEWAL OR INSULT NEAR GROUND ZERO?
Mosque At the WTC :
Muslim Renewal Or Insult Near Ground Zero?
By Youssef M. Ibrahim
An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the World Trade Center once stood to turn into potentially one of the largest NYC mosques.
At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, serves already as a mini-mosque where an iron grill lifts Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards away from where Ossama Ben Laden airborne Islamist bombers killed nearly 3000 people back in 2001.
The Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf told the Times which put the story on its front page Wednesday he has assembled several millions dollars to turn it into ‘’an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors’’.
The 61-year-old Imam said paid $4.85 million for it, in cash, records show. With 50,000 square feet of air rights and enough financing he plans an ambitious project of $150 million, he said, akin to the Chautauqua Institution, the 92 Street Y or the Jewish Community Center.
The origins of such monies are unexplained nor are the countries or entity advancing such huge donations. Most of the US mosques, including many in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are funded directly or indirectly by Saudi Arabia the country to which 15 of the 19 hijackers who bombed the WTC belonged. The UAE, Qatar and Iran are other major sponsors across the USA.
The money trail is an important question that must be answered by the Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with more than a bland comment by one of his spokesman, Andrew Brent, who quipped to the Times “If it’s legal, the building owners have a right to do what they want.â€
At the moment, the location is not designated a mosque, but rather an overflow prayer space for another mosque, Al Farah at 245 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where Imam Feisal is the spiritual leader. Call this creeping annexation. On Sept. 11, the Burlington building with 80 employees in its basement is where a piece of a plane plunged through the roof, either from Flight 11 or Flight 175 crashing into the south tower at 9:03.
One of the investors for future oncoming funds is listed as the Cordoba Initiative, defined as an ‘’interfaith group’’, founded by Imam Feisal. Cordoba is the name militant Muslims often invoke when they recall the glory of Muslim empire in the centuries they occupied Spain.
As a former NYT and WSJ correspondent and a NY SUN columnist who covered Islamic Fundamentalism extensively overseas and in the USA, I find the facts oddly lacking. The story as reported fails to answer, and avoid asking, so many pertinent questions.
The source of money matters as a significant part of the hundreds of mosques being built and already erected in this country double up as cultural Islamic centers for distribution of literature– Islamist propaganda in fact—from Bay Ridge Brooklyn to Detroit, and for schooling among growing Muslim minorities. They house Imams of unknown origin and education many of whom do not speak a word of English but preach in Arabic and Urdu, often it turns out, radical messages.
As a reporter familiar with the Arab communities of the USA, I doubt the faithful fork out all that money for mega mosques, and if they did, the mayor’s office should prove it, not merely accept someone’s say so. It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds from the Saudis but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran, all problematic Islamists activist nations. The government just ceased a major Iranian funded mosque and center in NYC, which operated under the radar since the days of the good old Shah of Iran, under the auspices of the Pahlavi Foundation, owned since 1979 by the Mullahs of Iran.
The context here is that of the perpetrators in the WTC attacks on the very site where this new mosque shall rise all were radicalized at mosques here or overseas. We saw how, in the case of Major Nidal Hassan of Ft Hood, it turned three of the original participants in 9/11 listened to the same preacher he listened to, an American Imam with a radical violent Islamic website now operating out of Yemen to recruit more American Muslims. In such a framework knowing more about the project and the men behind it. Unknown investors who are planning $150 million for a mosque at the WTC site of New York City merit more some crafted PR remarks about loving interfaith dialogue.
The mayor’s office should tell us more.
Just as important, who’s imam Feisal Abdul Rauf ? And what’s his background? Given the origination of much Islamist radicalism at mosques at the hands of imams in virtually all the terrorist attacks in America and Europe — as we found over and over again– this is a glaring mishap. As it stands he appears nattily dressed in a suit, described merely as a Sufi, a man of a few words. What does he say in Arabic during his preach? Does the mayor’s office Islamic counselor know and did she tell the mayor? Mayor Bloomberg’s folks need to find out and tell us what are the Imam’s origins, where he was schooled, whether he is an immigrant, a visitor, what is his philosophy, among other relevant questions.
Merely quoting the Imam saying ‘’What happened that day was not Islam’’– which is how the Times reporters ended their story– is rather lame given the enormity of his ambition and the iconic status of where he wants to put it and the religion under which it was, rightly or wrongly, perpetuated.
Merely describing the man as a Sufi ‘’who follows a path of Islam focused more on spiritual wisdom than on strict ritual,’’ is far too little. After every terrorist atrocity any number of Sufi and Muslims savants ritually come out with the hackneyed sayings ‘’Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood’’. Accumulated as they are these statements are added a heap of nothing for those tens of thousands of Muslims killed by other Muslims in suicide and other bombings from Pakistan to Iraq every day.
One would hope for a follow up story or stories and that New York City and its citizens, in the least, ask harder questions? As it stands, this one misleads in the interest of political correctness.
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