THE IMAM BEHIND THE MOSQUE: ED LASKY
Imam Rauf’s membership in group that sponsored Gaza flotilla.
Ed Lasky
The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli commandos at sea this week.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization, according to its Website.
Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.
At first, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf insisted the funds would be raised entirely from the Muslim-American community.
But then he told an Arabic-language newspaper in Britain that funding would also come from Arab countries.
And it should be noted that Rauf’s father was the long-time director of the Islamic Center of New York, which built the mosque on Third Avenue and 96th Street — a project funded primarily by the governments of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations.
Now, the Saudis openly fund mosques abroad, spreading the radical Wahhabi strain of Islam, as a means of pacifying their own home-grown radicals.
So it would be particularly troubling if Rauf’s funding comes from abroad — particularly from Riyadh.
Especially given his own disturbing ties to figures like Hossein Mahallati, Iran’s former UN ambassador and an unabashed supporter of Hamas.
Not to mention Rauf’s own pointed refusal to label Hamas a terrorist organization — and his statement, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”
Sounds the ideal candidate to send overseas on a taxpayer-funded trip as out latest envoy to the Islamic world-where, he no doubt, will try to raise funds for the 9/11 Mosque.
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