RUTHFULLY YOURS

Traditionally, Americans are a trusting lot. If you say you want to build a cultural center devoted to mutual understanding of various religions, most of us will take you at your word. If you claim to be helping legal immigrants with securing a job, working on naturalization and learning the English language, most of us would applaud and say “Thank you.”

Thus, the building of an “Islamic learning center and mosque” and an “immigrant advocacy” center should not be a “big deal”, right? In Maryland, Casa de Maryland, an “immigrant advocacy” group, just completed renovation of its headquarters, with $10 million of the $32 million cost reportedly coming from taxpayers. On the other hand, the $100 million Islamic center proposed for construction in lower Manhattan, has yet to identify where its funding will come from.

So what is the problem? Well, first a little background. According to a profile of pollster Scott Rasmussen in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, he believes Americans increasingly view our country as divided between the “ruling class” (in “single digits”) and the “main street class” (roughly 60%). The rest apparently are confused as to who they are.

How then does this connect to the debate over the Islamic “mosque” in New York and the new building of an immigrant group in Maryland? In almost every way.

Most Americans understand terrorists claiming to be acting in the name of Islam, and trained by an organization, Al Qaeda, given sanctuary by the Taliban of Afghanistan, carried out the attacks of 9/11. A detailed analysis of the 1993 World Trade Center attack reveals Iraq as the probable mastermind. Given Khalid Sheik Mohammed was associated with the 1993 attack, (carried out on the 2 year anniversary of Iraq’s surrender in Gulf War 1991) and the top planner for 2001, many believe Saddam too was behind 9/11.

But whatever the facts ultimately reveal, Islam is, fairly or not, associated with terror attacks against the United States. Whether or not “Islam” generally shares the goals of these attackers is not at issue. What is at issue is the Imam associated with the New York mosque and cultural center. He blames America for the 9/11 attacks, and said we created Al Qaeda. And just for good measure, he does not think Hamas is a terror organization.

He is apparently part of an elitist opinion infecting many in America and abroad that sees American foreign policy as the “culprit” behind 9/11. This view neatly dovetails with Osama Bin Laden’s declaration of war against America in which he claimed US troops “in the land of the shrines” were an insult to Islam. He further claimed America was at war with Islam, decrying America’s defeat of Iraq in freeing Kuwait, and the continued sanctions and no-fly zones against Iraq. The irony of Osama Bin Laden coming to the defense of Saddam Hussein is rich, of course, but for some reason not of significance to those who see only bad American behavior as the cause of 9/11. Remember Reverend Wright telling his congregation that 9/11 was simply “America’s chickens coming home to roost”.

In an interview the Imam tells us that the US sanctions against Iraq killed 500,000 children because they lacked necessary health care. He says former Clinton administration Secretary of State Albright agrees with him, whom he now calls a “friend”. Ironically, one of the key charges that Osama Bin Laden made in his declaration of war against the United States was exactly the same: that UN and US sanctions against Iraq had led to the death of half a million children. We now know that healthcare products for children were being hijacked by Saddam’s family and sold on the black market all during the “Food for Palaces” program run under the auspices of the United Nations. At the same time, the Iraq government was playing the world’s media for fools as it disseminated the false story that sanctions killed thousands of children as opposed to the greed of its own rulers.

A similar story involves Casa de Maryland. Its literature and website imply that America’s hand in Central America’s turmoil of the 1980’s—especially the civil war in El Salvador and the US support for the Democratic resistance in Nicaragua—was responsible for the refugee flows to the United States. It is these people whom they say they were founded to help.

Thus it is that Casa de Maryland claims it simply wants to help those legally in America get their immigration status in order, learn English, find jobs and be just regular, albeit new, American citizens. However, there is more. Casa de Maryland opposes the new law in Arizona that is trying to enforce immigration law. It wants to end all existing federal programs that allow local police to help enforce immigration laws. It wants all raids against employers of illegal immigrants to stop. It proposes in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, and no restrictions on the issuance of driver’s licenses.

While funding for the cultural center in New York remains unknown, we know now that 80% of mosques in America are funded by Saudi Arabia and preach the Shariah law of Wahhabism, thanks to a new study by the Center of Security Policy of Washington, D.C. As for Casa de Maryland, funds came from George Soros’s Open Society. $1.5 million came from Venezuela’s Chavez via the oil company CITGO. And moreover, nearly 20 Maryland state and country government entities provided a reported $10 million.

In New York and in much of the country, the elites have ignored the concerns of everyday Americans about the New York “mosque”. However, Americans know that mosques across the country and around the world have been recruiting grounds for terrorists and from which Imams have preached violence against America.

And we know they have been connected to fund raising for Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda and other terror organizations. And they are connected to state sponsors of terror such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria, the most important members of the poisonous coalition we face that we call “terrorism with global reach”.

And thus the site of the proposed Islamic center– but a few yards from the World Trade Center ruins and widely viewed as hallowed ground–cannot be separated from the suspicion about Islam’s role in the attacks of 9/11. It is also simply not an appropriate place for such a center, especially to the survivors of the attacks on the morning of 9/11. Whatever the connection to Islamic-fueled terrorism and 9/11 may actually be, the connection is too real for many not to be suspicious.

On immigration, most Americans want our borders to be protected and the illegal immigration to be ended. They know a number of the 9/11 hijackers were stopped for driving violations; held driver’s licenses issued by a motor vehicle administration in Virginia; had visas issued under Visa Express that would never have been issued if the law had been followed; and were in violation of a number of immigration statutes. In addition, they know the local police did not have the authority to check their immigration status which if done might have foiled the plots of 9/11.

Why then, they ask, are the elites, including the government of Maryland, the terrorist sponsoring government of Venezuela and the socialist billionaire George Soros, all supporting an organization that wants to keep America’s borders unprotected? [Ironically, Venezuela’s Chavez and Soros both argue that America’s foreign policy failures created the terrorist attacks of 9/11].

One Maryland delegate–a former board member of Casa de Maryland and once a refugee from El Salvador– argued during the debate in the state legislature over whether illegal immigrants could be allowed to secure driver’s licenses that there were no such people as illegal immigrants in Maryland. She argued while being interviewed by Mexican television: “They are here just to await a change in their status”.

When I spoke with her about the Chavez donation to Casa de Maryland, she screamed at me saying “Chavez is a model for all of America’s economic development”. For the record, Venezuela’s murder rate is now triple that of Mexico; its inflation rate is over 35% and one of the highest in the world; GDP has fallen, unemployment has skyrocketed, and despite $75 dollar a barrel oil, the oil economy is a shambles.

Americans are waking up to the shadowy connection between mosques and terrorist murder, between immigration and invasion. Thus, it is that two buildings–one in Maryland and one in New York, are at the center of two controversies between America’s elites and those Americans who live on “Main Street”. And they are connected. All of America’s Main Street remembers Muhammad Atta, when our broken laws and false assumptions on both terrorism and immigration came together on that terrible morning of 9/11. Even if our elites are busy pretending otherwise.