RUTHFULLY YOURS

More smooth deceptions, and some surprisingly revealing pro-Sharia Islamic supremacist statements, from the Islamic supremacist imam behind the Ground Zero Mosque. “Ground Zero imam gives Scotland his recipe for successful multiculturalism,” by Vicky Allan for the Sunday Herald, August 28 (thanks to Ron):

AMERICA’S most controversial imam – the man at the centre of the storm over plans for the “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York last year – flew into Edinburgh yesterday to tell the Festival of Spirituality and Peace that greater integration between Islam and the West depends on the incorporation of Sharia law into the legal systems of the UK and the United States as well as Muslims adopting the culture of their host countries.Many see Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf as an Islamic moderate even though he has been vilified in the US press as an apologist for radical Muslims. In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Rauf said he believes the world is in the grip of a “dangerous myth” and “self-fulfilling prophecy” that “Islam and the West are at war. But the real battleground is not between Islam and the West, but between the wise, fair-minded people of all faith traditions and the extremists.”

Although he is a pro-US imam who has argued that America is the embodiment of Islam’s ideal society, Rauf became a hate figure in the US over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. The plan offended relatives of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and led to a US pastor proposing a “Burn a Koran day”.

He’s a “pro-US imam” who blamed 9/11 on the U.S. and said that Osama bin Laden was “made in the USA.”

Rauf says that when the project – a community centre containing a mosque – was announced on the front page of the New York Times [in December 2009] there was no reaction. But six months later, it was picked up by conservatives like Sarah Palin and became one of the most divisive subjects in US society. Rauf later said: “If I had known this would happen, cause this kind of pain, I wouldn’t have done it.”…

Then stop it now. Join us at our 9/11 Freedom Rally at Ground Zero and announce that you’re definitively abandoning the project.

An essential element of this interweaving of cultures, he says, will have to be the incorporation of Sharia law into the legal systems of Europe and the US. In this, he is in agreement with the Archbishop of Canterbury who said that the adoption of some aspects of Sharia law “seems to be unavoidable”.Rauf points out that “the only truly clashing area is the penal code, and no Muslim has the intention of introducing that to America. The penal code is the area that people in the Western world are worried about – but these are things that aren’t even observed today in most of the Muslim world. Apart from the Taliban and a few places like that, where do you see this happening?”.

Hani Ramadan, Tariq Ramadan’s brother, called for the stoning of adulterers in Paris a few years back. If Muslims believe that the Sharia, including its penal code, is Allah’s perfect and immutable law, why wouldn’t they want to bring it to America and Europe? Rauf does not and cannot point to a form of Sharia that does not contain the mandates for stoning, amputation, etc. So how firm and honest can his assurance that Muslims have no intention of bringing all that here really be? We’re already seeing honor killings and female genital mutilation in America. Why shouldn’t the rest follow when all of this is justified by Sharia?

In the UK, he says, we need to recognise that the radicalisation of Muslim youth is not a problem of religion. “You have to consider how we would approach it if these people were not Muslims, but were Christian, for instance. The source of the problem is not religion, but an economic one.”

That idea has been debunked in study after study. But if enough easy marks believe Rauf, the Muslim communities in the UK will pick up some more jizya.

Another myth which Rauf tries to counter is the idea that Islam is at odds with Western concepts of gender equality. “Look around the world, and you see six or seven predominantly Muslim countries that have had heads of governments and heads of state who were women. Glass ceilings have already been broken for many countries in the Muslim world.”

Yes, that certainly proves that women have equal rights in Muslim societies!

The rise of the extreme right in Europe is something he perceives as a “reaction of fear to a threat of the loss of identity”. He says: “What it means to be Dutch, or what it meant to be British, in terms of ethnicity or language, is undergoing a shift.” The tensions this provokes have to be “addressed by both the host community and the immigrant community … We need to develop a local Muslim culture. Dutch Muslims have to become increasingly Dutch. The same for British Muslims. We should dress like the people of our country.”…

Cut out the jihad terror plots? Not a word about that. Dress like the natives? Yeah, that’ll fix everything.

Rauf supported the decision by Edinburgh City Council to ban the far-right Scottish Defence League from marching on the eve of the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 amid safety fears.He also supported the Scottish Government’s decision to release the Lockerbie bomber….

What a surprise.