RUTHFULLY YOURS

Leftist pseudo-journalist/propagandist David Edwards uses a suspicious story about a domed church in Arizona that people are supposedly “fearing” because they think it is a mosque to claim that “Islamophobia” is reaching a fever pitch, and that Pamela Geller and I played a role in that by successfully “dubbing” an “Islamic center that is planned near Ground Zero” a “Ground Zero Mosque.”

“Church in Arizona protested because it looks like a mosque,” by David Edwards in The Raw Story, November 16:

Islamophobia may have reached a point in this country where people condemn Christians that they suspect are Muslims without ever checking the facts.In Phoenix, Arizona, a new Christian church has residents fearing that it is an Islamic mosque.

The Light of the World multidenominational church is being built just off of Interstate 10 and features a dome-like structure.

“Since the distinctive dome shape went up, church leaders said they have received phone calls from concerned neighbors who’ve mistaken the building for an Islamic mosque,” KPHO reported.

“I heard many people, they came over and they say, ‘Is this a Muslim temple?’ No, it’s not,” church member Juan Calixto told KPNX.

“It is unfortunate that people are so intolerant to differences that they aren’t willing to see that the place of worship is not a mosque,” said Tayyibah Amatullah of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Arizona chapter….

No mention from Edwards, unsurprisingly, of CAIR’s Hamas links, the terror convictions of various of its former officials, etc.

Officials are trying to avoid the type of backlash received by the Park51 Islamic center that is planned near Ground Zero.The cultural center was largely ignored when The New York Times first reported about it in December 2009.

The project received wider notice in May 2010 when a community board considered the construction plans. Conservative bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer dubbed the proposed center the “Ground Zero Mosque” which started a national controversy.

“But with so many high-profile figures selling unfounded, anti-Muslim fear to the public, is it any wonder that all many Americans can see in Islam is a phantom menace?” asked Tanya Somanader at the liberal blog Think Progress.

David Edwards must think that the American people are very stupid, if he really believes that Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer could hoodwink the 70% of Americans who oppose the Ground Zero Mosque into thinking that it was a mosque at Ground Zero in the first place, when it’s really just an innocent “Islamic center that is planned near Ground Zero.”

In reality, most Americans believe that the Ground Zero Mosque is a Ground Zero Mosque because they can see with their own eyes that it is a Ground Zero Mosque.

The Burlington Coat Factory building that will be torn down to build the mosque is part of the attack site, as the landing gear from one of the 9/11 planes crashed into its roof and fell five stories to the basement. The building is thus an essential part of Ground Zero itself, which will greatly enhance the mosque’s symbolic value in the Islamic world as another triumphal mosque, a la the Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (the grandest cathedral in Christendom for a millennium, converted to a mosque in 1453, now a museum), and thousands of others throughout the Islamic world.

What’s more, mosque organizer Feisal Abdul Rauf in December 2009 spoke happily about building the mosque on a site “where a piece of the wreckage fell.” In other words, the Ground Zero location is very much part of the point for him.

And as for its not being a mosque, it will contain a mosque, and thus it isn’t in the least unjustified to call the whole thing a mosque, as did Daisy Khan, one of the organizers of the Ground Zero mosque initiative. No one says that the evangelical mega-churches that contain swimming pools and counseling centers, etc., are not churches because they contain things other than a worship space.