An Insult. A Trojan Horse. Surrender.
These are a few of the many ways conservative pundits have referred to plans by a Muslim group to construct a 13-story, $100 million community center that will include a swimming pool, an auditorium, an art exhibit, bookstores, restaurants and a mosque three blocks from Ground Zero.
According to the group behind this venture, this complex, the Cordoba House, will serve as a "community driven center" and will promote "integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture."
The Cordoba Initiative, the organization that is funding the construction of this building, was founded by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
Abdul Rauf appeared on 60 Minutes shortly after the 9/11 attacks asserting that "fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam." He has worked with the FBI and has long been a leading Muslim voice condemning terrorism. He insists that this community center will be open to people of all faiths and will serve to build bridges between the different communities.
This matters little to critics of the proposed community center, including many leading politicians and pundits, who insist this building is being erected to taunt the victims of 9/11.
Sarah Palin comically tweeted that Muslims should "refudiate" plans for this building because it "stabs hearts."
A Facebook group demanding that the "Ground Zero mosque be stopped" has almost 200,000 members.
A new ad created by a political action committee called the "National Republican Trust" shows the twin towers collapsing as a narrator ominously describes how "on 9/11 they declared war against us" and to celebrate "they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at Ground Zero".
This is but a small sample of what has been a large-scale, hysterical frenzy on the right regarding this issue. This visceral reaction to the proposed community center would be amusing if it wasn't so dangerous. It is disheartening that in this day and age, these bigoted, dangerous sentiments have been allowed to fester and prominently take their place in our public discourse.
The fact of the matter is, these people don't only have a problem with the idea of a mosque being built in downtown Manhattan. They are repulsed by the notion that mosques exist anywhere in the United States. They fail to make the distinction between the fanatics who perpetrated the attacks on 9/11 and ordinary Muslims, and they believe that mosques are all breeding grounds for terrorists. Never mind the millions of law-abiding, peaceful American Muslims, the thousands of Muslims who serve in the U.S. armed forces, the fact that there are now multiple Muslims serving in Congress and the hundreds of Muslims who lost their lives as victims on 9/11. Never mind the First Amendment of the Constitution and all that talk of religious freedom.
To many of these conservatives, Islam is the enemy and allowing the construction of this community center is a concession of defeat. This preposterous idea has no basis in reality or rational thought. It has been perpetuated by the fear-mongering of politicians and pundits, but it must be put to a stop.
It is not only deeply offensive to the millions of hard-working, patriotic Americans who practice Islam and provide invaluable contributions to the fabric of our society, but it is dangerous and it is un-American.
This country was built on a foundation of religious tolerance and freedom. It is our diversity and our acceptance of people from all backgrounds that has made us into the most powerful country in the world. To prevent a minority group from building a community center solely due to the fact that it offends a bigoted, ignorant segment of the population is not only immoral. It is beneath the ideals that this nation aspired to perfect.
It's also unconstitutional.
is a member of the 
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"Where did you get that nonsense about that imam wanting to implement shariah? Oh you don't know, do you? You heard it from someone, didnt you? Did you research it yourself?" Stonings at Ground Zero -- that'll be the day, right? You can read a riveting investigation by Christine Brim at BigPeace.com into scrubbed website material of the Cordoba Initiative, the Internet home of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, he of the Ground Zero Mosque. In this trove of information, curiously deleted from the current Cordoba Initiative website, lie key clues to Rauf's long-term program, the Shariah Index Project, whose "goal," as stated in the "hidden" material, is to "define, interpret and implement the concept of the Islamic state in modern times."
What is Shariah? It is the body of sacred laws that regulates public and private life in Islam. How does the Shariah Index Project fit into the planned mosque complex? Very easily, argues Brim. After accounting for the 13-story building's stated uses, from its mosque to its athletic and other facilities, Brim identified six undesignated stories. That's a lot of empty office space. But with its global spread, the Shariah Index Project just might be the perfect tenant.
Since 2006, Rauf has coordinated a series of international meetings with Shariah experts ranging from Muslim Brotherhood associates to Iran's Mohammad Javad Larijani, "who," as Brim reports, "has justified torture of Iranian dissidents as legal punishments under Shariah law."
That's not all Larijani, who heads Iran's Human Rights Council (for real), has justified. He has also justified Shariah-sanctioned stoning. As Anne Bayefsky recently reported, Rauf's picture with Larijani (and former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Sada Cumber) disappeared from the Cordoba Initiative website, too.
So much to hide -- but the Shariah is out of the bag.
What would expanding Shariah mean here? More halal-butchered livestock leading, as in Europe, to halal-only menus? More midnight football practice during Ramadan? More sex-segregated swimming pools? More incitement to jihad in "radical" mosques? More "apostates" living in fear? More self-censorship, I mean "respect," when it comes to discussing Islam?
An excellent benchmark of Shariah's remarkable and, think of it, post-9/11 progress is that none of the above manifestations of Islamic law -- all designed to sync society with Islamic practice -- are shocking to us. Indeed, marital rape, permissible in Shariah culture wherever it spreads, got a "religious" pass from a New Jersey judge last month (overturned by an appellate court). Death by stoning, however, still seems to take everybody's breath away as those who read about last weekend's Taliban stoning in Afghanistan, I hope, would agree
Muslims frequently build Mosques as symbols of their victories over their enemies. For example, after conquering the Christian city of Constantinople in 1453, the Muslims converted the Cathedral of St. Sophia into a mega Mosque. After their victory in Jerusalem, Muslims turned the Temple Mount (the holiest site in Judaism where the First and Second Temples once stood) into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In AD 600, the Muslims captured the Church of St. Vincent in Spain and converted it to the Cordoba Mosque. It's not a coincidence that Cordoba is the same name the Muslims originally want to use for the Ground Zero Mosque!
The source of funding for this controversial Mosque has yet to be revealed. It is suspected to be coming from wealthy supporters of terrorism. The Imam (Muslim leader) behind this project is a firm believer in implementing the abusive, discriminatory, and violent judicial system known as Sharia law and says he wants the US to become Sharia compliant.
The world would be outraged at the building of a Japanese Shrine at Pearl Harbor, or a Nazi history museum at Auschwitz, or a KKK headquarters next to the Martin Luther King Memorial. A Mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero, which symbolizes the destruction of innocent lives and advocates the usurpation of American laws with Sharia Law, is wrong. The insensitivity it demonstrates is in immeasurable and appalling.
BTW, no one cares where you're from, it makes no difference.Can you tell me why the mosque MUST be built there? Why can't it be moved a mile away? NY has already offered property for them to do just that. Why would that be so terrible? Why is that not an acceptable compromise? Anyone?