Why There Shouldn’t Be a Mosque at Ground Zero

Those favoring construction of a 15-story mega-mosque at Ground Zero say that those who oppose it are racists and bigots. It is absurd to suggest that the 70% of Americans who oppose the building of the mosque do so out of hatred of Muslims.

Americans don’t want a victory mosque marking the site of the 9/11 attacks. They don’t want an insult to the 3,000 Americans who were murdered there by Islamic jihadists and for whom Ground Zero is a cemetery.

There are other reasons to oppose the mosque, too. Here’s why every American should oppose the mega-mosque—including you.

First, there is the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader of the mosque effort. It is clear that Rauf and other mosque leaders are not as moderate as they claim to be. Rauf has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, while those who claim he is moderate just keep telling us that he is without giving us evidence. But the audio and transcripts posted at my website Atlas Shrugs prove otherwise.

The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated, according to a captured internal document, to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” Rauf’s book What’s Right with Islam says on the copyright page that “this edition was made possible through a joint effort of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the office of Interfaith and Community Alliance of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Funding for this project was provided by IIIT.” Both IIIT and ISNA are Muslim Brotherhood fronts, and ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case.

The Arabic translation of Rauf’s book is a call to conversion from the pile of human remains at Ground Zero, disturbingly entitled, A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of post 9/11 America.

In his book, Rauf supports and justifies Sharia law, and calls for restrictions on free speech in America. He has written another book that has gotten little notice: Islam: A Sacred Law—What Every Muslim Should Know About Sharia. In it he explains why God’s law is superior to manmade law, or that is, why Sharia is better than democracy:

“God places a high premium on judging in accord with His dictates, and for developing a nation where laws apply to all equally, and where those who are in charge of upholding the law do not set themselves or any other group above the law—for them corruption sets in. The corruption of the individual or a society that abandons Sacred Law is amplified in one of the key Qur’anic passages regarding the relevance, evolution and meaning of Divine Law, (5:41-50) where Allah speaks frequently of the act of ‘judging.’ In this passage, God criticizes previous generations who ‘raced toward disbelief, among those who say with their mouths “We believe” while their hearts done believe;’ who ‘altered God’s Words from their placements;’ indicating somehow that they altered their divinely ordained Shari’ah, placing their own values above that which God had established. The Qur’an continues to describe them as ‘listeners of lies, devourers of ill-gotten property,’ an accusation that a Muslim tries carefully to avoid incurring.”

This passage is based on a section of the Koran, 5:41-50, that talks about “judging” peoples. It’s clear from the context that the “previous generations” are Jews and Christians who have now become “listeners of lies, devourers of ill-gotten property.” In other words, Rauf is condemning Jews and Christians in America and arguing obliquely that America should ditch the Constitution and adopt Sharia.

It is important to remember that there are numerous huge mosques being built all over America with money from the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), another Muslim Brotherhood-linked group that gets Saudi funding. As mosque leaders have now admitted, and like most mosques in this country, the mega-mosque at Ground Zero will have to get foreign funding. The Muslim community in Lower Manhattan doesn’t need a giant mosque, and can’t pay for one. All over the country, NAIT is overseeing the construction of huge mosques that are much larger than the local Muslim group really needs.

These mega-mosques are making a supremacist statement. Most people assume they’re just like synagogues or churches. They don’t realize that Islam has political goals that are expressed through the mosques, and that the mosques often symbolize that Muslims are claiming a particular territory as their own. In Europe, the “no-go” areas for non-Muslims in France, Sweden and elsewhere show what these claims lead to.

For the Muslim Brotherhood, mosques aren’t just houses of worship. They’re centers of political power, from which plans are made to increase that power in various ways. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan know this well.

Jihadist imam Anwar al-Awlaki aided the 9/11 jihadis at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va. Even after his role in inciting the Fort Hood jihadist and the Christmas balls bomber, his tapes were still on sale at the mosque bookstore just a month ago.

Is it really “racism” and “bigotry” to oppose the mega-mosque because of all this? Of course it isn’t. It’s just common sense. Common sense and love for America.