Why I am against the GZM

By Mario Goveia

My opposition to the mosque has NOTHING to do with religious freedom because I have no objection to yet another mosque in New York city on top of over 100 mosques that already exist there. The opposition is based on two things:

1. The subliminal message in the name “Cordoba Initiative”.

Why would the developers name a community center and mosque in New York after a city in Spain?

A subliminal clue lies in the name, Cordoba Initiative, in the context of the history of Islamic mosques built on the ruins of places of worship in countries that Muslims have conquered over the years A partial list is shown at the end of this essay. In Cordoba, Spain, conquering Moors tore down the Church of St. Vincent in 784 and built the Great Aljama Mosque in its place

Thus I see the new mosque as a thinly veiled symbol of the radical Muslim “victory” in New York on 9/11/2001.

2. Imam Rauf is a duplicitous radical who pretends to be a “bridge-builder”.

Imam Rauf tells every English speaker who will listen that he is a “peacemaker” and a “bridge-builder”. He is neither. He is a closet jihadi. According to Arabic speakers like Walid Shoebat and Brigitte Gabriel, his speeches and articles in Arabic to Muslim audiences often contradict his speeches and writings in English.

Here are some facts that could be windows to the Imam’s radical jihadi soul:

a) Nineteen days after 9/11/2001 Imam Rauf told an interviewer on 60 Minutes on CBS that the US was “an accessory” to the attack because of all the Muslims they had killed around the world. This is a completely false allegation.

Prior to 9/11/2001 the US had sent aid to Iran after their earthquakes, helped the Muslim Mujahedeen to repel the invading Soviet Red Army from Afghanistan, led the NATO rescue of innocent Muslims from marauding Christians in Bosnia and led the ejection of secular Saddam’s Iraq that had invaded Muslim Kuwait.

Thus Imam Rauf was deliberately falsifying to an ignorant CBS interviewer what the US had done – not something a “bridge-builder” would do right after 3,000 of his innocent fellow citizens, many of them Muslims, had been killed in a sneak suicide attack by radical Muslims.

b) In the same interview Imam Rauf said Osama Bin Laden was “made in America”. This is yet another deliberate falsehood.

Osama had joined the Afghan Mujahedeen against the Soviets and had no special direct contact or relationship with the Americans helping them. He formed Al Qaeda after the Soviets withdrew because he said that US troops had defiled “holy” Saudi Arabia by their presence when they were helping Kuwait against Iraq, and secondly, the US was helping Israel from being wiped off the map by radical Arabs.

c) Imam Rauf has refused to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization.

d) In a speech in Australia in 2005, Imam Rauf said that the US had more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda had non-Muslim blood on its hands, explaining that the US was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis even before the regime change because it had supported UN economic sanctions while trying to get Saddam to account for his WMDs from 1991 to 2003. This is also a gross misrepresentation at best and another deliberate lie at worst unworthy of an American bridge-builder.

To begin with, the sanctions on Iraq were placed by the UN, not the US. Secondly, these included an oil-for food program to provide Iraqis with food and medicines. We later learned that Saddam was looting this program to buy arms and build palaces, and many Iraqis died as a result of the shortages of food and medicines.

The regime change in 2003 was accomplished in a few weeks with little loss of life. The US then helped the Iraqis while they wrote a Constitution and elected a government – both epic firsts in this unfortunate country. Then the radical Shia and Sunni started attacking each other, aided and abetted by Al Qaeda, Syria and Iran, and the US was put in a position of helping the nascent Iraqi government to STOP the violence. So, to blame the US for the loss of life in Iraq before and after the regime change is specious and false.

e) Imam Rauf has said that the US Constitutions is perfectly compatible with Sharia Law, which is an incredibly absurd and delusional statement for anyone familiar with these two philosophies.

None of these distortions of fact would be uttered by a moderate Muslim interested in religious harmony with other Americans.

Such beliefs prove that Imam Rauf is not a moderate and is sympathetic to radical Islam.

It is for these reasons that I and many others oppose the LOCATION of the mosque, but, under American religious freedoms do not object to the mosque being built somewhere else.

ADDENDUM:

History of Islam and how they build VICTORY MOSQUES…

Source: William J. Federer is the author of: “What Every American Needs to Know About the Quran: A History of Islam and the United States

The HISTORY OF ISLAM may hold answers to WHY it is so important for Moslems to build that GROUND ZERO MOSQUE..

In 630, Muhammad led 10,000 Muslim soldiers into Mecca and turned the pagans’ most prominent spot, the Ka’aba, into the Masjid al-Haram Mosque.

In 634, Rightly Guided Caliph Umar conquered Syria and turned the Christians’ most prominent spot, the Church of Job, famous for being visited by Saint Silva in the fourth century, into the Mosque of Job.

In 637, Caliph Umar conquered Hebron and turned the second-most prominent spot in Judaism, the Cave of the Patriarchs, into the Ibrahimi Mosque. (This was repeated by Saladin in 1188.)

In 638, Muslim generals Amr ibn al-As and Khalid ibn al-Walid conquered Gaza and turned the prominent fifth-century Byzantine church into the Great Mosque of Gaza.

In 638, Caliph Umar conquered Jerusalem.In 691, Caliph Al-Malik ordered the _Dome of the Rock_ built on the most prominent spot in Judaism, the Temple Mount, followed by Caliph Al-Walid building the Al-Aqsa Mosque there in 705.

In 651, Muslims conquered Persia and turned Zoroastrian temples in Bukhara and Istakhr into mosques.

In 706, after Muslims took Damascus from the Byzantine Empire, Caliph Al-Walid turned the prominent Orthodox Church of St. John the Baptist into the Umayyad Mosque.

In 710, Gen. Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Pakistan, defiled the prominent Sun Temple in Multan, which house the great idol “sanam,” and erected a mosque.

In 784, after the conquest of Spain, Emir Abd ar-Rahman turned the prominent Visigothic Christian Church of Saint Vincent into the Great Aljama Mosque of Cordoba. After the conquest of Egypt, Caliphs al-Mamun (813-833) and al-Hakim (996-1021) turned prominent Coptic Christian churches and Jewish synagogues in Cairo into mosques.

In 831, Muslims conquered Palermo, Sicily, and Asad ibn al-Furat turned the prominent Church of Saint Mary of the Assumption into the Great Mosque of Bal’harm. In 1193, Muslims conquered Delhi, India, and Qutbuddin Aibak turned the Red Citadel in Dhillika, the most prominent spot of the last Hindu rulers, into the Qutb Minar Mosque.

From 1250-1517, Mamluk Muslims controlled the Golan Heights and used the ancient Synagogue of Katzrin as a mosque.

In 1387, Turkish Muslims conquered Thessaloniki and turned the Katholikon Monastery and the Church of Aghia Sophia, which housed the relics of Saint Gregorios Palamas, into mosques, as Symeon of Thessaloniki recorded: “The greatest number of the buildings of the churches fell to them, of which _the first_ was the Holy Church of the Savior. … These were trampled underfoot and the infidels rejoiced in them. … Most of thhe religious buildings in the city were despoiled, while altars were demolished and sacred things profaned.”

On May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople and turned the great Byzantine church, Hagia Sophia, into the Ayasofya Mosque. The _largest_ church in Christendom for a thousand years, the church’s four acres of gold mosaics were covered with whitewash and Quran verses.

In 1458, Sultan Mehmet II conquered Athens and turned the Greeks’ most prominent spot, the Parthenon on Acropolis hill, into a mosque. When Venetian Gen. Francesco Morosini drove the Muslims out in 1687, a cannonball hit the gunpowder stored in the mosque, blowing it up. In the 15th century, Ottoman invaders turned Saint Clement’s Macedonian Orthodox Monastery in Plaosnik, Balkans, into the Imater Mosque.

From 1519-1858, Muslim Mughal rulers gained control of India and turned over 2,000 Hindu temples into mosques, including demolishing the Temple of Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya, the birthplace of Rama, and replacing it with the Babri Mosque. India’s Mughal Muslim ruler, Jahangir (1605-1627), wrote in Tujuk-i-Jahangiri: “At the city of Banaras [was] a temple. … I made it my plea for thhrowing down the temple … and on the spot, with the very same materials,, I erected the great mosque.”

In 1543, Hayreddin Barbarossa’s 30,000 Muslim troops wintered in Toulon, France, and turned the prominent Toulon Cathedral into a mosque.

In 1570, under Sultan Selim II Khan, Muslims conquered Paphos, Cyprus, and Gov. Mehmet Bey Ebubkir turned the prominent Christian church into the Great Mosque of Paphos.

In 1571, Muslims invaded Famagusta, Cyprus, and turned Saint Nicolas Cathedral, a rare Gothic church, into the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, and Saint Sophia Cathedral in Nicosia, constructed in 1228, into the Selimiye Mosque.

In 1588, Sultan Murat III turned the Eastern Orthodox Church of Saint John the Forerunner in Constantinople into the Hirami Ahmet Pasha Mosque.

In 1781, after having conquered the Old City of Acre, Ottoman Muslims turned the Roman Catholic church built by Crusaders into the Jezzar Ahmet Pasha Mosque, where a hair from Muhammad’s beard is preserved.

In 1923, Muslims expelled Greeks from Turkey and turned Orthodox churches into mosques. In World War II, Nazis allied with Bosnians and turned the prominent Artists’ Gallery Museum in Zagreb, Croatia, into a mosque.

In the 1950s, Muslims expelled Jews from Arab lands and turned synagogues into mosques. Algerian Muslims warred against French colonial rule till France pulled out in 1962, after which the Cathedral of St. Philippe was turned into the Ketchaoua Mosque. Violence against Jews caused 30,000 to flee and the Great Synagogue of Oran was turned into the Mosque Abdellah Ben Salem.

In 1974, Turkish Muslims invaded northern Cyprus, and prominent Greek Orthodox churches were turned into mosques. In 1981, Muslim immigrants to the Netherlands converted Amsterdam’s historic Catholic Sint-Ignatiuskerk into the Fatih Mosque, and a synagogue in The Hague into the Aksa Mosque.