“COURIER” comment by Margaretha Kopeinig: “A shot across the bow”
The Turkish tactic is clear: a provocation, because Vienna against the
EU accession.
Vienna (OTS) – It would be naive to assume that the Austria-critical
Statements of the Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey were his personal
Opinion. It is part of the raison d’être of a diplomat, to represent
the interests of his country. In addition, the
Turkish Foreign Ministry considered very well whom to send to Vienna
The Ambassadors are statements in the of EU-wide context
To understand the debate on the accession of Turkey and the negative
attitude of the government of Turkey is a shot across the bow.
Turkey wants after years of stalling by the EU and clarity
from those countries that stand on the front line against membership.
These are France, Germany and Austria. To begin with, against the
economically strong and strategically well oriented Turkey, the
smallest and weakest country politically
was Austria, at the 2005 launch of the accession negotiations that
wanted to stop it but could not prevail.
The wisdom is it is not that Turkey needs EU but vice versa. For the
competition on the global stage, the EU and its economy – hence the
Austrian – need for new resources.
Contact:
COURIER, European Editor
Tel: (01) 52 100 / 2752
==============================================
Warning shot
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For the album, see Warning Shots.
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2009)
A Coast Guard painting depicts a warning shot fired across the bow of a suspicious vessel bearing the State of Vietnam flag.
A United States Coast Guard helicopter firing warning shots at a non-compliant boat during training.
A warning shot (in nautical terms, often called a shot across the bow) is a harmless artillery shot or gunshot intended to call attention and demand some action.
During the 18th Century, a warning shot could be fired towards any ship whose colours (nationality) had to be ascertained. According to the law of the sea, a ship thus hailed had to fly her flag and confirm it with a gunshot. Warning shots may still be used in modern times to signal a vessel to stop or keep off and may be fired from other ships, boats, or aircraft. [1][2]
Warning shots are also used in military aviation, to demand some action of an “enemy” aircraft; the most common demand would be for the aircraft to change course. The ostensible justification for firing shots is that tracer rounds are very bright and would immediately gain the attention of a crew whose radio is non-functioning, or who might not have noticed radio transmissions. The objective of warning shots is to demonstrate the ability to shoot, and cause fear in the aircraft’s crew that they will be shot down if they do not comply with combatant’s demands.[citation needed]
On the ground, a warning shot from a pistol, rifle, or shotgun is fired into the air or a nearby object, or aimed so that the shot passes the one being warned harmlessly. This is a sufficiently aggressive act to demand attention, and alert onlookers that they might be shot if directions are not followed.
By analogy, “warning shot” can be said of any action of declaration, especially a demonstration of power, intended or perceived as a last warning before hostile measures.
Herde of migrating birds fly over the Blue Mosque and St. SophiaBasilica silhouetted during an autumn sunset in the old cityoverlooking the Bosphorus straits in Istanbul, Credit: Reuters/Fatih Saribas/Files
By Ayla Jean Yackley
ISTANBUL | Thu Sep 16, 2010 8:25pm IST
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – About 200 Greek Orthodox Christians want to travel to Istanbul to try to hold mass at the former basilica of Hagia Sophia, defying Turkish law that bars religious services in what is now a museum.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official said Ankara could stop the group from entering Turkey if they pose a security threat.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government has lifted curbs on Christian worship at other sites under a EU-inspired drive to improve human rights. It has ruled out services at Hagia Sophia.
Turkish law from the 1930s has prevented both Muslims and Christians from formal worship at the monument, the greatest cathedral in Christendom for a millennium before invading Ottomans converted it into a mosque in the 15th century.
The U.S.-based group behind the attempt said it was on a mission to “re-establish Hagia Sophia as the holy house of prayer for all Christians of the world and the seat of Orthodoxy before the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453”.
Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople, was the seat of the Greek Byzantine Empire until 1453. Hagia Sophia became a museum after the formation of modern secular Turkey in 1923.
Members are due to arrive in Istanbul on Friday.
The Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity: “If an individual is known to pose a security problem, it’s not possible for him to enter Turkey.”
Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay ruled out permission and said the group lacked good intentions. “Anyone can pray silently in this place but a group activity would pave the way for similar activities by members of other religions,” Gunay said.
Turkey’s population of 72 million is 99.9 percent Muslim.
In a letter to Erdogan, Chris Spirou, head of the group making the visit, said the issue was about religious freedom.
An official at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate had said the group led by Spirou did not have its backing and said the event could make things harder for the patriarchate.
Turkey allowed Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million Orthodox, to celebrate mass at a former monastery on the Black Sea coast last month for the first time since Greeks were expelled from most of Turkey in 1923.
(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara)
Florida Pastor: Muslim Leader Lied About Ground Zero Mosque, Koran Burning Only Suspended
Thursday, 09 Sep 2010 05:34 PM
Article Font Size
By: David A. Patten
The anti-Muslim leader of a tiny Florida church says he was lied to and is rethinking his decision to cancel burning Korans to mark 9/11.
Pastor Terry Jones earlier Thursday had backed off his threat to burn the Koran after he said he was promised that a planned Islamic center and mosque would be moved away from New York’s ground zero. Muslim leaders denied there was such a deal.
Later outside his church he said that the imam he thought he made the deal with “clearly, clearly lied to us” about moving the mosque.
Jones and Imam Muhammad Musri stood side by side in a news conference where the pastor said he would cancel Saturday’s event.
Musri later told The Associated Press there was only an agreement for him and Jones to travel to New York and meet Saturday with the imam overseeing plans to build a mosque near ground zero.
After meeting with a Florida imam, Jones had agreed to cancel plans to burn the Koran on Saturday, and instead announced plans to fly to New York City, where he wants to protest against the Islamic center being built near ground zero.
Jones and Imam Muhammad Musri announced that the Koran-burning protest had been canceled shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday.
“If they were willing to either cancel the mosque at the ground zero location, or if they were willing to move that location, if they were willing to move it away from that location, we would consider that a sign from God,” Jones said.
Jones said Imam Musri had been in contact with Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf.
But Rauf, the controversial imam at the center of the ground zero mosque controversy, quickly denied he had reached any deal to cancel the planned Islamic center or had even discussed it with Musri.
“I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Korans,” Rauf said in a statement to CNN. “However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones or Imam Musri. I am surprised by their announcement. We are not going to toy with our religion or any other, nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony.”
Jones appeared to indicate that Rauf had agreed to move the ground zero mosque location. However, Musri did not speak to the imam, but spoke instead to the imam’s staff, who agreed to meet with Jones and Imam Musri on Saturday.
Slideshow: Prominent Voices Speak Out Against Koran Burning
The network also reports that Rauf’s staff said merely that the imam “was open” to selecting a new location, not that he promised to do so.
Nevertheless, Jones declared: “He has agreed to move the location. That cannot of course happen overnight. We felt that that would be a sign that God would want us to do it.
“The American people do not want the mosque there,” he said, “and of course Moslems do not want us to burn the Koran. The Imam has agreed to move the mosque.”
Jones also said he received a telephone call from Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking him not to proceed with the Koran-burning protest which had inflamed Islamic tensions throughout the world.
Interpol and the State Departments had issued alerts warning Americans that a backlash of violence abroad could result.
Imam Musri appeared to side with Jones on the question of the location of the ground zero mosque, saying it is unnecessary to place it that close to the site of the tragic terrorist attack of 9/11. He called on Muslims throughout the world to remain peaceful exemplars of the Muslim faith.
President Obama warned Thursday burning the Koran would be a “recruitment bonanza” for al-Qaida.
A few hours before the announcement of the burning cancellation, Obama told ABC that he hoped Jones “understands that what he’s proposing to do is completely contrary to our values. I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan.”
The proposed event triggered flag-burning demonstrations abroad and sharp debates domestically over whether the same political correctness now flowing from the highest levels of the Obama administration also should apply to proposals to build a mosque two blocks from ground zero in New York City.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin commented: “People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation — much like building a mosque at ground zero. It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don’t feed that fire.”
The State Department had advised U.S. embassies around the world to reassess their security measures.
The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Dr. Billy Graham, had sent a personal letter to Jones, urging him not to burn the book that Muslims consider holy.
Graham, who professes love for Muslim people but has been outspoken in his view that Islam does not lead to salvation, said, “It’s never right to deface or destroy sacred texts or writings of other religions even if you don’t agree with them.”
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Catholic archbishop emeritus of Washington, D.C., went even further Wednesday during a news conference at the National Press Club sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America.
If “someone sees the Gospel as the truth of God’s presence in our world, that person should embrace the Gospel,” McCarrick told CNSNews.com. “If a person sees the Koran as proof of God’s presence in the world, then I cannot say, ‘Don’t embrace the Koran.’”
Jones, whose church has just 50 members, ignited international protests with his plan to burn Korans to protest Shariah and acts of violence he contends are linked to the Islamic faith. Demonstrations included the following
Thousands of Afghans burned the U.S. flag and chanted “death to the Christians” on Thursday.
About 200 Pakistanis marched in Multan and burned a U.S. flag at the rally.
A Muslim cleric in Afghanistan said Muslims would have a religious duty to react if the Koran were burned, heightening fears that Americans could be attacked.
Gen. David Petraeus, who met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Wednesday to discuss the controversy, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that extremists would use images of the Koran in flames “to inflame public opinion and incite violence.”
Declaring “shame on you,” evangelical Richard Cizik lectured Christians who openly reject Muslims because of their religious faith. “As an evangelical, I say, to those who do this, I say, ‘you bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ. You directly disobey his commandment to love our neighbor,” Cizik said at the National Press Club event.
The nations of Pakistan and Bahrain issued official denunciations of the planned burning of the Koran.
The president of Indonesia sent a letter to Obama, asking that the book-burning be halted.
Several U.S. leaders and organizations, including New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, have condemned the Koran burning while at the same time defending the church’s First Amendment right to express its views.
“We defend his right to the speech,” said Brandon Hensler, a spokesman for the Florida ACLU, “and we absolutely, simultaneously condemn the things that he’s saying, because they’re not tolerant of different religious viewpoints. The reverend himself has admittedly not read the Koran, and he’s simply using this as a jumping stone to get on the world stage, which he’s clearly achieved.”
The debates over the appropriate exercise of First Amendment rights in the case of the mosque and the burning of the Koran is triggering a broader discussion of the uneasy relationship between Islam and Christianity in America.
The Koran-burning protest comes in the context of the controversial decision to build a Muslim community center and mosque a few blocks away from ground zero in New York.
The imam behind the Park51 facility, formerly known as the Cordoba initiative, warned that relocating the facility could also spark Muslim violence against Americans.
“The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack,” said Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf in an exclusive CNN interview, adding that, “if you don’t do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world.”
Rauf also suggested that, if he had it all to do over again, he would have selected a different location.
“If I knew this would happen, if it would cause this kind of pain, I wouldn’t have done it,” he said.
The recent controversies over the coexistence of Islam and Christianity appear to be creating cultural ripples nationwide.
Muslim, Christian, and Jewish groups are planning rallies to celebrate unity and tolerance on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Saturday. It is not known if any of those observances will be held in Hartford, Conn., however, where the town council is embroiled in controversy after city leaders announced they would allow imams, as well as rabbis and Christian pastors, to provide the invocation before council meetings.
“If they check their history, we’re a Christian nation,” Pat McEwen of the evangelical group Operation Save America told Fox News. “For years, prayers just referred to God. I think breaking with that tradition is a bad idea.”
Patriarch Bartholomew leads 250 million Orthodox Greeks but his flock in Turkey has dwindled to just a few thousand
Turkish laws, demographics and attitudes have been blamed
Main seminary was closed in 1971, Turkey says only Turkish citizens can be patriarch, many Greeks left Turkey in 1950s
Despite this the current patriarch is confident his community and church will survive
Watch Ivan Watson’s insightful documentary on the patriarch’s plight on CNN International’s “World’s Untold Stories.” Check out all the broadcast times and some of our best videos and past episodes at our new website
Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is the living embodiment of an ancient tradition. From his historic base in Istanbul, Turkey, the 270th Patriarch of Constantinople claims to be the direct successor of the Apostle Andrew.
Today he’s considered “first among equals” in the leadership of the Greek Orthodox church, and is the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians around the world. But few of them are in his own home country.
“We are a small Christian minority,” Bartholomew laments.
“We have suffered because of Greek-Turkish confrontation, struggle, and a lack of mutual trust and confidence. And that is why we lost most of our faithful.”
Turkey’s once-flourishing Greek community is fading away. The country is predominantly Muslim and led by a secular government that’s had a complicated relationship with the patriarchate.
If Turkish laws, demographics and attitudes aren’t changed, Bartholomew could ultimately be the last Patriarch of Constantinople.
“We are not all in despair for the future of our church,” Bartholomew said. “It is not easy, but it is not impossible.”
The Turkish government can veto any candidate put forward for the position of patriarch. And it requires the patriarch be a Turkish citizen. Bartholomew is, but most of those best qualified to succeed him are not.
So the government has proposed offering Turkish citizenship to Orthodox archbishops overseas. Several have applied; so far, none has been approved.
The Turkish government also refuses to recognize the title Ecumenical Patriarch, or Bartholomew’s role as an international religious leader.
Officially, he is viewed as a local bishop who leads a shrinking community of a few thousand Greek Orthodox citizens. Yorgo Stefanopulos is one of them. “I am a curiosity now in Turkey,” he said. “We used to be a minority; now we are a curiosity.”
Stefanopulos is an outspoken leader of Istanbul’s Greek community. About 50 years ago, that community numbered more than 100,000. Today, it’s probably less than 3,000.
He insists that decline was not accidental. Instead, he blames the Turkish government. Decades ago, he said, they targeted ethnic Greeks with nationalist policies, like wealth taxes, property seizures, and campaigns to speak only Turkish in the streets.
Then there was the pogrom in 1955: riots directed against Greeks and Greek-owned property. The violence was later found to have been orchestrated by Turkish authorities.
As a result, Greeks left Istanbul in droves. “The Turkish government somehow managed to do a bloodless ethnic cleansing,” Stefanopulos said. Today’s Turkish government says those events are from the distant past, and they’re now looking ahead to reconciliation.
“Turkey is going through a period of transition,” said Egemen Bagis, the country’s Minister for European Union Affairs. “Turkey’s becoming a much more democratic, much more prosperous, much more transparent society.”
Yet, the government has resisted calls to reopen the patriarchate’s main school of theology.
For more than a century, the Halki seminary educated future Greek Orthodox bishops, theologians and patriarchs, until Turkey’s highest court ordered it closed in 1971. Since then, it’s remained empty, worrying former students like theologian Satirios Varnalidis.
“We want to reopen this school so that we can provide new priests to the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” Varnalidis said. “Otherwise, in a little while our community just won’t have any more priests.”
For years, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has talked of reopening the school. Bagis insists the government is still working on it.
Despite these difficulties, Patriarch Bartholomew is heartened by new signs of hope that his community and his church will survive.
“We have many young people from Greece who want to come and be established in Turkey,” he says. “This is an opposite current than before.”
Haris Rigas is part of that trickle of fresh immigration, which offers perhaps the best hope of reviving Istanbul’s Greek community. “The minute I came I was in love with the city and felt that I had to live here,” he said.
Rigas has been studying the city’s indigenous Greek community. He’s also a musician in a band that plays Rembetiko, a genre of old, mostly Greek, folk songs. His studies and his music are focused on the preservation and promotion of Greek culture.
“The only way for the community to survive is to attain a degree of visibility,” he said. “They’ve played an important historical role in this city throughout the centuries, and I think they should still do it.”
Earlier this month, the Turkish state and the Ecumenical Patriarchate made a historic step towards reconciliation.
Thousands of Orthodox Christians gathered for a prayer service at the ancient cliffside monastery of Sumela, near Turkey’s Black Sea Coast, on August 15. Patriarch Bartholomew conducted a divine liturgy, the first Christian service of its kind at Sumela, in more then 80 years.
Even if Istanbul’s Greek community makes a comeback, some fear that the patriarchate itself may not last much longer, due to demographics and lingering suspicion from the Turkish government.
And the patriarch remains hopeful and resolute. He rejects conjecture that he could be the last Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
“Absolutely not,” Bartholomew insists. “We trust a divine providence, and the guarantee given to us by our Lord himself, that the church can survive.
“This is our faith, this is our conviction, this is our hope, this is our prayer. And all the rest we leave at the hands of God.”
CNN’s Ivan Watson and Yesim Comert contributed to this report
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/08/26/wus.patriarch/index.html
Early plans call for a 13-story, $100 million Islamic center with a swimming pool, basketball court, auditorium and culinary school besides the mosque. The center, called Park51, also would have a library, art studios and meditation rooms. A memorial will be dedicated to victims of the 9/11 attacks.——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Founder, Cordoba Initiative; his wife Daisy Kahn, Executive Director, American Society for Muslim Advancement at State Dept. event
Wednesday, 04 Aug 2010 07:05 AM
Plans for an Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero moved forward as a city panel opened the way for developers to tear down a building that was struck by airplane debris on Sept. 11.
Even as the project’s backers celebrated the decision, a conservative advocacy group founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson announced it would challenge the panel’s vote in state court Wednesday.
Brett Joshpe, an attorney for the American Center for Law and Justice, said the group would file a petition alleging that the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission “acted arbitrarily and abused its discretion.”
The panel voted unanimously on Tuesday to deny landmark status to a building two blocks from the World Trade Center site that developers want to tear down and convert into an Islamic community center and mosque. The panel said the 152-year-old lower Manhattan building isn’t distinctive enough to be considered a landmark.
Oz Sultan, a spokesman for the developers, said they had no comment on the possible legal action by the ACLJ. But he said the developers were grateful for the decision by the landmarks panel.
“We’re very happy it’s moving forward,” he said.
The decision drew praise from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who stepped before cameras on Governor’s Island with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop shortly after the panel voted and called the mosque project a key test of Americans’ commitment to religious freedom.
“The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts,” said Bloomberg, a Republican-turned-independent. “But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves, and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans, if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.”
The vote was a setback for opponents of the mosque, who say it disrespects the memory of those killed at the hands of Islamic terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. Jeers and shouts of “Shame on you” could be heard after the panel’s vote.
The proposed mosque has emerged as a national political issue, with prominent Republicans from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich lining up against it. The Anti-Defamation League, the nation’s most prominent Jewish civil rights group, known for advocating religious freedom, shocked many groups when it spoke out against the mosque last week.
Former Rep. Rick Lazio, a Republican running for governor of New York, attended the commission meeting with a handful of opponents of the mosque, which is being developed by a group called the Cordoba Initiative. Lazio said the group’s imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, had refused to call the Palestinian group Hamas a terrorist organization.
Rauf also said in a “60 Minutes” interview televised shortly after Sept. 11 that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”
The Cordoba Initiative says on its website that its goal is to foster a better relationship between the Muslim world and the West.
“We believe it will be a place where the counter-momentum against extremism will begin,” the imam’s wife, Daisy Khan, told The Associated Press on Friday. “We are committed to peace.”
The commission’s decision not to designate the existing building as a landmark means that the developers can tear it down and start from scratch. If the building had been declared a landmark, they could have created a smaller mosque and community center there.
A partner in the project, SoHo Properties, bought the property for nearly $5 million. Early plans call for a 13-story, $100 million Islamic center with a swimming pool, basketball court, auditorium and culinary school besides the mosque. The center, called Park51, also would have a library, art studios and meditation rooms. A memorial will be dedicated to victims of the 9/11 attacks.
Sultan, who is the media relations director for Park51, said there was no timeline for starting demolition or construction, which is expected take 18 to 48 months.
——
Associated Press writer Cristian Salazar contributed to this report.
Imam paid $4.85M for Ground Zero mosque – in CASH!
Posted on December 16, 2009 by creeping
Where did imam Faisal, who called America and Christians the first terrorists and whose wife is on an advisory team for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, come up with $4.85 million in cash? And where will he get the $150 million to build an Islamic mecca planned two blocks from Ground Zero?
A reporter at Hudson New York has new information and asks, or says the people of New York should be asking, much tougher questions than the New York Times posed to the Islamic groups involved and the Mayor of NYC. Hat tip Gateway Pundit. Emphasis added.
Mosque At the World Trade Center: Muslim Renewal Or Insult Near Ground Zero | by Youssef M. Ibrahim
An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the World Trade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques.
At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards away from where Osama Bin Laden’s airborne Islamist bombers killed nearly 3000 people back in 2001.
The Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, told the New York Times — which put the story on its front page Wednesday — that he has assembled several million dollars to turn it into ‘’an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors.’’
The 61-year-old Imam said he paid $4.85 million for it — in cash, records show. With 50,000 square feet of air rights and enough financing, he plans an ambitious project of $150 million, he said, akin to the Chautauqua Institution, the 92 Street Y or the Jewish Community Center.
The origins of such monies are unexplained; neither are the countries or entity advancing such huge donations. Most US mosques, including many in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are funded directly or indirectly by Saudi Arabia the country to which 15 of the 19 hijackers who bombed the World Trade Center belonged. The UAE, Qatar and Iran are other major sponsors across the USA.
The money trail is an important question that must be answered by the Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with more than a bland comment by one of his spokesmen, Andrew Brent, who quipped to the Times, “If it’s legal, the building owners have a right to do what they want.”
At the moment, the location is not designated a mosque, but rather an overflow prayer space for another mosque, Al Farah, at 245 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where Imam Feisal is the spiritual leader. Call this creeping annexation. On 9/11, the Burlington building, with 80 employees in its basement, is where a piece of a plane plunged through the roof, from either Flight 11 or Flight 175 crashing into the south tower at 9:03 a.m..
One of the investors for future oncoming funds is listed as the Cordoba Initiative, defined as an ‘’interfaith group’’ – and founded by Imam Feisal. Cordoba is the name militant Muslims often invoke when they recall the glory of Muslim empire in the centuries they occupied Spain.
As a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal correspondent, and as a New York Sun columnist who covered Islamic Fundamentalism extensively overseas and in the USA, I find the facts oddly lacking. The story as reported fails to answer, and avoid asking, so many pertinent questions.
The source of money matters as a significant part of the hundreds of mosques being built and already erected in this country double up as cultural Islamic centers for distributing literature– Islamist propaganda in fact—from Bay Ridge Brooklyn to Detroit, and for schooling growing Muslim minorities. They house Imams of unknown origin and education, many of whom do not speak a word of English but preach in Arabic and Urdu — radical messages, it often turns out.
As a reporter familiar with the Arab communities of the USA, I doubt the faithful fork out all that money for mega mosques, and if they did, the mayor’s office should prove it, not merely accept someone’s say so. It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran — all problematic Islamists activist nations. The government just discontinued work on a major Iranian-funded mosque and center in New York City, which had operated under the radar since the days of the good old Shah of Iran under the auspices of the Pahlavi Foundation, and has been owned since 1979 by the Mullahs of Iran.
The context here is that 15 of the 19 perpetrators of the attacks — on the very site where this new mosque shall rise — came from Saudi Arabia.
We saw how, in the case of Major Nidal Hasan of Ft. Hood, it turned out that three of the original participants in 9/11 had listened to the same preacher Major Hasan listened to: a man with a radical violent Islamic website now operating out of Yemen to radicalize American Muslims. In such a context,knowing more about the Imam overseeing a potential multimillion mosque at the World Trade Center site is essential to the story. Nearly 3,000 people were deliberately killed there – and the New York Times is papering over what is about to be built on the site in a nice, beatific pseudo-profile of the Imam overseeing the mosque? Limiting access to this Imam to some nice quotes, showing him nattily dressed in a suit, and describing him merely as a Sufi, is vacuous, crafted and couched in public relations spin to obscure rather than explain. ‘’What happened that day was not Islam’’ is all that the Times quotes the Imam saying — a rather lame comment given the enormity of his ambition and the iconic status of where he wants to put his mosque.
The mayor’s office should tell us more.
Just as importantly, who Is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf ? And what is his background? Given that much Islamist radicalism originated in mosques at the hands of imams in virtually all the terrorist attacks in America and Europe — as we found over and over again – the omission of this information is a glaring mishap.
All we get learn about the Imam in the Times story about him is some anodyne, rather anemic, focus on a man of peace. No real searching. Mayor Bloomberg’s folks need to tell us what are the Imam’s origins, where he was schooled, whether he is an immigrant, a visitor, of which country is he a citizen, and what is his philosophy, among other relevant questions.
Merely describing the man as a Sufi ‘’who follows a path of Islam focused more on spiritual wisdom than on strict ritual,’’ is far too little . After every terrorist atrocity, any number of Sufi and Muslims savants ritually come out with the hackneyed saying: ‘’Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood.’’ Accumulated as they are, these statements are added a heap of nothing for those tens of thousands of Muslims killed by other Muslims in suicide and other bombings from Pakistan to Iraq every day.
One would hope for a follow-up story or stories, and that New York City and its citizens at least ask harder questions, rather than submit to being mislead in the interest of political correctness.
