The Terrorist Next Door (5 page)

Ever since Islam roared out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century to overpower a large chunk of the known world, Muslims have built mosques at the scene of their conquests. This is an acknowledged fact to which anyone with even a passing knowledge of Islamic history can attest. The Dome of the Rock, which is actually a shrine, and the nearby al-Aqsa mosque, both of which are built directly over or next to the remains of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, are the most prominent examples. The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik completed construction of the large and visually striking Dome in the late seventh century on top of the Temple Mount—Judaism's holiest site—
as a message to Jerusalem's Christians and Jews that Islam would now reign supreme.

An Arabic inscription that adorns the inside of the building, directly disparaging the Christian belief in the Trinity, is telling:

Gee, that doesn't sound very tolerant. Neither does the conversion of the famous Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople—now Istanbul—into a mosque by the conquering Ottoman Turks after a long, bloody siege in 1453. Simply put, there have been many mosques built over the centuries as symbols of triumph and shows of force. I have yet to see one built as an exercise in reconciliation and interfaith harmony, as Imam Rauf, the original face of the Ground Zero mosque, so disingenuously suggests his structure will represent.

In fact, New York's Ground Zero mosque provides a good example of the fundamental
intolerance
behind the mosque-building craze. This structure is planned as a 15-story mega-mosque to be placed just two blocks from Ground Zero, in a building that was damaged by landing gear from one of the planes that slammed into the Twin Towers on 9/11.
¹⁰
While the project has provoked widespread condemnation, some influential leaders have parroted Rauf's declaration that the mosque would be a monument to tolerance. One such person is President Barack Obama who, at a White House dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, assured the assembled crowd of Muslim dignitaries that allowing a $100 million monument to Islam to be built at the site where
3,000 Americans were killed in Islam's name would uphold “the writ of our Founders”:

Obama's remarks, incidentally, were delivered to an audience that included representatives of the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Both groups have been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and ISNA was even named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. So while they surely appreciated Obama's defense of mosque building, it's unclear how many members of Obama's audience have any real interest in religious freedom for anyone besides Muslims.

Let's look at some details Obama omitted from his speech, beginning with the Ground Zero mosque's name. It is now called Park51, but that non-descript moniker was only adopted in response to a controversy over its original name, the Cordoba Initiative. Cordoba was a Spanish city that was conquered in the eighth century by invading Muslims, who turned it into the capital of their new caliphate in Spain. As was the norm after a Muslim victory, they erected a large mosque in the city over the remains of a destroyed Christian cathedral. The vanquished, in turn, were forced to live as second-class citizens—or
dhimmis
—under Islamic rule.
¹²

By 1492, the
reconquista
of Cordoba and the rest of Spain after 800 years of Muslim domination had been completed. Ever since, jihadists
from Osama bin Laden to Anwar al-Awlaki have mourned the passing of Muslim Spain and dreamed of its return to the Islamic fold. The conquest of Spain—in the heart of Western Europe—represented a seminal, symbolic victory and the height of Islam's advance against the West. Again, given the background, anyone who knows a shred of Islamic history realizes that naming a mosque—in a Western country—after Cordoba is not only a thumb in the eye to non-Muslims but an unmistakable message of dominance. “We're back, you infidels—this time, for good.” Could it be any more obvious?

Unfortunately, even though we are locked in an existential struggle against Islamist barbarians, the vast majority of our elected officials and liberal media mavens—many of whom support the Ground Zero mosque—don't know a shred of Islamic history. They've never read the Koran and are oblivious to the
hadiths
(the sayings and actions of Muhammad as recorded by his companions). And sadly, before Imam Rauf came along, they had never even heard of Cordoba and had no concept of its significance to Islamists; I'll even wager many of them were unaware that Spain had lived under the heel of Islam for eight centuries. (“Really? But the clubs in Madrid are so happening!”) After all, they reason, the threat of Islamic terrorism and Islamist infiltration has been severely overblown by racist, right-wing fanatics for political gain.

Imam Rauf, on the other hand, is eloquent, well-dressed, and says all the right things to the cameras—now
him
they can trust. Never mind that he refuses to condemn the terrorist group Hamas, defends Iran's theocratic regime, advocates for Islamic sharia law on U.S. soil, and insists that Mid-East peace will require Israel to transform into an Arab country with a Jewish minority.
¹³
And forget that nineteen days after 9/11, as gray ash and smoke still rose from the remains of what was once the World Trade Center, Rauf told
60 Minutes
host Ed Bradley, “I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime.” He later added, “In the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the U.S.A.”

No, never mind that. Rauf now tells the media he is moderate and opposed to violence, and that Islam is peace and his mosque will preach tolerance for the infidels. Why would he lie?

Since the alternative—that Rauf is not what he appears, and that Islam's core texts encourage violence and discrimination against nonbelievers—is too awful for the Obama administration or the
New York Times
editorial board to accept, they've decided to cast their lot with the smiling imam and hope for the best. In fact, as the Ground Zero mosque controversy exploded in the summer of 2010, Obama's State Department sent Rauf on a taxpayer-funded tour of the Middle East. Trying to quell the ensuing outrage, then-State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley called the smooth-talking imam “a moderate Muslim figure” who preaches “religious tolerance throughout the world.”
¹⁴
It's unclear, however, what exactly Rauf preaches tolerance for—it sure isn't America. Aside from his insinuation of America's culpability in the 9/11 attacks, he made his views about his adopted homeland clear enough in 2005, when he declared that “the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.”
¹⁵

Despite the widespread insistence that Rauf is a moderate, it seems the Ground Zero mosque project was inconvenienced by the ongoing discovery of his decidedly non-moderate views, so in January 2011 he was pushed out of the venture. His replacement, Abdallah Adhami, lasted about a month before he too left the position after reporters uncovered his own Islamic supremacist comments, including his argument that converts from Islam should be jailed. It's funny how a shrine to tolerance like the Ground Zero mosque keeps attracting these rather intolerant types.

In reality, Rauf is a master of the Islamic concept of
taqiyya
—or deception. Hence Rauf's publication in 2004 of a book called
What's Right with Islam Is What's Right with America
. Sounds innocent enough—except that the Arabic version of the book was titled,
A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Proselytization
[Da'wah]
from the Heart of America Post 9/11
.
¹⁶
The latter title says it
all: for Rauf, the 9/11 attacks were a great Islamic victory that presented an opportunity to spread Islam in America. His English-language reworking of the book title mirrored a technique that was perfected by terrorist godfather and taqiyya master Yasser Arafat: offer a peaceful, moderate message in English to clueless Western audiences, and advocate Islamic conquest while speaking in Arabic to the Muslim masses.

Taqiyya is a vitally important concept for Westerners to understand as unctuous Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen (Rauf, not surprisingly, has been linked to MB front groups)
¹⁷
vie for air-time and influence, encouraged every step of the way by a compliant political Left in both Europe and the United States. In a nutshell, taqiyya means Muslims are permitted to lie to non-Muslims if the lie furthers the cause of Islam. In Rauf's eyes, erecting a 15-story victory mosque at Ground Zero does exactly that. So he'll gladly continue to play the public role of highminded moderate until he achieves his goal.

Unlike naïve Western infidels, Muslims around the world know their history, and they fully understand the meaning behind the Cordoba Initiative. In August 2010, as the Ground Zero mosque furor was in full swing, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, general manager of Al-Arabiya TV, penned an op-ed opposing the project in Lower Manhattan. He wrote:

Al-Rashid, whose network is not exactly a bastion of pro-Western sympathies, makes a salient point. There are currently at least 200 mosques in New York City, with some 100 located in Manhattan alone. Our old friend Imam Rauf is actually the imam of another mosque just a few
blocks north of the Ground Zero site. So why are he and his cohorts so adamant that a massive mosque be built at the scene of history's deadliest Islamic terror attack, on a spot considered sacred by most Americans (but not by Rauf, who has publicly rejected the notion that Ground Zero is “hallowed ground”
¹⁹
)?

To put it in terms Manhattanites can understand, it's all about location, location, location.

It's the same reason mosques are popping up throughout Tennessee, according to local counter-jihad activist Laurie Cardoza-Moore, whom I interviewed for my report about the Murfreesboro mega-mosque.

“You have Bible book publishers, you have Christian book publishers, you have Christian music headquartered here,” she told me. “So this is where the Gospel message goes out. And the radical Islamic extremists have stated that they're still fighting the Crusaders—and they see this as the capital of the Crusaders.”

In other words, it's a direct challenge to Judeo-Christian civilization. Throughout the West, mosques are often built right next door to, or directly across the street from, churches or synagogues. I've been to many mosques in the United States and Europe—including the new ICM structure, which is being built next to a Baptist church—and seen this phenomenon firsthand. Just for kicks, take a few minutes and check out the location of your local mosques. I guarantee that many will either be in close proximity to Christian churches or synagogues, or will occupy buildings that are renovated churches. You'll also notice that minarets at U.S. and European mosques will usually be built higher than the steeples of neighboring churches. All this is no accident. Again: domination is the name of the game, and bigger is better.

And let's debunk one more red herring about the Ground Zero mega-mosque. Its supporters scream, “It's not a mosque! It's a cultural center. There's a big difference, you hateful Islamophobic rabble.” Really? Well, during the course of my investigations over the years, I've been in dozens of “Islamic centers” from coast to coast in the United States, as well as
in Europe. In each instance, the centerpiece and main hub is a large, elaborate mosque.

The Muslims who worship at these facilities don't say they are going to the “Islamic center.” They say they are going to the “mosque”—because that is exactly the way they view it. As Robert Spencer, director of the invaluable Jihad Watch website, has noted, most Protestant megachurches in America also include schools and other attached facilities. Yet they are still called churches. How are Islamic centers any different? They consist of a large mosque with attached facilities. Honest Muslims will tell you they see Islamic centers as mosques—and their viewpoint on the matter is the most important.