President Obama's Mosquerade

In God We Trust

IBDEditorials.com

9/11 Mosque: At a Ramadan Iftar dinner at the White House, the president says building a mosque near Ground Zero is just a real estate deal. Of course, 9/11 was just a "man-caused disaster." So is his presidency.

On Friday, President Obama endorsed the construction of a mosque within shouting distance of Ground Zero. On Sunday, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of the terrorist group Hamas and the organization's chief in the Gaza Strip, did the same.

"We have to build everywhere," al-Zahar said on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on WABC radio in New York after Obama said it was okay for Muslims to build a mosque anywhere.

His State Department even sent the mosque's imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, on a goodwill mission to the Middle East.

Good will? Good grief!

Abdul Rauf, touted by the mainstream media and naive politicians as a bridge-builder between cultures, has pointedly refused to describe the group as a terrorist organization — despite the State Department listing that identifies it as such. It is a valid insight into his thought process.

Yes, Mr. President, Muslims should be as free to practice their religion in this country as any other religious group. They are free to buy property and develop it as they wish in accordance with local zoning laws like anyone else.

There are in fact hundreds of mosques in New York and thousands in America.

Mahmoud al-Zahar and Feisal Abdul Rauf may want to build everywhere, but the American people are saying not just anywhere. The American people who put you in the White House are just saying not this mosque, not near Ground Zero, and not now.

If you can't understand why, Mr. President, we have a problem. In fact, the mosque is a mere 600 feet from Ground Zero, so close that the landing gear from one of the 9/11 planes crashed into a building on the proposed site.

The mosque at Ground Zero is not about outreach. Evidently President Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are not aware of why the name Cordoba House was picked. It is named after the bloody Muslim conquest of Cordoba, Spain, in 711. It will be seen as another Islamic victory.

Is this mosque going to be a bastion of religious tolerance? Its Imam Rauf is a man who has said he has no use for religious dialogue and believes 9/11 was America's fault.

In a "60 Minutes" interview that aired Sept. 30, 2001, he said: "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened, but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened."

Rauf says the U.S. has "been an accessory to a lot of — of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, it — in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA."

Sounds like the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for over two decades, who famously said 9/11 was America's chickens coming home to roost.

Anwar al-Awlaki and his mosque in Falls Church, Va., were once described by the media in the same glowing terms as Rauf and his mosque are today.

A New York Times article from Oct. 19, 2001, said al-Awlaki was held up as one of "a new generation of Muslim leaders capable of merging East and West." Yet al-Awlaki's Dar al-Hijrah mosque was a breeding ground for terror itself.

Among al-Awlaki's proteges would be Fort Hood terrorist shooter Nidal Hasan and the Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Al-Awlaki is now an al-Qaida leader in Yemen.

We are not saying this is the destiny of the Ground Zero mosque. But tolerance has made us look the other way before. We are saying true outreach and tolerance takes into account the sensitivities of an American public shattered by 9/11 and its aftermath.

The price of liberty is still eternal vigilance, and that should start with the White House.