There’s very good reason to find the Cordoba House project — the mosque being erected on (many say near) Ground Zero — to be extraordinarily unseemly, even if you don’t know anything about Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the project. But, the more you learn about Rauf, the less likely it seems that the project has anything to do with interfaith reconciliation, as he claims.
We already knew that Rauf is an apologist for Hamas, he blames America for the 9/11 attacks, he is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, and other troubling facts. Now the Wall Street Journal has looked through his early writings and learned more about where he stands.
In a 1977 letter to the New York Times, Rauf wrote in favor of Egypt’s peace with Israel. Sounds good? Not so much: he cited Muhammad’s seventh-century peace with Mecca that gave him the chance to rearm and conquer the city ten years later. He also wrote that Israel should “become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority”.
In another letter to the New York Times, Rauf wrote in favor of Iran’s Islamic revolution, opining that it “was inspired by the very principles of individual rights and freedom that Americans ardently believe in.” Thirty years later, Rauf still thought highly of the Islamic revolutions “guiding principles”.
Is this man a moderate, as his defenders claim? I hope not. If this man is a moderate Muslim, the center of Muslim thought is more hostile to us than we would like to believe.
(Via the Corner.)
POSTSCRIPT: It’s also instructive to look at who is funding the project. We know very little about the project’s funding, since the organizers refuse to reveal it, which by itself should give us a hint. But a FOX NY investigation found that one of the project’s financial backers contributed to the Holy Land Foundation, a terrorist front group. (He says he didn’t know they raised money for terrorists.)
(Via the Corner.) (Previous post.)
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