 "Lose your ego, find your compassion." |
Feisal Abdul Rauf is the force behind the building of Cordoba House, the now-controversial Islamic cultural facility in Manhattan. Fear mongering conservative politicians have called him "a radical Muslim," a "militant Islamist" and simply - the "enemy." His Cordoba House project has been framed as a conduit for Hamas to funnel money to domestic terrorist operations.
For those who actually know or have worked with the imam, the descriptions are frighteningly unhinged from reality. The Feisal Abdul Rauf they know spent the past decade fighting against the very same cultural divisiveness and religious-based paranoia that currently surrounds him.
"Imam Feisal has participated at the Aspen Institute in Muslim-Christian-Jewish working groups looking at ways to promote greater religious tolerance," says Walter Isaacson, head of The Aspen Institute. "He has consistently denounced radical Islam and terrorism and promoted a moderate and tolerant Islam. Some of this work was done under the auspices of his own group, the Cordoba Initiative... This is why I find it a shame that his good work is being undermined by this inflamed dispute. He is the type of leader we should be celebrating in America - not undermining." You can finish reading here.
Park51's main movers, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, are actually the kind of Muslim leaders right-wing commentators fantasize about: modernists and moderates who openly condemn the death cult of al-Qaeda and its adherents — ironically, just the kind of "peaceful Muslims" whom Sarah Palin, in her now infamous tweet, asked to "refudiate" the mosque. Rauf is a Sufi, which is Islam's most mystical and accommodating denomination. (See the very best #Shakespalin tweets.)
from AOL news...
WASHINGTON (Aug. 17) -- The political battle over plans to build an Islamic center two blocks from ground zero is reaching biblical proportions as Republicans pummel President Barack Obama and Democrats for being insensitive to victims of 9/11.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Monday compared the center -- which many prominent Jewish officials support -- to Nazis trying to protest outside a Holocaust museum. Republican campaign staffers send out e-mails placing Obama on the same page as the leader of Hamas. And GOP candidates in places far away from lower Manhattan quickly launched TV ads declaring, "Mr. President, ground zero is the wrong place for a mosque."
and what would GW Bush say...
A spokesman for the former president told AOL News that Bush would have no comment on the matter.
But days after the 9/11 attacks, Bush had much to say about the need for religious tolerance even after Islamic extremists carried out the worst foreign attack in history on U.S. soil.
"The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam," Bush said at the Islamic Center of Washington in a speech that set the tenor for when he later sent U.S. troops to fight on Muslim soil in Afghanistan and later Iraq. "That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war."
He went on to say millions of American Muslims "need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect."
All across America peaceful American Muslims are trying to live their lives, but fanatics are terrorizing them in the name of Christianity. It's embarrassing for our country to be labeled as bigots. The right wing fanatics just had to have something to drive a wedge into the the presidents agenda. Yes this argument is rightwing driven and it's turning hateful to the point of scary. Who would you rather have for your neighbor, a rightwing NUT or an American Muslim??
What if those planes flying into the twin towers were piloted by Germans, or Russians, or Frenchmen? Would the wackos be acting the same way towards those Americans whose ancestors immigrated here generations ago? I kinda doubt it. This fight is with Islam, I believe it's religion based not terror based. Christians claim Muslims hate Christians and Jews therefore they are the enemy whether or not they are peaceful....
