Austin Hill - Federally Funded Islam?

It’s disturbing that we even need to have this conversation.

It’ll be more disturbing if the Obama Administration doesn’t intervene and stop the process.

The people behind the controversial “Park 51” Islamic mosque project in Lower Manhattan have apparently applied several times for federal grant money with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. LMDC is officially a New York state agency, but the money that this agency doles-out for the purposes of “reconstructing New York city” in 9-11’s aftermath is nonetheless federal tax money.

The money is administered through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, while “HUD” itself is overseen by President Obama’s hand-picked cabinet officer, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Thus, it is accurate to say that President Obama and his Administration have a very direct connection with this project – and somebody from the Administration needs to take a stand, do the right thing, and put a halt to it.

Much of the debate over the “Park 51” has involved concerns that the intended location of the project would be “offensive.” The “offense” is found in the fact that the would-be mosque is to be built not far from the region formerly known as “ground zero,” and in the fact that ( no matter how much President Obama and his Administration wants to pretend otherwise) those who attacked our nation on 9-11 were self-described Muslims.

Yet President Obama and his friends in the Administration seem to be disconnected from the many ways in which Americans are offended with the building an Islamic mosque, in a region where Americans were killed by Muslims. In fact, President Obama and several of his top Administration officials (include Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano here) seem helplessly enslaved to a far left-wing approach to such moral dilemmas, which leaves the views and sentiments of everyday Americans out-of-grasp for the Administration.

This approach can roughly be characterized in three very simplistic assumptions: A) Religious traditions, cultures, world views, and moral systems are all relative to one –another; none is any better than any of its counterparts. B) The only reason that an adherent to a particular religion or world view, or a member of any particular culture would do harm to anybody else is because of an unjust power struggle –this is to say that those who do harm to others do so simply because they haven’t been given adequate material provision or economic opportunity; and C) If government can be used to “level the playing field” – that is, if the “strong” (or “wealthy” or “majority class”) can be made a bit weaker, and the “weak” (the “poor” or the “the minority class” ) can be made stronger, then some arbitrary definition of “fairness” with ensue and everyone will begin to peacefully coexist.

This is why, despite three terrorist attacks on American soil in the last 12 months, all of which were committed by young men of Middle Eastern descent who identified themselves as “Muslims,” President Obama nonetheless continues to reiterate to the Muslim world that “America is not at war with Islam.” This is also why the Obama Administration pretends that a Catholic Nun, or a 7 year-old child, or an elderly man in his 70’s are all just as likely to be packing explosives adjacent to their genitals, as anybody else who wants to board a commercial aircraft. None among us is any better or any worse than anybody else, so the liberal thinking goes, and if we all get the same treatment, then the occasional bad behavior will cease.

Of course, the world doesn’t actually operate this way. In fact, the “real world” in which we all must live is far different from the theoretical world of American academic elites. But, so far as we can tell, Barack Obama has spent most of his life in the world of academic elites (according to my calculation he is only the second U.S. President to have been raised almost entirely by “intellectuals,”), and abandoning his assumption that American culture and Islamic culture are morally neutral is likely impossible for our President.

Thus, President Obama will likely continue to offend American sensibilities with his bowing to foreign heads of state, his repeated displays of “kindness” and “assurances” to predominantly Muslim nations, and all the rest. Yet he has taken the offensiveness to an entirely new level, with the prospect that our tax dollars (or more accurately, our children’s and grandchildren’s tax dollars) will be spent on an Islamic house of worship.

This proposal runs afoul of the so-called “separation of church and state” that is usually top of mind for liberals. But it also means that American taxpayers could end-up helping to fund the very ideological system that is committed to our nation’s destruction.

Will somebody in the Obama Administration stand up and do the right thing – even if our President is incapable of doing so?
Austin Hill
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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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Doug Giles - The Separation Between Muslims and Taste

Building a mosque at Ground Zero is like OJ’s mom putting a glamour shot of Orenthal over Nicole Brown’s gravestone. In other words, it’s very wrong and extremely disgusting, as every person with a lick of decency would agree.

What’s next, Awad? Are you going to demand a Nidal Malik Hasan Avenue on Ft. Hood’s military base? What about an Abdulmutallab Upgrade Package on Northwest Airlines?

To me, the question is not if a mosque could be built right next to the place where Muslims slaughtered 3,000 innocent people, but should it be built. The “no duh” answer to that insane inquiry is: Hell no, it should not be erected because that is simply gross.

Yet only people who actually give a rat’s backside about what others think could understand or answer such a question … which excludes Muslims. And for that matter, it excludes Bloomberg the Jackass.

In one of the most insensitive acts known to mankind, the “Religion of Peace” blows off courtesy, decorum and the feelings of the vast majority of Americans by establishing a mosque next to the same chunk of soil upon which their Jihadists shed American blood. How quaint. And … how telling.

The irony in this Islamic insult is the nine years of living hell the daft and duplicitous NYC bureaucrats have been giving St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in getting their church rebuilt after the Twin Towers flattened it on 9/11. But those same NYC bureaucrats are giddy as schoolgirls in erecting a mega-mosque to Mohammed on that macabre scene.

This is sick, twisted, rancid, pathetic, profane and offensive in the extreme. But this is what they historically do. Muslims see our 3,000 murdered citizens as a conquest to be celebrated, so they’re going to memorialize their bloody victory by establishing a mosque in honor of that sad morning.

Whiny Islam says we must not draw any offensive cartoons and must remove Jell-O from public schools because of trace pork products; they demand people be fired for bringing BLTs to eat at lunch; they want to rename our wars and re-write our history because it wounds their sensitive psyches; and in return they want to jam a 13-story, 100 million dollar Ground Zero mosque up our tailpipe.

I’m calling on all contractors far and wide to boycott the building of this insult. In addition, I’d like Donald Trump to outbid this imam and build a 15-story monument in the shape of a gargantuan middle finger wrapped in the America flag as a symbolic gesture to all our enemies—both foreign and domestic—of what we think about people who mess with America and that for which it stands.
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Doug Giles’ new book “If You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going!" is now available. Ann Coulter says "Doug Giles is a substantive and funny tour de force for traditional values.” Doug’s talk show and video blog can be seen and heard at www.ClashRadio.com.

Retired Geek - Controversy Over Cordoba Mosque

Fox News Burn a Koran Day

Barack Obama Weighs In on Burning Koran

Michael from IL - The primary mission of the Cordoba House in NYC

 The primary mission of the Cordoba House is that of da'wah which in Islam means a "call" or "invitation," and has been used to refer to a person being "called" to follow Islam. However, it has developed into the idea of a "mission" or "propaganda," either in a political or religious sense.

911's financing began in Saudi Arabia as part of a broader plan by the Muslim Brotherhood to spread Islam throughout the West. The 911 commission determined that "preparations for the attacks cost somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 -- of which about $300,000 was spent in the United States."

At the Muslim Brotherhood's 5th Cairo Conference: The International Campaign Against United States & Zionist Occupation, in which delegations from Hezbollah and Hamas took part. The participants cheered as Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef stated: "the failure of the American war machine to break the rock of the Iraqi opposition, the difficulties facing the coalition forces in Afghanistan, and the military defeat of the Israeli armed forces in Lebanon and against the Palestinians."

Akef called on the Arabs and Muslims to continue terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israel "until they withdraw completely from the Middle East." Akef reassured his followers that "the jihad will lead to smashing Western civilization and replacing it with Islam which will dominate the world," according to a translation by Jonathan D. Halevi, director of Orient Research Group.

http://www.public-integrity.org/article/invent_index.php?id=348
 
Imam Rauf the front man and spokesperson for Park51 as the project is now named, refuses to publically denounce al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Imam Rauf, an Egyptian born in Kuwait, is the son of the founder of the Islamic Center of New York, whose leaders have consistently been telling their congregants that someone other than Muslims was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (Rauf is on the Board of the ICNY, and has never interfered with this teaching.) The first candidate, naturally, was "the Jews." Then it was the United States government. Then it was just "someone" other than Muslims. Rauf himself has said that the United States was "to blame" for 9/11 - a statement just a shade more nuanced than blaming it on "the Jews". (It's also what bin Laden said.)

Rauf's father was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a friend of its founder, Hassan al-Banna, and Rauf's professional and political connections are all to the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas support network in the United States: the Council on American Islamic Relations; the Muslim American Society; the Islamic Society of North America; the International Institute of Islamic Thought.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7142/pub_detail.asp

 
Rauf has written a book published in the West as “What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America”, but the book had a significantly different title abroad: “A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Da'wah in the Heart of America Post-9/11”. As a reminder, “Da'wah” means Islamic proselytizing, a process that ends in the imposition of sharia. The book was published abroad with the assistance of the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which are two appendages of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization behind much of the world’s murderous Islamic terrorism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/243608/not-ground-zero-editors
 

The claims that the objections to the building of this mosque are rooted in xenophobia, racism or Islamophobia are utterly false; the broad rejection of the Cordoba House exists because the American people get it. The question remains why our elected officials do not?

Posted by Michael from IL - Town Hall commentator

9/5/2010. 

See Anne from PA article 1
See Anne from PA article 2