Premeditation in purchasing the land near Ground Zero.

****While Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama have stressed the right of anyone to build on her PRIVATE PROPERTY, nothing was said about WHEN or HOW or WHY that private property was acquired. It is the case that the land was acquired by a Muslim group after 9-11 with the express purpose of being as close to Ground Zero as possible. When the owners are described as being a "group of investors" that is a bit disingenuous since it is hardly a commercial proposition designed to produce a return (unless there are ancillary uses such as being subleased to Al Qaeda.)It was referred to as the Ground Zero Mosque by the initiators while they were looking and raising funds for a "suitable" property i.e. one associated throughout the world with the 9-11 event.****

Monday, August 23, 2010
GROUND ZERO MOSQUE FACTS
"The last legal hurdle to the proposed Islamic center near the site of the World Trade Center has been removed, but ignorance, bigotry and politics are more formidable obstacles."
-Time Magazine article

A couple of quick points on the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, because its already been covered too much elsewhere:

1) Red State has a useful collection of links to news stories about the Muslim group trying to find property as close as possible to the fallen Twin Towers:

# A December 8th, 2009, New York Times article stated, “The location [next to Ground Zero] was precisely a key selling point for the group of Muslims,” and quoted Rauf as noting that they got a property “where a piece of the [9/11] wreckage fell.” ASMA then touted the piece in its 2009 Year End Report.
# A simple Google search of the Cordoba Initiative’s website reveals the phrase “Ground Zero” to be seeded throughout as a rather inept 1999-era SEO tactic to bring people looking for information about Ground Zero to the mosque promoters’ website.
# On May 5th and 6th, ASMA’s Daisy Khan was on her Twitter account, boasting first that the “new muslim center near ground zero gets unaminous vote of approval from community board one in downtown nyc,” and then that she had a “Media blitz day for ASMA / Cordoba [on the] muslim commuity center near ground zero.”
# On June 15th, Daisy Khan told the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn that “a divine hand” led to the Ground Zero proximity.

2) Imam Rauf said that the 9/11 location is "iconic" in a New York Times article, but they recently edited that line from the article as the Imam has changed his line to say it isn't all that close.
3) Imam Rauf has a bit more radical anti-American background than the left cares to realize, as noted at Atlas Shrugged. Rauf is also a major backer of the Palestinian floatilla that attacked IDF soldiers when it violated the blockade.
4) The name of the Mosque was at first going to be the Cordoba House, but when people started looking up what Cordoba House meant, they changed the name to Park 51, referring to its address, or just the Muslim Community Center.
5) “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved [the Sept. 11 attacks], but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened, we have 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.”
--Imam Feisal Rauf on CBS 60 Minutes on Sept. 30, 2001.
6) When asked to build the structure somewhere else, the backers utterly refused.
7) Imam Rauf insisted funds for the building would be from the US, but later said that the money would come from Muslim Arabic sources, and would not count out Iranian money.
8) UDPATE: "The United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims."
-Imam Rauf (note that qualifier innocent there)

Just some things to consider when you're called a bigot for thinking anyone with noble motives, a desire for outreach and brotherhood, and any sense of honor and sympathy for the victims of 9/11 would build it somewhere else.

posted by Christopher Taylor at 8:16 AM