The triumphalist Victory Mosque is no bridge.

http://tinyurl.com/26w4dmb
Ground Zero Mosque Reveals Deeper Muslim Problem
By: Ronald Kessler
The controversy over plans to build a mosque two blocks from the site where the World Trade Center once stood reveals a deeper problem within the Muslim community.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is behind the project, says he wants to build bridges with fellow Americans and condemns terrorism. Yet he has refused to call Hamas a terrorist group, even though the State Department has designated it as such, and he is tone deaf to what should be obvious: Building a mosque so close to ground zero is wounding to many of those who lost their loved ones at the hands of Islamic extremists.
This lack of understanding is consistent with what the FBI has found in trying to cultivate the Muslim community. To be sure, leads from some Muslims have led to FBI cases in such cities as Lackawanna, N.Y.; Lodi, Calif.; and Atlanta. But in general, the FBI has met resistance to its requests for help from Muslim leaders in developing sources and leads in the war on terror. In fact, as many as 10 percent of the imams at the 2,000 mosques in the United States preach jihad and hatred of America, according to top FBI counterterrorism officials.... Muslims often are in denial about the fact that the terrorists who threaten the U.S. are Muslims....‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’”...You want me to waste my time and your taxpayer’s dollars going to look at the Irish? They’re not killing Americans.... “I can name the home-grown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom ...it’s not the Protestants; it’s the Muslims.”...“Rarely do we have them coming to us and saying, ‘There are three guys in the community that we’re very concerned about,’” one agent says.... a Muslim group suggested having a photo taken of its members with FBI Director Bob Mueller to show their community isn’t a bunch of terrorists and that they are partners in the war on terror. An agent replied, “Let me make a suggestion: When you bring to my attention real extremists who are here to plan and do something, who are here supporting terrorism, and I work that based on your information, then I promise you, I will have the director stand up on the stage with you.”To the agent’s amazement, the answer was: “That could never happen. We would lose our constituency. We could never admit to bringing someone to the FBI.”...by refusing to condemn terrorists, and by showing insensitivity to New Yorkers devastated by the 9/11 attack, Rauf has made himself a poster boy for attitudes that need to change within the Muslim community.//

Perhaps it's not so bad. The stupidity, appeasement/PC-mentality and illogic of such as Bloomberg et al will produce a backlash that might eventually get the U.S. to realize what a threat Radical Islam ( perhaps Islam ) is to American values and Western Civilization. This is a triumphalist project, named after the similar one in Cordoba ( and parallelled with the building of Al-Aqsa on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, conversion of St. Sophia to a mosque in Constantinopole, etc. When the Pope allowed a mosque in Rome, he naturally asked for some reciprocity for churches in Muslim countries: he got ...nada!

Besides, the cost of protecting this mosque will be exorbitant and its half-life I would guess to be less than five years. It won't require a Timothy McVeigh ( although such a one would garner infinitely more support than did the original ); rather, since it will be a Sunni mosque, it will be likely destroyed by a Shia suicide bomber (perhaps supported by a national subscription drive! ).

By the way, Fareed The Screed Zalaria has shed his Western skin revealing the Muslim colors underneath ( although, honestly, he has never hidden the fact of his bias, merely relying on the political-correctness of his audience to shield him.)
http://tinyurl.com/38qg68n
...In the segment, Zakaria praises the imam behind the mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for promoting a version of Islam he calls “Osama Bin Laden’s nightmare.” Many of the points he makes in his commentary he has already written about in his letter to the ADL and in Newsweek, but among the new highlights in his segment is the conservative argument for the Ground Zero mosque: the fact that conservatives have, he explains, often promoted efforts “to fund moderates and delegitimize radical and violent Islam.” He also noted that it was not just a mosque, but a community center, and “if this community center were being built anywhere else in the world, chances are the US government would be funding it,” because its leaders were friendly to American interests.

Zakaria then praised the mosque’s leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, called his version of Islam “Osama Bin Laden’s nightmare,” and argued that “we should be encouraging such an islamic center, not demonizing it.” He also noted that the idea that the mosque would be offensive to 9/11 victims seems to ignore the fact that many of the victims of the attacks were muslim themselves, and the fact that people are victims, according to him, does not give them the right to prejudices. “Are irrational feelings, prejudices, hatreds ok because those expressing them are victims or see themselves as victims?,” he asked. “Will the ADL defend the rights of Palestinian ‘victims’ to be anti-semites?”



Mischief in Manhattan We Muslims know the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation By Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah, Citizen SpecialAugust 7, 2010

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city council speaker Christine Quinn announce this week's decision to deny landmark status to the site of a planned Muslim centre
Last week, a journalist who writes for the North Country Times, a small newspaper in Southern California, sent us an e-mail titled "Help." He couldn't understand why an Islamic Centre in an area where Adam Gadahn, Osama bin Laden's American spokesman came from, and that was home to three of the 911 terrorists, was looking to expand.
...When we try to understand the reasoning behind building a mosque at the epicentre of the worst-ever attack on the U.S.,...so it's not as if there is pressing need to find space for worshippers. The fact we Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel. The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as "Fitna," meaning "mischief-making" that is clearly forbidden in the Koran... So what gives Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the "Cordoba Initiative" and his cohorts the misplaced idea that they will increase tolerance for Muslims by brazenly displaying their own intolerance in this case?
Do they not understand that building a mosque at Ground Zero is equivalent to permitting a Serbian Orthodox church near the killing fields of Srebrenica...Questions about where the funding is coming from? If this mosque is being funded by Saudi sources, then it is an even bigger slap in the face of Americans, as nine of the jihadis in the Twin Tower calamity were Saudis. If Rauf is serious about building bridges, then he could have dedicated space in this so-called community centre to a church and synagogue, but he did not....$100 million would be brought into the United States rather than be directed at dying and needy Muslims in Darfur or Pakistan.
Let's not forget that a mosque is an exclusive place of worship for Muslims and not an inviting community centre. Most Americans are wary of mosques due to the hard core rhetoric that is used in pulpits....As Muslims we are dismayed that our co-religionists have such little consideration for their fellow citizens and wish to rub salt in their wounds and pretend they are applying a balm to sooth the pain.
... If this mosque does get built, it will forever be a lightning rod for those who have little room for Muslims or Islam in the U.S. We simply cannot understand why on Earth the traditional leadership of America's Muslims would not realize their folly and back out in an act of goodwill.
As for those teary-eyed, bleeding-heart liberals such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and much of the media, who are blind to the Islamist agenda in North America, we understand their goodwill. Unfortunately for us, their stand is based on ignorance and guilt, and they will never in their lives have to face the tyranny of Islamism that targets, kills and maims Muslims worldwide, and is using liberalism itself to destroy liberal secular democratic societies from within.
Raheel Raza is author of Their Jihad ... Not my Jihad, and Tarek Fatah is author of The Jew is Not My Enemy (McClelland & Stewart), to be launched in October. Both sit on the board of the Muslim Canadian Congress.//
http://tinyurl.com/36xab66
Zakaria urges the building of the Victory Mosque as a support to "moderate" Muslims. Why it has to be at Ground Zero to support "moderate" Muslims is not clear; rather it is a support and victory for triumphalist radical Muslims all around the world. There is not the slightest evidence that the Imam Rauf is a "moderate." He refuses to consider Hamas a terrorist organization and the various statements that Zakaria tries to dismiss as inconsequential are, in fact, reflective of the Imam's lack of moderation. We'll see what the preachings are like from the Victory Mosque ( assuming the FBI can penetrate the sermons sufficiently to record them.) Very strangely, Rauf is touring the MidEast, likely on a fund-raising compaign and is traveling AS A GUESS OF THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT. The Obama Administration is so arrogant that it is not even reserving "plausible deniability" for its Muslim biases. This will be claimed to be a religious matter; it is not. It is providing aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States and Western Civilization itself. If that's the side the Obama Administration is on, the more obvious it is, the better.