Look, We Share the Same Values!

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a very nice man. He will tell you so. Those who hear his sermons will also declare him to be a very nice man, a good and a moderate Muslim. An American citizen who shares all the values of other American citizens. But of course, a man of experience in his faith, one who knows how to lead others to their faith. And in the process, melding Islam with the American experience of a social centre that brings people together, educates and enthuses them.

"We repeatedly say we are neither a mosque nor within Ground Zero, but they just shout back 'Ground Zero mosque, Ground Zero mosque'", Imam Rauf complains. The 13-story complex he plans to build in the shadow of Ground Zero has a laudable purpose innocent of malice, much misunderstood by the too-sensitive non-Muslim citizenry of New York, and by extension Americans living elsewhere in the country.

All consumed by the memory of 9-ll, which, unfortunately is inextricably, horrendously, atrociously linked to Islam.

Now, how unreasonable can people be! "We are trying to establish something that follows the YMCA concept but is not a church or a synagogue or, in this case, a mosque. We are taking that concept and adapting it to our time and the fact that we're Muslims. It's basically a Muslim Y." Well, that explains everything. And demonstrates aptly how skilled Muslims have become at adapting to and adopting Western-style values, manipulated to veil their own.

Islam is unlike other religions. It has a firm stranglehold on its adherents, as a total lifestyle experience. It is a religion that will not lift its stolid, heavy presence as a firm and unassailable expression of domination through all aspects of life's journey from the political to the social, the civil to the religious, all one neat and complex bundle to be taken as is, no deviations contemplated lest ye become an apostate.

The clever manipulation of reason and logic by the quiet use of laws to insist that Muslims want nothing more nor less than their due as integral members of Western society, and that due should really, given sheer numbers within the population, include sharia. To deny them that is to express one's anti-Muslim attitude. The laws of freedoms and public relations meant to advantage society as an entirety have proven very useful.

Imam Rauf seeks understanding, empathy, sympathy for the need to further the cause of Islamic stability and acceptance within the greater society of the United States. In the process he demonstrates an utter lack of empathy and sensitivity for the sensibilities of other Americans who have suffered a grave trauma in witnessing the sanctity of their public places destroyed, their citizens murdered in an attack of monumental proportions.

The attackers were rabid Islamist jihadists whose incendiary hatred for the West and for non-Muslims led them to plan an outrage so unsuspected by the targets that they could be assured their assault would have tormentingly long-lasting effects. These were men so steeped in the pathology of avenging an historic past, so utterly devoid of humane-ness that they could undertake to destroy the lives of thousands and consider it a blessing for Islam.

After the 9-11 atrocity, Muslims throughout the world who hated the West and specifically the United States, celebrated the event as a victory for Islam. Dancing in the streets and handing out sweets to children marked the depths to which a depraved hatred of other human beings could plunge a people. Sympathy for the attackers and contempt for those whose lives were lost marked a well-noted attitude within Arab and Muslim states.

Imam Rauf contends that his projected project, to build the mosque that is not really a mosque but a Western-concept "Y", is a badly misunderstood project. One that "couldn't be more urgent than right now. One thing I hear all the time is, 'Where are the moderate Muslims?' We are moderates and we've condemned radicalism But moderation doesn't' sell newspapers."

No, it does not, he is correct. But unmitigated chutzpah can and does. And what is being proposed in the 'shadow' of Ground Zero represents a signal lack of empathy, sympathy and understanding of the huge trauma suffered by New Yorkers. What he proposes to build there represents another kind of trauma, one of unrepentant opportunism, an undeclared but obvious obliviousness to the shock and horror felt by the people affected, one that will not fade gracefully.

His actions and those of his backers represent a grave affront to the memory of those who died. To the pain of the living who now exist without their loved ones. To the insecurity and terror re-lived in nightmares of people who are very well aware that their enemy is restless and anxious to commit additional acts of terror wherever and whenever opportunity presents itself.

When Imam Rauf was pointedly asked why he would choose to build where he did, he evaded the question by responding: "I've been in this community for the last quarter century. I'm the imam of a mosque 10 blocks from there. But we now have to hold three sessions of Friday prayers because the space is so tight."

Right. But why, on heaven's name there, in that very space, so adjacent the atrocity that altered America's comfort of self? That, in and of itself is a triumphalism, expressing Islamic contempt for others, for non-Muslims, for infidels and kuffars.