- The Proposed WTC Mosque

Galvez:
Does Mayor Bloomberg know why the Ground-Zero Mosque will be dedicated to “ Cordoba ”? But what can you expect from an anti-gun nut … Of course not! Instead of doing a little bit of research, he prefers to call relatives’ of 9/11 victims bigots.

Well, to understand why you just need to know about the history of Islamic Jihad in Europe :


“Osama bin Laden’s deputy explicitly linked the destruction of the World Trade Centre with events in southern Spain 512 years ago, by referring, in a post-9/11 broadcast, to “the tragedy in al-Andalus”, the watershed moment in 1492 when the Christian troops of Ferdinand and Isabella finally conquered Granada, bringing to an end nearly 800 extraordinary years of Islamic rule in Spain. With our foreshortened historical memories in the West, we see the War on Terror through a prism of recent events: Afghanistan , the Gulf War, the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia . But in truth the landscape of Islamic memory stretches to a more distant horizon: to the Christian flag unfurling over the Alhambra , the great 14th-century Muslim fortress of Granada , and the Crusades that preceded it.”


Current Spain was invaded by Islam in the year 711 AD, where they established the Caliphate of al-Andalus. It took almost 800 years to expel the invader. Bin Laden thinks in historical terms. For him, the attacks on 9/11 were part of a struggle against the West, a struggle that started with the Jihad for al-Andalus. That was the first confrontation against Christianity, many centuries before the Crusades of Palestine (approx. 1100 AD).

As simple as that. The World Trade Center was destroyed in revenge for “the tragedy in al-Andalus”. Now, I find rather disturbing that they want to dedicate the Ground-Zero Mosque to al-Andalus’ center of spirituality, the city of “Cordoba”. Did you know that, in fact, this will be one of the very few Mosques around the world dedicated to a city of al-Andalus? Why to choose a name directly and inextricably connected to Islamic Jihad, here in Ground-Zero?? It may not mean anything to the average American, but to a Muslim this is a great provocation, like opening a museum in Tehran denying the Holocaust and inviting rabbis from around the World to participate.

I bet you the funding comes from the masters of provocation... Iran.

May God preserve America free, united and in peace.


Me:
I haven’t said much about the Mosque myself so let me take this chance to say that I’m against it.

There are lots of ways that the institutions of the Western world don’t jive well with Islam. In our minds the separation of church and state is a simple and direct thing. So too is the decent treatment of soldiers in war. But the Islamic world neither understands nor respects those principles because to them the theology of Islam and the politics of Islam are inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other. And in many cases, the politics of Islam are actually far more important than the theology, which is a secondary consideration.

If you listen to the Islamic advocates of the Mosque, they’ve learned how to play specifically to our civilization’s weaknesses. They are complaining that all they want is to be allowed to practice their religion the same as anyone else. But the fact is, no one is stopping them from doing so. (There is already a very sizable Mosque on the upper east side... not too far from the Mayor's official residence.) Put the mosque on the upper west side and no one will have anything to say about it. But their decision to compel us to allow them to build a memorial to the murderers at the site of the murder is a political decision.

What they really want is to compel us all to recognize legally that their values are ‘normal’. Once they have that, they'll then use that designation to turn our own legal system against us and compel us to follow the tenants of their belief out of 'respect' or diversity' or whatever works for them. That’s not theology, that’s politics.

I have a problem with Gitmo because I don’t trust our government to just make up rules as they go along. I think we should sit down and write out some very specific rules for how the government deals with the un-uniformed practitioners of Jihad. But in the meantime I recognize that these people are trying to kill us all, so we had better err on the side of infringing on their rights until we figure it all out. (In truth, I wish we were trying a little harder to do so.) I feel the same with regard to the Mosque. It may be stepping over the lines as we know them, but Islam contains so many secular principles that it demands it. It’s not really a religion any more than something like ‘environmentalism’ is.

As for Bloomberg, I sat 18 inches from him at a benefit once and listened to him opine for hours. This was long before he was mayor but after he had already amassed a sizable fortune. He’s an unfathomably arrogant a$$. I’d expect nothing less from him.