Ground Zero Mosque is the SECOND Mosque Being Built on a 9/11 Site

To our fellow 9/11 families and to all who are concerned about the Ground Zero mega-mosque in New York:

We want everyone to know that the Park Service is right now building an even larger Islamic victory mosque atop the Flight 93 crash site. Many of you were outraged in 2005 when the Crescent of Embrace design was unveiled to be a half-mile wide Islamic shaped crescent:

Left: 2005 publicity shot of the Crescent of Embrace design. Right: typical Islamic crescent and star, viewed from a similar angle.

Few people know that this giant crescent actually points to Mecca, or understand the religious significance of this orientation. A crescent that points the direction to Mecca is a very familiar construct in the Islamic world. Because Muslims face Mecca for prayer, every mosque is built around a Mecca direction indicator called a mihrab. The classic mihrab is crescent shaped. Here are the two most famous mihrabs in the world:

Left: the Mihrab of the Prophet, at the Prophet's mosque in Medina. Right: the mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain.

Face into the crescent to face Mecca

As with the Medina and Cordoba mihrabs, a person facing into the Crescent of Embrace will be facing Mecca. In the image below, superimposed red lines show the orientation of the Flight 93 crescent. The green qibla circle is from an nline Mecca-direction calculator:

A person standing between the tips of the crescent and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow) will be facing almost exactly in "qibla" direction (the Muslim prayer direction). You can verify the qibla direction from Somerset PA using any number of on-line Mecca-direction calculators.

To be precise, the Crescent of Embrace points 1.8° north of Mecca, ± a tenth of a degree. The final construction drawings alter this orientation slightly, so that instead of pointing a little less than two degrees north of Mecca, the actual crescent will point less than three degrees south of Mecca. Such small deviations from Mecca are insignificant by Islamic standards, which developed over a period of more than a thousand years during which far flung Muslims had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca.

The Park Service does not call the Crescent of Embrace a crescent anymore. Now they call it Circle of Embrace, but the only actual change was to add an extra arc of trees (planted to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent) that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. The unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace. It is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing at Mecca.

This is the Park Service's official explanation for the design: the terrorist attacks are depicted as smashing our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant crescent. A clearer depiction of Islamic victory is hard to imagine, so no one should be too surprised that the damned thing points to Mecca, and actually turns out to be a mosque.

Other mosque features:

Mosque design is based on a dozen typical mosque features, every one of which is realized in the Crescent/Circle design, all on the same epic scale as the half mile wide crescent-mihrab. Note, for instance, that the 93 foot tall minaret-like Tower of Voices is topped with another Islamic-shaped crescent, akin to the crescent-topped minarets seen in many Islamic countries:

An Islamic shaped crescent, soaring in the sky above the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes, which literally dangle down below. In Islam, there is only heaven and hell. Symbolic damnation?

The Flight 93 mosque needs to be stopped, along with the Islamic victory mosque at ground zero in Manhattan. May the fight against these two desecrations strengthen each other.

Sincerely,

Tom Burnett Senior
Loving father of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Junior

Contact information for the Flight 93 Memorial Project here:
Flight 93 National Memorial
109 W. Main St., Suite 104
Somerset, PA 15501
814.443.4557

If you would like to help stop the crescent mosque, please email Alec Rawls (alec@rawls.org) who is helping to coordinate opposition.

There is also an online petition that people can sign.

You Might Also Like to Read:

Ground Zero Mosque Articles
No Mosque on the Ground Zero
Obama and the Mosque
Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf of Mosque at Ground Zero
Hamas: NYC Mosque Must Be Built
The Moderate Muslim Threat
On Whose Side is Obama?
Islamic Trojan Horse at Ground Zero
Build This Mosque or Face the Wrath of Radical Islamists
Imam Rauf on Israel's Destruction
Is Islam the Problem?
The Mosque of War




By: Atlas Shrugs

The Moderate Muslim Threat

NY mosque affair another sign moderate Muslims more dangerous than radicals.

By: Shaul Rosenfeld





Muslims should build mosques “everywhere,” Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar declared Tuesday as he addressed the plans to build a mosque near ground zero in New York. Most of his Muslim brethren, moderates and radicals alike, likely endorsed this sentiment. After all, when one of the pillars of Islam is its very dissemination, one should not wonder that even the “moderates” view ground zero as a suitable site for a mosque.

The fact that almost all global terror in recent years is carried out in the name of Islamic ideas being recited day and night at the finest mosques (both in the East and West,) and that almost 3,000 people were killed in New York in the name of these notions nine years ago should have elicited at least a hint of understanding for the feelings of the victims’ families on the part of Islamic moderates.

New York Governor David Patterson recently announced that Muslims refused his offer to find an alternate site for the new Islamic center. He may have forgotten for a moment that more than anything, the center and its name (The Cordoba House) are a symbol. Seemingly, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Sharif el-Gamal and their partners could have scored quite a few points in America’s public opinion (which in all polls shows firm objection to the center’s establishment) had they accepted Patterson’s proposal.

After all, these distinguished gentleman fully realize that the various shades of Islam, even without the center, do not enjoy an especially positive image in US public opinion, and that a gesture conceding only the site of the mosque, rather than the principle of building it, was virtually a win-win situation for them. Moreover, their willingness to change the location would have ended almost at once the ongoing media and public debate on the actions of 19 of their Islamic brethren nine years ago and the thousands of their victims.

If, as Rauf and Gamal argue, the center’s main purpose is to encourage tolerance and promote interfaith dialogue, while showing maximal sensitivity to the feelings of others, would it not be natural to show a little more than zero tolerance and consideration for other people’s feelings, instead of dismissing out of hand many families of September 11 victims who ask that the mosque be built somewhere else?

The trap of Islamic rhetoric
An important part of the answer to the above questions has to do with the long-term goals designated by many of Islam’s spiritual and ideological leaders, both in the past and at present, both in the West and East. These objectives prompt many Muslim immigrants in the West (unlike any other immigrant group on earth) to strictly refrain from integrating into their new home and adopt local customs, even when this does not require them to make any religious concession.

In Britain, France, and the US, the separatist and anti-Western voices coming out of the mosques have no parallel among any other immigrant group. Even the economic, educational, and social opportunities and temptations, which are immeasurably greater than what is available at their home countries, only prompt a minority of Muslim immigrants to veer off the path outlined by Imams and integrate into the citizenry of their new country.

Moreover, this separatism is not undertaken for noble aims of course, but rather, mostly in order to gain a cultural, social, religious, and political foothold in their new address. This has always been Islam’s way. We would do well to examine the refusal of mosque planners to compromise on its location, even at the price of boosting the grievances against them among Americans, through this prism.

Yet in order to ensure that their work bears fruit, the senior Imams within the “moderate” Muslim camp excel at uttering words that are pleasantly received in the West. These imams can always put their trust in a variety of enlightened Western intellectuals, as well as some useful idiots, which this time around include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city council members, with the trusted support of Barack Obama (before he embarked on his zigzags.)

And so, we again see a noble, wonderful partnership between “moderate Muslims” committed to doublespeak and Western intellectuals who remain loyal to double standards; meanwhile, naïve souls all around are deeply moved by any “moderate” Islamic statement.

In his recently published book Flight of the Intellectuals, Paul Berman warns that the danger posed to the West by “moderate Muslims” is even greater than that posed by their radical brethren, mostly because too many people are happy to fall into the trap laid by moderate Islamic rhetoric, even when the conciliatory tone disappears the moment the target audiences changes to Muslims.

And so, for example, the Cordoba House is marketed to Westerners as a stronghold of tolerance, moderation, and interfaith dialogue. Yet in Islamic tradition, Cordoba is first and foremost a Christian Spanish city conquered by Muslims in 711, with many of its residents butchered or turned into slaves; a mosque built on the ruins of a church; and memories of the Almohads, the spiritual fathers of contemporary Islamic zealots.

The Almohads razed the town in the 12th Century and killed those who refused to convert to Islam, forcing Jews and Christians to either convert or go into exile. However, Feisal Abdul Rauf reserves this chapter in Cordoba’s history for his Muslims brethren only.


You Might Also Like to Read:

Ground Zero Mosque Articles
No Mosque on the Ground Zero
Obama and the Mosque
Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf of Mosque at Ground Zero
Hamas: NYC Mosque Must Be Built
Ground Zero Mosque is the SECOND Mosque Being Built on a 9/11 Site
On Whose Side is Obama?
Islamic Trojan Horse at Ground Zero
Build This Mosque or Face the Wrath of Radical Islamists
Imam Rauf on Israel's Destruction
Is Islam the Problem?
The Mosque of War

Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf of Mosque at Ground Zero

Imam of Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero refuses to condemn Hamas.
I've been trying to tell you about this guy. You wouldn't listen. "Imam terror: Ground Zero mosque leader hedges on Hamas,"

The imam behind plans to build a controversial Ground Zero mosque yesterday refused to describe Hamas as a terrorist organization.

According to the State Department's assessment, "Hamas terrorists, especially those in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, have conducted many attacks, including large-scale suicide bombings, against Israeli civilian and military targets."

Asked if he agreed with the State Department's assessment, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf told WABC radio, "Look, I'm not a politician.

"The issue of terrorism is a very complex question," he told interviewer Aaron Klein.

"There was an attempt in the '90s to have the UN define what terrorism is and say who was a terrorist. There was no ability to get agreement on that."

Asked again for his opinion on Hamas, an exasperated Rauf wouldn't budge.

"I am a peace builder. I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy," Rauf said, insisting that he wants to see peace in Israel between Jews and Arabs.

Note:
The Brotherhood openly seeks to spread Islam around the world, while Hamas is committed to Israelís destruction and is responsible for scores of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks aimed at Jewish civilian population centers.

Rauf also would not answer a question about Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

"I have nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. My father was never a member of the Muslim Brotherhood," he said, disputing a rumor....

Yeah, and I would continue to believe every word this man says...

FACTS:
A religion adviser to President Obama has close ties to the imam who wants to build a 13-story Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero. The two have been documented together discussing America as 'the ideal place for a renewal of Islam,' WND has learned.

In February, Obama named a Chicago Muslim, Eboo Patel, to his Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Patel is the founder and executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, which says it promotes pluralism by teaming people of different faiths on service projects.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the controversial Muslim leader behind the plan to build the Islamic center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, wrote the afterword to Patelís 2006 book, 'Building the Interfaith Youth Movement: Beyond Dialogue to Action.'

Patel is listed as one of 15 ìMuslim Leaders of Tomorrowî on the website for the American Society for the Advancement of Muslims, or ASAM, which is led by Rauf.


In Patelís 2007 book, ìSaving Each Other, Saving Ourselves,î he recounts discussing with Rauf the future of Islam in the U.S.

Rauf ìunderstood the vision immediately and suggested that I visit him and his wife, Daisy Khan, at their home the following evening,î Patel recalled. Khan founded the ASAM with her husband and has aided him in his plans for the mosque near Ground Zero.

'The living room of their apartment on the Upper West Side was set up like a mosque, with prayer rugs stretched from wall to wall,' wrote Patel in his book.

Continued Patel: 'I arrived at dusk, prayed the maghrib prayer with Daisy and Imam Feisal and then talked with them about how America, with its unique combination of religious devotion and religious diversity, was the ideal place for a renewal of Islam.'

'Islam is a religion that has always been revitalized by its migration,' he wrote. 'America is a nation that has been constantly rejuvenated by immigrants. There is now a critical mass of Muslims in America.'

And Obama is making sure to grant emigrant visas to as many Muslim immigrants as possible, more than ever before.

Islam isnít in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.î-- Omar Ahmad, co-founder of CAIR

America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.

Build it anywhere but there.



You Might Also Like to Read:

Ground Zero Mosque Articles
No Mosque on the Ground Zero
Obama and the Mosque
Hamas: NYC Mosque Must Be Built
The Moderate Muslim Threat
Ground Zero Mosque is the SECOND Mosque Being Built on a 9/11 Site
On Whose Side is Obama?
Islamic Trojan Horse at Ground Zero
Build This Mosque or Face the Wrath of Radical Islamists
Imam Rauf on Israel's Destruction
Is Islam the Problem?
The Mosque of War