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Politics : BuSab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SmoothSail who wrote (5632)	11/26/2010 12:33:00 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 23934

No Taxes For The Ground Zero Mosque .................................................... 11/24/2010 investors.com Developers of the Ground Zero mosque have applied for federal grant money to help with its construction. They may have the right to build it, but having taxpayers foot the bill would be the ultimate insult. As Thanksgiving travelers were being fondled and groped on their way to grandma's house in a futile effort to prevent another 9/11 attack, developers of a proposed "cultural center" within blocks of the site of that attack were asking these same travelers to fork over their tax dollars to build what many consider not a bridge over a cultural divide but a slap in the face to the victims of terror. The application was submitted under a "community and cultural enhancement" grant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation (LMDC). The agency oversaw the $20 billion in federal aid allocated in the wake of 9/11 and is currently doling out millions in remaining taxpayer funds for community development. Developers hope to get around the "nonreligious activities" requirement in their application by mentioning only the cultural, educational and community development aspects of the 13-story facility and not the prayer room and other areas where Shariah law, which is diametrically in conflict with Western values and freedoms, will be preached and advocated. The grant is unlikely to be approved since such grants go commonly to finish or assist ongoing projects, not start them. And at last report, Park 51, as this project's been designated, was found to have less than $20,000 in the bank for a project with a slated cost of $100 million. Still one has to admire their chutzpah. Apparently the advocates of tolerance, outreach and bridge-building haven't been coughing up a lot of dough. Perhaps they are pondering the wisdom of being associated with a mosque that not only was built on a site close to Ground Zero but arguably was part of Ground Zero. The proposed mosque is so close that the landing gear from one of the 9/11 planes crashed into a building on the proposed site. The mosque at Ground Zero is not about outreach. Its name, Cordoba House, was picked in honor of the bloody Muslim conquest of Cordoba, Spain, in 711. Canadian Muslims Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah, who sit on the board of the Muslim Canadian Congress, write in the Ottawa Citizen of Aug, 7: "We Muslims know that the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel." Is this mosque going to be a bastion of religious tolerance? Its imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, has said he has no use for religious dialogue and believes 9/11 was America's fault. In a "60 Minutes" interview that aired on Sept. 30, 2001, Rauf said: "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened, but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened." While the Ground Zero mosque proceeds, however slowly, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church is not so lucky. It used to be right across the street from the WTC until it was crushed when Tower 2 and its incinerated inhabitants came crashing down upon it. Plans to rebuild St. Nicholas two blocks from its original location fell apart when Port Authority officials objected to its 24,000-square-foot footprint with a traditional grand dome atop. They said it could not rise above the planned WTC memorial. Yet no objection was raised to a 13-story mosque on which there were placed no height restrictions. If the Ground Zero mosque was truly about outreach, developers might have proposed a joint project to rebuild both with a joint fund-raising effort. As it is, no taxpayer dollars should go to a project that we feel desecrates truly hallowed ground.