How to Stop the Ground Zero Mega-Mosque

Expose Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s history, his statements in Arabic, and his organization’s appallingly incomplete tax filings.

Pajamas Media | May 28, 2010

by Alyssa A. Lappen

On May 25, Manhattan Community Board 1 gave their nod of approval to construction of a highly contested, 15-story mega-mosque at the former Park Place Burlington Coat Factory—600 feet from Ground Zero.

But this is hardly a final word on the matter.

New York City community boards function as mere advisory bodies, with no authority to make legally binding decisions for or against any proposed New York City structure. And while a motion to postpone the vote was defeated, the approval hardly represented resounding community support: only one board member voted no, but ten members abstained.

Nevertheless, the matter concerns far more than New York City planning, zoning, or community board politics. Following jihad doctrine, 19 Muslims attacked the U.S., as a nation, on 9/11. They attacked all nations whose citizens were among the nearly 3,000 murdered. Not surprisingly, the Muslim Gulf states are carefully watching the debate.

Obviously, this matter is no less Earth-shattering to Americans than the erstwhile plans of President Obama to conduct Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial in a New York City federal civilian court. The nation spoke in a unified voice against that plan, and stopped it cold. The nation, with a unified voice, can stop construction of any mosque near Ground Zero as well.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in planning for this 15-story mosque, casts a gauntlet to America—the center of the war against radical Islam.

In 2004, this man assumed trusteeship of land at 96th Street and 3rd Avenue near New York’s Islamic Cultural Center (ICC). Rauf is also an ICC permanent trustee. Until Sept. 28, 2001, the ICC employed Imam Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, an Al-Azhar University envoy to the U.S. One week later, from the “safety” of Egypt, Gemeaha said “only the Jews” could have perpetrated September 11. If Americans knew, “they would have done to Jews what Hitler did.” Allah says Jews “disseminate corruption in the land” and spread “heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs,” he added.

Gemeaha’s successor at ICC was no better: Omar Saleem Abu-Namous saw no “conclusive evidence” proving Muslims responsible.

These pronouncements represent institutional discriminatory precepts embedded within Sharia law. Rauf’s associates, who operated under his trusteeship at the 96th Street mosque, uttered them, and not surprisingly, they mirrored Rauf’s own hateful post-9/11 comments.

In March, Rauf stated in Arabic: “I don’t believe in interfaith dialogue.”

On May 26, Rauf gave an interview to Sa’da Abdul Maksoud on the well-trafficked Hadiyul-Islam website:

“Throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians, it is clear an Islamic state can be established in more than just a single form or mold. It can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of Sharia that are required to govern.

Rauf’s statements in Arabic directly contradicted his statements to English speakers—i.e., that the U.S. Constitution is Sharia-compliant:

“New laws were permitted after the death of Muhammad, so long of course that these laws do not contradict the Quran or the Deeds of Muhammad—so they create institutions that assure no conflicts with Sharia.

Consider the relevance of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood membership of Rauf’s father alongside Rauf’s own deceptive behavior and speech. In 1965, Muhammed Abdul Rauf (1917-2004) bought two-thirds of the bloc at 96th Street and 3rd Avenue with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. Rauf withheld information on the Islamic donors until 1984. Only after wrangling for permits for 20 years did Rauf begin construction—at that point, funding sources no longer mattered as construction became a fait accompli. Similarly, upon the 1992 dedication of the 96th Street mosque, founders revealed its $17 million in financing from 46 Islamic nations, all members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Another fait accompli, including plans for an apartment building restricted to Muslims alone. By 2010, the enormous Islamic complex had added two more buildings.

Saudi Arabia founded the OIC in 1969 to promote the “struggle for Islam,” and has been its chief sponsor since. The OIC’s charter includes all Muslim Brotherhood precepts, the foremost being to spread Sharia worldwide. With headquarters in Jedda “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” the OIC in 1973 established the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) “according to Islamic Sharia principles,” and through it, launched the petrodollar-based Islamic financing market as another way to stealthily spread Islam and Sharia worldwide.

“[A]n Islamic organization must serve God—and ultimately sustain—the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life,” writes Nasser M. Suleiman in “Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking.” Certainly the 46 OIC members had those Sharia principles in mind when they funded construction of New York’s Islamic Center.

Secrecy surrounding the land purchase and construction financing of the 96th Street mega-mosque emulate the teachings of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, a colleague of Rauf’s father, who taught Al Azhar University—Islam’s closest equivalent to the Vatican. Rauf fled Egypt’s 1948 crackdown on the MB. His eldest son Feisal was born in Kuwait that year.

MB doctrines require “flexibility“—adapting to each environment on local terms, especially in North America—to force Islamic law on the masses globally. Hiding financing sources are perfect examples of taqiyya, a theologically encouraged practice of deception to advance theocratic, fascist Islamic doctrines.

Like his father, Rauf is probably a stealth Muslim Brother, as are most MB members.

The Muslim Brotherhood founded virtually all Islamic terror organizations operating worldwide today, including al-Qaeda and Hamas. Thus, only propaganda and recruitment chiefs like Alabama-born Omar Hammami—and shills hoping to convince useful idiots the Brothers are genuinely peaceful—advertise their affiliation.

Rauf established ASMA’s Cordoba Initiative in Colorado in 2004, but registered the non-profit in New York only in April 2009. His financial statements look mysterious, too. A Cordoba Initiative project, since at least 2006, has partnered with the Gallup Organization and “a team of Sunni and Shi’a scholars from Morocco to Indonesia” to create “an Islamic legal benchmark for measuring ‘Islamicity’ of a state,” available both publicly and to pundits “and state officials in both the Muslim and Western worlds.”

If the U.S. is Sharia-compliant, and Rauf supports Western democracy and mosque-state separation, why has his New York-based institution initiated this project, funded by Malaysia and many other Muslim nations in the OIC?

Malaysia is not a secular democracy. Its federal government maintains a Department of Islamic Development (JAKIM) charged with promoting “the development and advancement of Islamic affairs,” including formulation of “policies for the ADVANCEMENT of Islamic affairs in the country and to safeguard the sanctity of the aqidah and the teachings of Islam.” (Emphasis in original.)

Rauf may well get Saudi funding too: In February 2001, the IDB established its U.S. dollar-denominated Awqaf Properties Investment Fund (APIF) to “develop and invest in accordance with ‘Islamic Sharia [principles], in Awqaf real estate properties’ in [IDB] member countries—and Islamic communities in non-member countries.” Financing applications go—where else?—to OIC founder and chief IDB backer Saudi Arabia, which has worked tirelessly for decades to advance Islamic communities in the most influential non-Muslim nation, the U.S.

OIC countries financed the 96th Street mosque. Why would Rauf not approach them again, particularly since an IDB financing mechanism for projects like his is already in place?

At Tuesday’s meeting, a 9/11 survivor, along with relatives, parents, and dear friends of victims, all spoke eloquently against the mosque. Bereaved mother Cynthia Kane honored her son, firefighter George Kane, and his hundreds of brave colleagues who died fighting to save lives. Another victim’s father poignantly noted that bodily remains of 997 people are still missing. “Where the hell do you think they are? They are on that [holy] ground—and building a mosque over them is truly insensitive.” 9/11 Families leader Debra Burlingame professed happiness that the controversy might encourage Americans to finally ask: “What is Sharia?”

The best route to stopping construction may be through the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service. According to a Certified Public Accountant and Act for America member, available American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) tax filings raise several red flags.

Very little ASMA information is available on the non-profit organization from Guidestar, a commercial service that provides 990 filings from thousands of tax-exempt charitable organizations, many much smaller than ASMA. However, the CPA reports that many documents required for public examination are missing from Guidestar’s ASMA files. Federal law requires ASMA to provide tax returns for public inspection, but evidently it has not done so, the CPA says.

Director since 2005, Daisy Khan—Rauf’s interior designing, Kashmir-born wife—apparently never filed a required informational return or regular annual reports: “shocking for a charity with over $1 million in grants just last year.”

Several other issues indicate ASMA’s financial statements are not “in accordance with accounting standards for nonprofit organizations.” An organization established in 1998 should have two-year comparisons, not the one-year comparison provided in the fiscal 2009 statement. Failing that, ASMA must provide comparative statements in its notes or a letter to stakeholders—which it also does not do.

Likewise, ASMA claims to be a 501(c)3 organization. They do present a letter of determination (albeit, misstated as being granted in “1988”). But ASMA financial statements do not specify under which code ASMA’s tax-exempt status falls.

ASMA also fails to list required future lease payments, although its auditor reportedly specializes in non-profit groups and purports to follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). “I’m shocked by all these” oversights, said the CPA, who has merely begun to list GAAP requirements on which ASMA flunks.

Maybe there’s just too much information Rauf and ASMA don’t want the public to know. Perhaps the IRS should institute a new taqiyya-busters division. Meanwhile, the public can shower the IRS with complaints on these evidently numerous tax-code violations.

(Click here to watch Walid Shoebat expose the Ground Zero mosque on PJTV.)

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See No Jihad — Third Verse: Same as the First

By Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | May 25, 2010

Review: Daniel Goldhagen, Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity
(New York: Public Affairs, Oct. 6, 2009), 672 pp.

In his third book, former Harvard University associate professor Daniel Goldhagen promises a distinctive approach to genocide. He hopes to integrate “mass murder and elimination into our understanding of politics, and extend genocide’s definition to include many forms of “elimination.”

To this end, Goldhagen posits some painfully obvious points. Outright extermination — the final stage of genocide — “is one aspect of ‘eliminationism’,” but perpetrators also usually seek to totally erase identities, cultures, existence, history and philosophy of perceived enemies. Thus, they initiate genocidal campaigns via several repugnant measures: They “transform” groups with forced religious conversions, suppress languages or erase and falsify history — destroying “defining political, social or cultural identities [to neuter] members’ alleged noxious qualities.” They “repress” the “hated, deprecated or feared” minorities inside accessible areas that can be easily, violently dominated. They “expel” or deport victims in forced migrations beyond national borders or into mass camps. They forbid normal “reproduction,” mandate mass sterilization or incite mass rape. (Another principal extermination method Goldhagen neglects: purposeful mass starvation of victims).

Unfortunately, the author presumes to advance genocide studies beyond the accomplishments of most scholars who preceded him. “Studies of genocide either mainly restrict themselves to a subset of usually the most familiar and largest mass killings…,” Goldhagen complains. Or “they float above the material on a general level to offer conclusions without a solid and broad empirical foundation.” He points no fingers, but by default Goldhagen pompously insults such great historians, anthropologists, Holocaust and genocide scholars as Vahakan Dadrian, Lucy Dawidowicz, Yehuda Bauer, Walter Laqueur, Israel Gutman, David S. Wyman and many others.

Where Goldhagen claims that other scholars failed, he pretends to distinctively approach the topic and promises to derive and deliver “new understandings” — especially on the “neglected” political nature of “eliminationism” — and all of that by means “predicated upon an accurate view of our age’s mass slaughters.” (p. 32)

Yet the author presents so many inaccuracies and distortions in his 597page text, one hardly knows where to begin the catalog. In its primary meaning in Webster’s Dictionary, “empirical” studies make orderly and reasonable examinations of established facts and, or results from scientific experiments. Goldhagen’s work exemplifies the obverse, secondary meaning of “empirical” — i.e, “without the aid of science or a knowledge of principles; ignorant and unscientific practice; charlatanry; quackery.”

“In no previous era have political leaders dreamed of disposing of hundreds of thousands, millions, or tens of millions of people” as have modern political leaders like Hitler, Stalin and Mao — and not just those tyrants — Goldhagen claims (p. 23). Oh really?

But a few pages earlier, Goldhagen correctly observes that extermination (i.e., eliminationism in all imaginable forms) was “a staple of all eras and parts of the world.” Ancients often “slew those they conquered.” Right. Citing the Bible and the Illiad, Goldhagen nevertheless concludes that ancient (and presumably medieval) historical accounts are “often so sketchy” as to leave scholars uncertain if some “slaughters occurred [at all] or of the number of victims.” (p. 18)

Apparently, Goldhagen has not read sufficient primary ancient and medieval accounts, nor studied enough scholars — for example Edward Gibbon; Sir Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson; and 20th century scholars like Giuseppe Ricciotti, Henri Pirenne, Spyros Vryonis, Will Durant, Bat Ye’or, K.S. Lal, Victor Davis Hanson, and many others — who examined wars and dominant cultures in those periods and prove the opposite. Otherwise, Goldhagen could not claim that the volume of 20th century mass slaughters (p. 56) made the modern age the bloodiest in all history, nor conclude that scholars lack enough details of early and medieval mass murders to know that hundreds of millions were murdered.

The stark figures on 20th century genocide — an estimated 127 million to 175 million people (p. 56), including victims of purposeful mass starvation — are indeed appalling. But such numbers mean most only against total populations in any given age. From 1900 to 2000, the world’s population more than tripled to nearly 6 billion. 1 At most, then, 20th century genocide eliminated perhaps 3% of the globe’s people.

As horrific as those numbers sound, history has witnessed much bloodier periods. According to Will Durant,

“The [Islamic] conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.” 2 (Story of Civilization, vol.1, Our Oriental Heritage, New York 1994, p.496)

Modern scholar of Islam Dr. Andrew Bostom observes, quoting the late Hindu historian K.S. Lal, that Muslim forces in the subcontinent murdered an estimated 80 million people from Mahmud of Ghazni in 1000 C.E. through the collapse of the Delhi Sultanate in 1525. The conquerors included Qutbuddin Aibak, Alauddin Khalji, Muhammad and Firoz Tughlaq, and Amir Timur (a.k.a. Tamerlane, 1336-1405) — all celebrated in Muslim accounts as “killers of lakhs,” with one lakh being 100,000 Hindus.3

In 1750, merely 791 million people populated the world — 500 million in Asia.4 By 1525, at most probably 250 to 300 million lived in India. Five hundred years earlier, India’s population would have been far smaller. Therefore, we may conservatively impute that Muslim invaders murdered wholesale some 18% to a third of the subcontinent’s Hindu and pagan people over 500 years of Islamic rule.

And this is to say nothing of the untold millions of Christians, Jews and pagans decimated by Islam’s extraordinarily violent conquests of the Middle East and North Africa from 632 through 750, 5 the mass slaughter perpetrated during the Islamic conquest and rule of Spain from 711 through the Moors’ final 1492 defeat, the deadly raids of Muslim seamen on Western Europe until the 732 battle of Poitiers, or millions destroyed by the Tatar heirs of Ghengis Khan (c. 1162-1227). The history of eliminationist Islamic campaigns is long and grisly.

What occurred in the Indian subcontinent, however, provides one of the best examples of the total cultural, historical and physical annihilation Islam inflicted on conquered nations throughout its 1,400 year history of jihad — which began when Mohammed in 627 initiated the genocidal tradition by beheading at least 600 men of Yathrib’s Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe and enslaving their wives and children.

Goldhagen limits his discussion mostly to 20th century genocide. Yet even within that frame, the above represent Worse than War’s most egregious oversights. It fails to achieve anything new or important. But most remarkably, while purporting to expose methods, institutions, logic, thinking, patterns and sources of 20th century genocide, Goldhagen entirely misses dozens of 20th century jihad genocides.

He mentions “jihad” only briefly (pp. 209-210) while discussing the Armenian genocide that, from the late 19th century through 1916 eliminated perhaps 2 million Armenian Christians. Goldhagen does give considerable space to these atrocities. Yet he inaccurately attributes motive to “nation building,” (p. 24) and virtually omits its Islamic origins. Ottoman Muslims — not irreligious or secular “Turks” — conceived and perpetrated the Armenian genocide, which in every respect was a classical jihad genocide. Muslim political leaders, moreover, were ably and copiously assisted, by clerical decrees (fatwas) inciting Muslims to eradicate Armenians via jihad.

In classical Islamic parlance, jihad is eliminationism. But while Goldhagen pretends to thoroughly cover eliminationism, readers of his latest endeavor will come away no more educated than they began on the jihad institution — a formalized Islamic system to eliminate non-Muslims (infidels) under their rule. Indeed, the Islamic legal code (sharia) strictly requires all Muslims to advance jihad warfare and includes many laws governing engagement with infidels. Non-Muslims must be forcibly converted (“invited”) to Islam; subdued, demeaned and levied an onerous annual head tax — or totally eliminated, that is, murdered.

Students of 20th century genocide, particularly those proposing strategies to avoid future mass bloodshed, should certainly understand the laws of jihad. More importantly, they should be able to objectively identify every instance of 20th and 21st century jihad genocide.

Alas, Goldhagen miserably fails both these tests. As with “jihad,” he mentions Islamic “holy war” but once, also in the context of the Armenian genocide, attributing it incorrectly and excluding it from the index.6 Despite frequent jihad genocides in the last 100 years, Goldhagen hardly refers to any of them, and incorrectly ascribes their cause when he does.

Herewith, a few more examples: Simultaneous with the Armenian genocide, Muslims also perpetrated jihad genocide against Iraq’s Chaldean, Assyrian and other Christian minorities. In 1933, they against struck Christians in at least 65 northern Iraqi villages. In June 1941, they murdered nearly 200 Baghdad Jews in a Farhud that also destroyed thousands of homes and shops. And so on. During the 20th century, Middle East Muslims — in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Turkey and Israel — perpetrated hundreds of massacres against Christians, Jews and other non-Muslim minorities, killing handfuls to several thousand in each attack or eliminationist war.

In 1955, Turkey’s government orchestrated a jihad campaign against Istanbul’s Greek Orthodox that destroyed 4,500 Greek homes, 3,500 business, 126 religious schools and institutions, and convinced most Greek Istanbul residents to flee. This came 23 years after 31 statutes intended to totally cripple the Greek community — and 14 years after Turkey deported from Istanbul every Greek man, aged 18 to 38. 7 Except in Israel, similar 20th century jihad campaigns including murder, intimidation, deprivation and deportation eliminated virtually all non-Muslim minorities from the Middle East. Elimination is jihad’s exact intent.

Concerning Nigeria, Goldhagen briefly mentions the 1967 “engineered starvation” of the Ibo people (p. 52), and elsewhere claims it resulted from “civil war” (pp. 272, 488). However, this was a jihad genocide specifically targeting Nigerian Christians. Lieut. Col. Murtala Mohammed declared in September 1967, “My destination is Onitsha, brothers and sisters. Let nobody stand on my way, for anything that stands on my way would be crushed.” In 1966, Nigerian troops slaughtered 50,000 “like cattle.” In 1968, they murdered every adult male in one village. In June 1969, Biafran Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu explained in his Ahiara Declaration, that the Ibo were threatened with “total destruction,” and wished to establish the Biafran nation specifically to resist “the Arab-Muslim expansionism which has menaced and ravaged the African continent for twelve centuries.” 8 Muslims intentionally starved to death at least one million Christian Ibos. As Karl Maier describes in This House Has Fallen (2000), Nigeria’s Islamization still continues. The Ibos are now deprecated as dhimmis — non-Muslims suffering under institutional eliminationist Islamic law.

The author also whitewashes Idi Amin’s 8-year reign of terror in Uganda. Amin “butchered” an estimated 300,000 Ugandans from 1971 to 1979, not simply to achieve status or ally with paramilitary forces. Goldhagen nowhere notes Amin’s motivations for mass murder — formal Islamic jihad doctrine. Uneducated except in a Bombo Islamic school, Amin was a devout jihadist Muslim famed for his Quran recitations. 9 He declared Islam Uganda’s state religion, hoped to convert the entire population, 10 and specifically targeted the predominantly Christian Acholi and Langi tribes for annihilation. 11 Even Goldhagen’s sections purportedly focused on “eliminationist institutions” (102-120) and “why perpetrators act” (pp. 145-231) do not discuss jihad. They merely rehash various deadly mechanisms (death marches, machetes, etc.), recount specific cases — and draw further obvious points. Yes, perpetrators lie to the world (p. 173).

The same aversions plague Goldhagen’s weak accounts of the Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sudan genocides. Pakistan murdered some 1 to 3 million in Bangladesh in 1971. Pakistan sent its Islamic Army to seceding East Pakistan with specific instructions to murder Bengali Hindus before secessionist Muslims. Victims were mostly Hindus. 12 Goldhagen merely blames this to Pakistan’s discrimination against Bengals and its wish to destroy Bengali intellectuals and political elites (pp. 212-213).

Indonesia’s 230 million people include the world’s largest concentration of Muslims — some 198 million. 13 East Timor seceded in 1975 due to religious persecution. Indonesia invaded and slaughtered 200,000, roughly a third of East Timor’s 97% Catholic population. 14 Here, Goldhagen blames mass murder on wanting to eliminate “communists and East Timorese” (p. 272). Neither does Goldhagen note Indonesia’s more recent jihad campaigns in Aceh or Papua. On the latter, Melanesians, Baptists, Christians and Catholics note religious intimidation and obvious eliminationist government plans. 15

Regarding Sudan Goldhagen mentions Islam, yet waters down reality. He discusses other faiths with no qualifiers. But Islam is always, and only, “political Islam” — notwithstanding pure jihad campaigns for two decades by which northern Sudanese Muslims exterminated, raped and enslaved millions of southern Sudanese Christians, animists and others, exhibiting jihad in its purest institutional form.

In his “Prologue to the future” Goldhagen at last cites jihadist incitements to genocide now appearing at rallies in every European capital. He notes genocidal inclinations of Muslim Brotherhood supreme leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, Hamas deputy chief Musa Abu Marzook, among others. He readily admits, they “already have as followers a good portion of the more than 1.2 billion Muslims in the world….” He cites “political Islam” as the world’s most dangerous genocidal movement.

Yet we cannot face the jihadist enemy and succeed without accepting elemental facts. And Goldhagen lacks necessary understanding of essential Islamic doctrine and history — not “political Islam” — to offer genuine solutions.

Islamic texts include “straightforward calls for terror,” writes Danish linguist and Sorbonne PhD Tina Magaard, a textual and intercultural analyst who examined sacred texts of ten religions over three years after the 9/11 attacks. They “distinguish themselves from the texts of other religions by encouraging violence and aggression against people with other religious beliefs to a larger degree…. This has long been a taboo in the research into Islam, but it is a fact….” If many Muslims believe that God’s literal words appear in the Quran’s hundreds of calls to fight people of other faiths, words “which cannot be interpreted or rephrased, then we have a problem. It is indisputable that the texts encourage terror and violence.” 16

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist focusing on the Middle East and Islam. She is a former Senior Fellow for the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991).

NOTES:

1 Regional population from 1750 to 2050, GeoHive, http://www.xist.org/earth/his_history1.aspx (visited 3/23/2010).
2 Will Durant, cited in Koenraad Elst, Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam, chapter 2, published by Voice of India, undated, at http://www.voiceofdharma.com/books/negaind/ (visited 3/23/2010).
3 Andrew G. Bostom, “The global jihad,” FrontPage Magazine, Apr. 4, 2006, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4737 and “Hindus, Jews and Jihad Terror in Mumbai,” American Thinker, Nov. 30, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/hindus_jews_and_jihad_terror_i.html (visited 2/25/2010). See also Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (New York: Prometheus, 2006), pp. 77-85, 433-461, 631-653.
4 Regional population from 1750 to 2050, GeoHive, http://www.xist.org/earth/his_history1.aspx (visited 3/23/2010).
5 Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: from Jihad to Dhimmitude, (New Jersey: American University Press, 1996), pp. 43-68.
6 Goldhagen, p. 209; footnote 87, p. 611, incorrectly refers readers to p. 223 if Peter Balakian, Burning Tigress: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, (New York: Harper Collins, 2003). The attributed quote actually appears on page 183.
7 Spyros Vryonis, The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom Of September 6 – 7, 1955, And The Destruction Of The Greek Community Of Istanbul (New York, Greeworks.com, 2008), 659 pp.
8 Alyssa A. Lappen, “Enemy without a Human Face,” FrontPage Magazine, Sept. 2, 2003, citing the Ahiara Declaration of Jun. 1, 1969, http://97.74.65.51/Printable.aspx?ArtId=16623 (revisited 3/20/2010).
9 “Amin: the wild man of Africa,” Time, Mar. 3, 1977, http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,918762,00.html (visited 3/10/2010) and Prophet of Doom, http://prophetofdoom.net/Good_Muslims_Idi_Amin.Islam
10 “Idi Amin — the little big man — thoughts on his life and death,” African Insights blog, August 2003, http://kabiza.com/OutofAfrica-Too-MonthlyNewsletterAugust-2003-Idi-Amin-Life-Death.htm (visited 3/23/2010).
11 “Amin: wild man of Africa,” ibid.
12 Koenraad Elst, “Was there an Islamic ‘Genocide’ of Hindus,” undated, http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/irin/genocide.html (visited 3/23/2010).
13 Indonesia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia (visited 3/23/2010).
14 Amnesty International, “Power and impunity’: Human rights under the New Order,” Sept. 1994, http://web.archive.org/web/20061014150002/http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/indopub/indoint.htm (visited 3/23/2010).
15 “Indonesia: We are victims of genocide, says Papuan leader,” AKI, Mar. 9, 2007, http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/indonesia-we-are-victims-of-genocide-says-papuan-leader/ (visited 3/23/2010).
16 Fjordman, “Islam is the most warlike religion,” Sept. 19, 2005, http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/09/islam-is-most-warlike-religion.htm (visited 3/20/2010).

The Ground Zero Mosque Developer: Muslim Brotherhood Roots, Radical Dreams

Everything there is to know about Faisal Abdul Rauf, the wolf in sheep’s clothing behind the planned lower Manhattan mega-mosque.

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Pajamas Media | May 14, 2010

The prospective developer of a $100 million, 13-story mosque 600 feet from Ground Zero presents himself as a Muslim moderate (1). Yet Kuwait-born Feisal Abdul Rauf also boasts of his issue from an “Egyptian family steeped in religious scholarship” (2). Indeed, Feisal Rauf’s Muslim Brotherhood provenance, radical by definition, is as authentic as it gets.

Rauf’s father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf (1917-2004)—-an Egyptian contemporary of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna—-conveyed to Feisal his family’s long tradition of radicalism, which he acquired at Islam‘s closest equivalent to the Vatican, Al-Azhar University. The elder Dr. Rauf studied and taught there before fleeing Egypt in 1948. That year, Feisal Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait.

Feisal Rauf has planned for some time to further develop his father’s U.S. Islamic expansionism. In 1990, Rauf opened the tiny al-Farah Mosque at 245 West Broadway in lower Manhattan. Area residents did not even notice the mosque until 2006, when the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) refused to license a new bar on the same block and started yanking others’ liquor licenses (3).

Rauf attended grammar school and high school in the UK and Malaysia, according to his biography. He probably first lived in America only in 1965, at age 17, when his father moved from Malaysia to New York to plan and head the Islamic Cultural Center (not built until the mid-1980s) (4). Rauf then obtained a BS in physics at Columbia University (5). In 1971, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Rauf’s father headed the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Ave. (6) His father, buried in Suitland, MD, at the for-profit Washington National Cemetery, also founded three Malaysian Islamic studies programs, including the International Islamic University of Malaysia (7).

Rauf’s early UK education and familiarization with American popular culture and values made him an acutely adept practitioner of Islamic taqiyya—deceptive speech and action to advance the interests and supremacy of Islam (8). To further that Islamic advancement, Rauf in 1997 established the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). His Kashmir-born wife Daisy Khan, an interior designer by profession, has run the organization since 2005 (9).

Rauf then began cultivating new spheres of influence. In about summer 2002, Rauf started lecturing on Islam at the 750-acre southwestern New York campus of Chautauqua Institution, a 136-year-old non-profit where religion director Joan Brown Campbell took Rauf under her wing. Under the rubric of the “Abrahamic” faiths, a convenient cover for Rauf’s Islamic activities, Campbell subsequently named him the prospective head of a Muslim house now planned on campus by another Rauf brainchild—-the 501(3)c organization Muslim Friends of Chautauqua. Rauf also befriended Karen Armstrong, the former British nun and devotee of Islam.

In summer 2002, as a “theologian in residence,” Armstrong advocated for the Muslim Brotherhood—-as if the father of all Islamic terrorist organizations was a progressive charity:

[The MB] set up a wonderful welfare program before it was suppressed…. Factories where Muslims could work, had time for prayers, had vacation time, insurance, [learned] labor laws, [provided] clinics, they taught people how to treat sewage, drainage, and it was always the religions response to try to help modernity to give to the ordinary people the benefits of modernity in an Islamic setting that made sense to them and made things more balanced (10).

In 2003, Rauf befriended leaders of Denver’s Aspen Institute, including former executive director and four-term Aspen mayor John S. Bennet. In 2004, under ASMA auspices, Rauf organized a meeting of 125 young Muslims and formed Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. With Bennet’s help, he co-founded the Cordoba Initiative in Aspen, purportedly to “improve” Muslim-West relations (11). Rauf gets funding from a variety of other liberal organizations, including, for example, Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Foundation.

However, Rauf directly contradicted his conciliatory behavior with a firebrand interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. Terrorism, he stated, will end only when the West acknowledges the harm it has done to Muslims:

The West’s role during World War II was strictly defensive, and in no way religious. Moreover, Rauf’s statements—-which Daisy Khan glossed over in a December 2009 Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham—-ignored Islam’s continuous attacks, from the 7th to 16th centuries, on non-Muslim peoples throughout the Mideast, Africa, Europe, central Asia, and India (12).

“The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians…. It was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets (12).

Rauf further revealed his antagonistic sentiments in the 2006 Copenhagen gathering he organized for the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. To enhance his moderate cloak, Rauf invited such liberal Muslims as Irshad Manji and Mona Eltahawy. But the Muslim leaders of Tomorrow also includes radicals like Yasir Qadhi—-a favorite speaker at conferences of the Muslim Brotherhood‘s Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and Dhaba “Debbie” Almontasser, who works closely with Hamas’ U.S. arm—-the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), itself an unindicted co-conspirator in terror financing.

Perhaps Rauf founded the Cordoba Initiative in 2004 intending to build a mosque in downtown Manhattan directly across from Ground Zero. However, Rauf tipped his hand to authorities only in April 2009, when he incorporated the Cordoba Initiative in New York (13). Within months, in July 2009, he bought a future mosque site at 45 Park Place for $4.58 million in cash from the heirs to New York’s Pomerantz family.

As Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001, destroyed the World Trade Center towers, falling jet debris simultaneously crushed the five-story 1923 structure some 600 feet away that until that morning housed a robust Burlington Coat Factory store (14). Over the ruin of the former retail outlet, Rauf now plans to build a 13-story, $100 million mosque. Rauf says the Cordoba Initiative bought the former retail building to prove to the world that Islam is not a violent faith (14).

Imam Rauf says that New York Muslims provided nearly $5 million in cash to buy the Park Place building (16). Yet in fiscal 2009, Rauf’s ASMA received large international donations. In the year ended June 30, 2009—-days before Feisal closed the purchase—-ASMA received at least $1.3 million. The largest donation, $576,312, came from Qatar (17). That Persian Gulf nation has long harbored terror financiers, and even the government stands accused of funding international terrorism. Qatar also has, for decades, hosted Muslim Brotherhood spiritual chief Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The elderly sheikh, a large and founding shareholder in the terror-financing al-Taqwa Bank, champions sharia law, wife beating, and suicide bombing.

ASMA also received $481,942 from Holland’s Millennial Development Goals Fund (MDG3), $144,752 from New York’s Carnegie Corporation, $53,664 from the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), plus donations from the Rockefeller Brothers and Hunt Alternatives funds, among others (18).

The Ground Zero mosque plan is more than a little reminiscent of a program initiated by Rauf’s late father in 1965. That year, Muhammad R. Abdul Rauf moved to New York to plan and head a huge Islamic Cultural Center that took decades to realize (19). He bought prime Manhattan real estate at 96th St. and 3rd Ave—-roughly two thirds of a city block—-apparently with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. The late Rauf long retained some of that land in a personal trust (19). But when construction started on the $17 million mosque in 1984, it had received funding from 46 Islamic nations. By 2010, the enormous Islamic complex had added another two buildings. Since 1984, its founders-envisioned apartment unit has been restricted to Muslims alone (20).

Whenever Feisal first considered building a mosque across from Ground Zero, he had the idea firmly in mind by 2004, when he wrote What’s Right with Islam. The book was translated into many languages. In Indonesia’s Bahasa, its title translates as “The Call from the WTC Rubble.” Rauf promoted the book in December 2007 at a Bundang, Indonesia gathering of Hizb ut Tahrir (20)—-an organization banned in Germany since 2003, and also outlawed in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, among other places—-and ideologically akin to the MB. Both seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law (sharia), and eventually impose Islam and sharia law worldwide. Most North American MB organizations avoid widely publicizing that aim. The HT however, at a July 2009 Khalifah conference at a suburban Chicago Hilton, openly promised to replace capitalism with Islam and sharia law (21).

Feisal Rauf supports sharia law, too.

Described in one Asian report as an Egyptian citizen living in the U.S., he has repeatedly stated, and writes in his 2004 book, that the U.S. Constitution is sharia-compliant. The “American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law,” Rauf wrote in his book. The “American political structure is Shariah-compliant,” he contends, since Muslim jurists over the centuries have “defined five areas of life” to be protected by Islamic law—-life, mind, religion, property, and family. Only two further actions could render the U.S. more Islamic than it is already, Rauf contends:

“[Inviting] voices of all religions to join the dialogue in shaping the nation’s practical life, [and allowing] religious communities more leeway to judge among themselves according to their own laws (22).

These assertions, however, merely fulfill the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine of flexibility—-adapting to each and every environment in which the brothers eventually hope to force Islamic law upon the masses. Rauf’s claims starkly represent taqiyya, the Islamic practice of deception, to further theocratic and essentially fascist Islamic advances (23). And the additional “leeway” Rauf seeks for intra-community religious-law enforcement is a thinly veiled attempt to impose shariah more widely in the U.S., in direct contravention of the U.S. Constitution.

President Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo challenged Muslims, as Rauf wrote in a June 5, 2009 Washington Post column (24): “Live up to the tenets of our religion, embrace Shariah law as conceived by the Prophet, and see what happens.” But sharia inhibits all kinds of freedoms, especially those of women and non-Muslims. Islamic law protects only the lives, minds, religion, property, and families of Muslims—-not all peoples of all faiths, as Rauf would have us believe (25).

Since at least 2006, Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative has partnered with the Gallup Organization and “a team of Sunni and Shi’a scholars from Morocco to Indonesia” to create “an Islamic legal benchmark for measuring ‘Islamicity’ of a state” for use by the public, pundits, “and state officials in both the Muslim and Western worlds.” If the U.S. is so sharia-compliant, and Rauf so strongly supports Western democracy and separation of mosque and state, why has his U.S.-based institution initiated such a project? Funded by Malaysia and many other Muslim nations in the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), no less?

Rauf has often directly contradicted his seemingly tolerant and peace-loving pronouncements with harsh, antagonistic assessments of the U.S. In his May 7 Khutbah (Muslim sabbath sermon), delivered at 1:00 p.m. at 45 Park Place in Manhattan, Rauf implied that Muslims did not perpetrate 9/11 at all, according to writer Madeline Brooks, who attended (26): “Some people say it was Muslims who attacked on 9/11,” he stated, before trailing off into another topic.

He also expressed this view in an interview with 60 Minutes aired on Sept. 30, 2001 as well (27):

The attacks were “a reaction against the U.S. government politically, where we espouse principles of democracy and human rights, [yet] …ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries…. [U.S.] policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

Not the crimes Muslims committed: “the crime that happened.” He continued:

“In …the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden was made in the USA (28).

Rauf explained the Islamic disdain for life, as well:

“In the Islamic belief system, the next life is the primary life. The next life is more real, more intense, and more vivid.

In short, Islam reveres death. Indeed, Islam orders its adherents to conduct jihad warfare, and promises paradise and 72 virgins to those who die in the service of Allah (29).

Even Cordoba Institute’s name telegraphs the organization’s deceptiveness. Cordoba (also the name for Chautauqua’s proposed new Muslim house) was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate that ruled most of Spain from Tariq ibn Zayid’s 711 invasion through 1248, and controlled parts of Spain until its full liberation in 1492. However, neither the Umayyads (who ruled monolithically until about 1031), nor the particularly vicious Almoravids (who swept over the Atlas mountains and, in 1080, into Spain) ruled non-Muslims kindly. While Islamic harshness varied, it remained unquestionably ever-present.

Rauf is not alone in his blatant whitewash of Islam’s brutal history in Spain. Many others purvey the same historical falsehood. Yet Muslim rule in Spain never remotely approached the mythic level of beneficence that Rauf pretends (30).

The surviving victims of 9/11 and families of the deceased should not be alone in opposing Rauf’s proposed 13-story mosque, 600 feet from the World Trade Center site. Traditionally, Muslims have destroyed houses of worship built by virtually every other faith under the sun. Worldwide, Islam has plundered tens of thousands (if not more) of Christian churches, Jewish synagogues and holy archaeological sites, plus Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Sikh, and other temples and monasteries. Then, in the interest of jihad, Islam has claimed all these religious places of others as their own “mosques,” forever Muslim.

To allow a mosque at a place a Muslim gang destroyed on 9/11 would amount to formally blessing Islam’s 1,400-year-old tradition of exclusivity and suppression of all persons of all other faiths. It would be a 100% victory of Islam and sharia law over the U.S. Constitution and America’s time-honored democracy and pluralism.
_____________________________

NOTES:
1 Feisal Abdul Rauf biography, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html (viewed 4/28/2010).

2 Feisal Abdul Rauf biography, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html (viewed 4/28/2010).

3 Carl Glassman, “West Broadway bars facing license ban,” Tribeca Trib, Mar. 31, 2006, http://www.tribecatrib.com/bak/archives/newsmarch06/Bar_new.htm (viewed 5/20/2007).

4 Rauf bio, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html, ibid.; Islamic Cultural Center of New York, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Cultural_Center_of_New_York (viewed 5/9/2010).

5 Rauf bio, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html, ibid.

6 Islamic Center of Washington, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Center_of_Washington (viewed 5/9/2010).

7 Salmy Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency, Dec. 12, 2004, http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/bernama-malaysian-national-new s-agency/mi_8082/is_20041212/islamic-scholar-tan-sri-dr/ai_n51486662/ (viewed 5/4/2010); Jaclyn Ling-Chien Neo,”Anti-God, anti-Islam and anti-Quran: Expanding the range of participants and parameters in discourse over women’s rights and Islam in Malaysia,” Pacific Basin Law Journal, Vol. 21:29, 2003, p. 69, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID753226_code491760.pdf?abstractid=753226&mirid=1 (viewed 5/7/2010).

8 Ikhwan website, http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/ (viewed 6/4/2008); The Muslim Brotherhood charter calls on members to sidestep attention through their long-established “flexibility” strategy—-muruna in Arabic. To spread Islam, a basic requirement of sharia or Islamic law, MB adherents also routinely practice concealment, known alternatively as either taqiyya or kitman. Ikhwan website, http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/ (viewed 6/4/2008); The Muslim Brotherhood charter calls on members to sidestep attention through their long-established “flexibility” strategy—-muruna in Arabic. To spread Islam, a basic requirement of shari’a or Islamic law, MB adherents also routinely practice concealment, known alternatively as either taqiyya or kitman. See also Warner MacKenzie, “Understanding Taqiyya: Islamic principle of lying for the sake of Allah,” Islam-Watch, Apr. 30, 2007, http://www.islam-watch.org/Warner/Taqiyya-Islamic-Principle-Lying-for-Allah.htm (viewed 5/16/2010).

9 “Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf,” chairman, Cordoba Institute, http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/staff-bios (viewed 5/11/2010).; Daisy Khan biography, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/b_dkhan.html (viewed 5/12/2010).

10 Quotation in Chautauqua institution panel, summer 2002.

11 American Society for Muslim Advancement Financial statement for period ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 9, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf (viewed 5/10/2010).

12 Frank Walker, “We must act to end jihad: imam,” Sydney Sun-Herald, Mar. 21, 2004, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/21/1079789939987.html (viewed 4/5/2004).

12 Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity, ibid; Andrew G. Bostom, Legacy of Jihad, ibid.

13 American Society for Muslim Advancement Financial statement for period ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 9, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf (viewed 5/10/2010).

14 Marc Pitzke, “Finding Allah at Ground Zero: A new Manhattan mosque hopes to heal,” Spiegel Online, Dec. 17, 2009, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-667678,00.html (viewed 5/10/2010); “9/11 Firefighter opposes mosque at Ground Zero as “a Trojan horse rolled onto our most sacred ground”, asks “Where is the money coming from?” The Jawa Report, May 8, 2010, http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/202370.php (viewed 5/9/2010);

14 Gadi Adelman, “Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” Family Security Matters, May 10, 2010, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp (viewed 5/10/2010); Matt Dunning, “CB1 committee hails plan for a mosque two blocks from WTC site,” Tribeca Trib, May 10, 2010, http://www.tribecatrib.com/news/2010/may/603_cb1-committee-hails-plans-for-a-mosque-two-blocks-from-world-trade-center-site.html (viewed 5/10/2010).

16 “9/11 Firefighter opposes mosque at Ground Zero as ‘a Trojan horse rolled onto our most sacred ground’, asks ‘Where is the money coming from?'” The Jawa Report, May 8, 2010, http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/202370.php (viewed 5/9/2010); Christian Salazar, “Some 9/11 families angry about plans for Ground Zero mosque,” Associated Press, May 7, 2010, http://www.kboi2.com/news/national/93073789.html (viewed 5/10/2010).

17 American Society for Muslim Advancement Financial statement for period ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 8, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf (viewed 5/10/2010), as cited by Gadi Adelman, “Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” Family Security Matters, May 10, 2010, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp (viewed 5/10/2010).

18 ASMA Financial statement for year ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 8, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf , ibid, as cited by Gadi Adelman, “Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” Family Security Matters, ibid, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp.

19 Salmy Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency, Dec. 12, 2004, http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/bernama-malaysian-national-news-agency/mi_8082/is_20041212/islamic-scholar-tan-sri-dr/ai_n51486662/ (viewed 5/4/2010).

19 George Goodman, “Ground broken for Islamic Center,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 1984, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/28/realestate/ground-broken-for-islamic-center.html?&pagewanted=print (viewed 5/10/2010); Islamic Cultural Center of New York, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Cultural_Center_of_New_York (viewed 5/9/2010).; Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” ibid.

20 Goodman, ibid.; David Dunlap, “A new mosque for Manhattan for the 21st century,” New York Times, Apr. 26, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/26/arts/architecture-a-new-mosque-for-manhattan-for-the-21st-century.html?pagewanted=print (viewed 5/10/2010).

20 http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/2007/12/27/imam-masjid-al-farah-new-york-city-konstitusi-as-sesuai-syari%E2%80%99ah/

21 “Hizb Ut-Tahrir: Shariah Takes Precedence over U.S. Constitution,” IPT News, July 20, 2009, http://www.investigativeproject.org/1100/hizb-ut-tahrir-shariah-takes-precedence-over-us, (viewed May 13, 2010).

22 Spencer Ackerman, “Religious protection,” The New Republic, Dec. 12, 2005, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/religious-protection; Feisal Abdul Rauf, What’s Right with Islam: a New Vision for Muslims and the West, (New York: HarperOne, 2004) p. 86.

23 “Taqiyah,” Dictionary of Islam, http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Hughes/t.htm (last visited 4/20/2010).

24 Feisal Abdul Rauf, “Obama’s challenge to the Muslim world,” Washington Post, Jun. 5, 2009, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/feisal_abdul_rauf/2009/06/obamas_challenge_to_the_muslim_world.html (viewed 4/26/2010).

25 al-Mawardi, The Laws of Islamic Governance; Reliance of the Traveller.

26 Madeline Brooks, “The Ground Zero Mosque Must Be Stopped,” No mosques at Ground Zero, May 9, 2010, http://nomosquesatgroundzero.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/breaking-our-media-and-the-news-thats-not-fit-to-print5-09-10/ (viewed 5/9/2010).

27 Ed Bradley, “Prominent American Muslims denounce terror committed in the name of Islam,” 60 Minutes, Sept. 30, 2001, http://islamicity.com/video/ch20/CBS60Minutes.ram; (viewed 5/5/2010). Transcripts, at Monroe County Green Party, http://www.monroegreens.org/Sept11/60minutes20010930b.htm, The Anti-Venom, http://brotherandrew.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Jihad&thread=75&page=1 and Islam for Today, http://www.islamfortoday.com/60minutes.htm (all viewed 5/5/2010); Partial transcripts at http://hem.passagen.se/okn50/60m_e.html, http://newsbusters.org/forums/topic-discussion/religion-peace-17019 , http://www.abc.se/~m9783/CBS_60.html, and http://web.comhem.se/onesr/CBS_60.html, (all viewed 5/9/2010).

28 Ed Bradley, “Prominent American Muslims denounce terror committed in the name of Islam,” 60 Minutes, Sept. 30, 2001, http://islamicity.com/video/ch20/CBS60Minutes.ram, ibid.

29 Qur’an 9:29 commands, “Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” As translated by Yusuf Ali, from Yet Another Quran Browser, http://qb.gomen.org/QuranBrowser/cgi/bin/retrieve.cgi?version=pickthall+yusufali+khan+shakir+sherali+khalifa+arberry+palmer+rodwell+sale+transliterated&layout=auto&searchstring=009:27-31, (4/26/2010); see also Sahih Muslim: The Book of Jihad and Expedition (Kitab al-jihad Waâ€™l-Siyar), As cited in Bostom, Legacy of Jihad, 2005, pp 138-139, from Abdul Hamid Siqqiqi, “Translation of Sahih Muslim,” Muslim Students Association, Book 019, Number 4294:

30 Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain, University of California, 2006, 2nd ed., 206 pp.

According to three important contemporary reports Fletcher summarizes, “…one …crucial administrative document from the Islamic side,” some small “archaeological evidence” and the “Chronicle of 754,” an anonymous Christian narrative in Latin after 711 Arab raids laid waste to “several provinces,” Tariq ibn Zayid’s army followed with fully equipped legions, who in 712 murdered Roderic of Spain.

North Africa’s governor then executed all Toledo’s prominent nobles (causing the Bishop to flee), devastated the countryside and perpetrated further destruction and mass murder in Zargoza and the Ebro valley. Upon returning to the Umayyad seat of power in Damascus, he transported innumerable enslaved Visigoth lords, and all their gold and jewels.

By 715, the next governor, Abd al-Aziz, conquered provinces throughout Iberia. Documents and archaeological excavations corroborate the arrival of Toledo’s Bishop in Rome and signs of 8th century devastation beside coins dated 711 to 713. In his April 713 treaty, Abd al-Aziz promised Theodemir lordship over, and free Christian practice throughout, seven southeastern towns. For this Abd al-Aziz extorted from Theodemir stiff annual head taxes of one silver dinar per person, all the region’s wheat, barley, unfermented grape juice, vinegar, honey and oil, and an inviolable promise not to help enemies of Spain’s Islamic conquerors.

From 718 through 720, As-Samh handed all Visigoth monarchy holdings to Arab Muslim governors, and gave all the less fertile land to the North African Berber Muslims. His generosity brought 150,000 to 200,000 Arab and Berber soldiers to Spain to usurp its wealth.

After the 750 Abbasids defeat of the Umayyads, in 762, the Islamic caliphate moved from Damascus to Baghdad. In 756 the Umayyad Abd al-Rahman escaped the Abbasid Caliph al-Saffah (“shedder of blood”) and established a rival Umayyad empire that ruled Spain until 1031. But the Umayyads continued to wreck havoc on Spain. Emir al Haken (796-822) kept a palace cavalry of 2,000 and a standing army of 60,000. In 805 alone, he crucified 72 people. In 818, he leveled Cordoba’s southern suburb. The military governors of the Umayyads’ three Spanish regions were constantly at war. In 884, for example, Burgos was destroyed “to its foundations.”

Even the reputedly enlightened Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) brutalized the population. At the Cordoba palace alone, he owned 3,750 slaves on his death in 961. On July 26 in 920, a Pyrenean monk at San Juan de la Pena recorded a slaughter in Valdejunquera, southwest of Pamplona. In 920, a three month campaign culminated on July 25 with a siege of the Muez castle. All “combatants” were “put to the sword,” including over 500 “counts and knights.” While returning to Cordoba, general al-Nasir totally destroyed many other villages too. The poet Ibn Abd Rabbihi later wrote the invaders left Osma “like a blackened piece of charcoal.”

In 976 Almanzor or Al-Mansur (“the victorious”) took power. In 977 he campaigned with his general against Leon. Some 56 campaigns followed in Almanzor’s rule alone. In 985, he sacked Barcelona and the San Cugat del Valles monastery. In 987, he plundered Coimbra (now in Portugal). In 995, he imprisoned the count of Castile, and destroyed Carrion and Astorga. In 997 he attacked Santiago de Compostela. In 999 he destroyed Pamplona and in 1002 flattened Roija and San Millan de la Cogolla monastery. Almonzor raided Catalonia in 1003; Castile in 1004; Leon in 1005; and Aragon in 1006. Almanzor himself described all war on Christians as Jihad. Christian subjects said he was “seized by the Devil.”

In the 11th century, Morocco’s Almoravids crossed the Atlas mountains, conquered its plain and then conquered Spain—-which they ruled from 1080 until Fernando liberated most of the peninsula in 1248. “[N]oting can stand in their way,” wrote the Muslim historian Ibn Kahldun of Almoravid religious and military fervor, “for their outlook is the same and the object they desire is common to all and is one for which they are prepared to die.” Thus in 1148 alone, the Almohads massacred 100,000 Jews in Fez, 120,000 Jews in Marrakesh and wrecked devastation and death throughout Spain, from Seville to Tortosa.

In 1148, Jewish physician and philosopher Maimonides fled Cordoba’s Almohad persecution with his family disguised as Muslims. He found asylum in Fatimid Egypt. Arabs and Muslims had “persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us,” he later wrote. “Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.” Maimonides’ 1172 Epistle to the [persecuted] Jews of Yemen that forced conversions they reported from Yemen, the Berbers had similarly forced upon Jews across the Maghreb and Spain. He described Mohammed as “the Madman,” despairing that the sole objective of his “invented…well known religion,” was “procuring rule and submission….”