Maybe this might change some minds a bit...

about Feisal Abdul Rauf.



New polls show strong opposition to the project in New York and nationally, and every Republican front-runner for 2012 has been quick to condemn it. Even some Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have said they think the mosque should be built somewhere else.

One of the tactics of mosque opponents has been to vaguely accuse the imam behind the project of having "radical ties" ? a charge that's been floated by Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, among others ? while also casting aspersions on the project's funding. (A spokesman for the project said through Twitter that the center's backers have not yet begun fundraising.)

[Photos: Ground Zero mosque plan]

But such characterizations don't square with the project's mission ? or the career of its spiritual leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. (Rauf heads up the Cordoba Initiative, the organization sponsoring the center.) Rauf was considered moderate enough during the Bush years to lecture FBI agents about Islam. And he is targeted on theological grounds by the same militant Islamists that mosque opponents claim he represents.

Rauf was sent by the State Department on several speaking tours in the Middle East under President George W. Bush, the Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports. He also attended a U.S.-Islamic World Forum with close Bush adviser and then-Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. (Hughes has so far not commented on Rauf and his project, though another former Bush adviser, Michael Gerson, wrote in the Washington Post that "a mosque that rejects radicalism is not a symbol of the enemy's victory; it is a prerequisite for our own.") Right now, Rauf is on another goodwill tour in the Middle East sponsored by the State Department, where he will talk about religious tolerance in the United States.

In 2003, the Kuwaiti-born Rauf was called on to speak about Islam to FBI agents, Stein reports. He is currently an adviser to the Interfaith Center of New York, which has come out in support of his plan to build the Islamic center, which Rauf says will be open to people of all faiths.

New York Times contributor William Dalrymple noted in an op-ed this week that Rauf represents a peaceful, mystical sect of Islam called Sufism. Sufi mosques are often attacked by more radical Muslims in the Middle East who oppose its pluralistic teachings, as well as the Sufi practice of permitting a wider public role for women in religious worship. Dalrymple points out that "in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, [Rauf] is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination."

Despite Rauf's past promotion of interfaith cooperation, he has also made controversial statements that opponents now quote as proof of his radicalism.

He told a radio interviewer, for example, that he would not denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization, as the United States, the European Union, and other nations do.

Rauf told WABC radio in June, "Look, I'm not a politician ... 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."

It didn't help Rauf's credibility when the same radio host tracked down a Hamas leader who said he endorsed the building of the Islamic center ? however irrelevant Hamas's opinion might be to the lives of New Yorkers.

In 2001, Rauf said in a widely quoted "60 Minutes" interview: "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened, but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened," referring to the country's support of repressive regimes in the Middle East. (In the same interview, he said: "Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam.")

In a July column for the Washington Post's "On Faith" page, Abdul condemned "opportunistic rabble-rousing" of politicians who "twisted" his record as a peace builder.

"We are not the extremists," he wrote. "We are that vast majority of Muslims who stand up against extremism and provide a voice in response to the radical rhetoric. Our mission is to interweave America's Muslim population into mainstream society. We are a Muslim-American force for promoting the universal values of justice and peaceful coexistence in which all good people believe."




Imam at center of Ground Zero controversy helped Bush administration - Yahoo! News

As far as Ive ever heard from you Bush did nothing right so using your logic this guy shouldn't be trusted because he was sent by Bush.

WASHINGTON ? A New York imam and his proposed mosque near ground zero are being demonized by political candidates ? mostly Republicans ? despite the fact that Islam is already very much a part of the World Trade Center neighborhood. And that Muslims pray inside the Pentagon, too, less than 80 feet from where terrorists attacked.

And that the imam who's being branded an extremist has been valued by both Republican and Democratic administrations as a moderate face of the faith.

Even so, the project stirs complicated emotions, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a complex figure who defies easy categorization in the American Muslim world.

He's devoted much of his career to working closely with Christians, Jews and secular leaders to advance interfaith understanding. He's scolded his own religion for being in some ways in the "Dark Ages." Yet he's also accused the U.S. of spilling more innocent blood than al-Qaida, the terrorist network that turned the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon and four hijacked airplanes to apocalyptic rubble.

Many Republicans and some Democrats say the proposed $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque should be built elsewhere, where there is no possible association with New York's ground zero. Far more than a local zoning issue, the matter has seized congressional campaigns, put President Barack Obama and his party on the spot ? he says Muslims have the right to build the mosque ? divided families of the Sept. 11, 2001, victims, caught the attention of Muslims abroad and threatened to blur distinctions between mainstream Islam in the U.S. and its radical elements.

A look at some of the claims and how they compare with the known facts:

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_"The folks who want to build this mosque ? who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists ? those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community. They're trying to make a case about supremacy." ? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate.

_Some of the Muslim leaders associated with the mosque "are clearly terrorist sympathizers." ? Kevin Calvey, a Republican running for Congress in Oklahoma.

_"This radical is a terrible choice to be one of the faces of our country overseas." ? Statement by GOP Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter King of New York.

THE FACTS:

No one has established a link between the cleric and radicals. New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said, "We've identified no law enforcement issues related to the proposed mosque."

Ros-Lehtinen and King were referring to the State Department's plan, predating the mosque debate, to send Rauf on another religious outreach trip to the Middle East as part of his "long-term relationship" with U.S. officials in the Bush and Obama administrations. The State Department said Wednesday it will pay him $3,000 for a trip costing the government $16,000.

Rauf counts former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from the Clinton administration as a friend and appeared at events overseas or meetings in Washington with former President George W. Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush adviser Karen Hughes.

He has denounced the terrorist attacks and suicide bombing as anti-Islamic and has criticized Muslim nationalism. But he's made provocative statements about America, too, calling it an "accessory" to the 9/11 attacks and attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to the U.S.-led sanctions in the years before the invasion.

In a July 2005 speech at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center in Adelaide, Australia, Rauf said, according to the center's transcript:

"We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims."

While calling terrorism unjustified, he said the U.S. has supported authoritarian regimes with heinous human rights records and, faced with that, "how else do people get attention?"

In the same address, he spoke of prospects for peace between Palestinians and the Israelis ? who he said "have moved beyond Zionism" ? and of a love-your-neighbor ethic uniting all religions.

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_"Mr. President, ground zero is the wrong place for a mosque." ? Rick Scott, Republican candidate for Florida governor.

_"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center." ? Gingrich.

_"Just a block or two away from 9/11." ? Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, another 2012 GOP presidential prospect.

THE FACTS:

No mosque is going up at ground zero. The center would be established at 45-51 Park Place, just over two blocks from the northern edge of the sprawling, 16-acre World Trade Center site. Its location is roughly half a dozen normal lower Manhattan blocks from the site of the North Tower, the nearer of the two destroyed in the attacks.

The center's location, in a former Burlington Coat Factory store, is already used by the cleric for worship, drawing a spillover from the imam's former main place for prayers, the al-Farah mosque. That mosque, at 245 West Broadway, is about a dozen blocks north of the World Trade Center grounds.

Another, the Manhattan Mosque, stands five blocks from the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site.

To be sure, the center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence. The building was damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks and the center's planners say they want the center to stand as a statement against terrorism.

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_"There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. ... America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization." ? Gingrich.

_"This religion's plan is to destroy our way of life. ... If we have to let them build it, make them build it nine stories underground, so we can walk above it as citizens and Christians." ? Ron McNeil, a House GOP candidate in the Florida Panhandle, in an exchange reported by The News Herald in Panama City.

THE FACTS:

Such opinions are shared by some Americans, while others are more reluctant to paint the religion with a broad brush and more welcoming of the faith in this country. Bush, himself, while criticized at the time for stirring suspicions about American Muslims, traveled to a Washington mosque less than a week after the attacks to declare that terrorism is "not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace."

In any event, the U.S. armed forces field Muslim troops and make accommodations for them. The Pentagon opened an interfaith chapel in November 2002 close to the area where hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, killing 184 people.

Muslims gather there for a daily prayer service Monday through Thursday and hold a weekly worship service on Fridays, drawing no complaints. Similar but separate services are provided for other faiths.

FACT CHECK: Islam already lives near ground zero - Yahoo! News

Then, if the man is all about peace and consideration, why doesn't he back off on building the mosque so close to ground zero? To me, and most other americans, he is showing a more antagonistic attitude toward the will of the american people and he is actually putting peace loving muslims in harm's way for this. Believe me, if the mosque is built, some right wing christian militia will take it down.

He doesn't need the will of the American people, a lot of people were going to initially be against it, but once they see that these aren't bad people...some opinions will change or ease up. They have been using the building for prayer for awhile and nothing has happened.