Ground Zero Imam Accuses West of Starting Terrorism

Uncovered Interview With Ground Zero Mosque Imam: Islamic Terrorism Caused by West “Humiliating” and “Ignoring” Muslim World… Weasel Zippers

(National Review)- NRO has obtained yet another interview in which Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leading figure behind the Cordoba House (the “Ground Zero mosque”), explains away terrorism. “They feel the feed to conflagrate,” he says of Muslims who feel they’ve been “humiliated” and “ignored.”

The interview was conducted for a Malaysia Matters podcast during the 2008 presidential campaign. (The Cordoba Initiative website references the podcast, but the provided link is dead.) While Rauf repeatedly positions himself as someone “trying to bridge the divide” between the West and the Muslim world, he also offers comments regarding the West’s culpability for terror against it.

“Are you arguing, or am I misunderstanding you, that the slaps on the face, to use your term, from the Muslim world to the West, are all reactive to things that the West has done?” an interviewer asks.

“Predominantly, because the West is the global superpower. . . . It’s the more powerful party in the relationship which sets the tone of the relationship,” Rauf replies. “In terms of specific conflict, specific issues that have resulted in specific actions within recent history, those have to be tied in to the perceptions which were created around what people were actually reacting to at that given point in time.”

When asked whether the U.S. bears “ultimate responsibility” for “any reactions,” Rauf responds, “I wouldn’t say ultimate. It’s the one who leads in the dance.”

Later in the interview, he says that “as a general rule, when people feel they’ve been humiliated, when people feel they’ve been frustrated, when people feel they’ve been ignored, when people feel that justice is not meted, then they feel the need to conflagrate.” Also: “In order to bridge the divide, we have to understand the dynamics, that there’s a certain — there’s a psychology. . . . If you do this, you get this reaction.”

Further, he blames the economic sanctions on Iraq for Muslims’ attitudes toward the West. “When you have a million people dying, half of whom are children, as a result of economic sanctions, what the Muslim world experiences or feels is political action, or an action done for a political objective, which results in innocent civilians dying,” he says.

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At this point the left is so invested in seeing this thing through, they’re willing to ignore anything…