Park 51 is a Battlestation for the Conquest of USA

By Amir Taheri - author of 11 books on the Middle East, Iran and Islam. He has been a syndicated columnist for American, British, and Middle Eastern publications since the 1980s. He has edited newspapers and magazines in his native Iran as well as Britain and France. He has been writing for the New York Post since 2002. In 2005, Taheri was named Senior Fellow at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.


Should there be a mosque near Ground Zero? In fact, what is proposed is not a mosque -- nor even an "Islamic cultural center."

In Islam, every structure linked to the faith and its rituals has a precise function and character.

A mosque is a one-story gallery built around an atrium with a mihrab (a niche pointing to Mecca) and one, or in the case of Shiites two, minarets.

Other Islamic structures, such as harams, zawiyyahs, husseinyiahs and takiyahs, also obey strict architectural rules. Yet the building used for spreading the faith is known as Dar al-Tabligh, or House of Proselytizing.

The Ground Zero project doesn't fit the traditional minaret.

This 13-story multifunctional structure couldn't be any of the above.

The groups fighting for the project know this; this is why they sometimes call it an Islamic cultural center.

But there is no such thing as an Islamic culture.

Islam is a "religion", not a culture.

Each of the 57 Muslim-majority nations has its own distinct culture -- and the Bengali culture has little in common with the Nigerian. Then, too, most of those countries have their own cultural offices in the US, especially in New York.

Islam is an ingredient in dozens of cultures, not a culture on its own.

Alan note: but while not a "culture" it is a system of universal governance as defined by its Sharia laws, which Islam tries to place above all existing national laws and cultural mores around the world, under the guise of "religion" but is NOT a religion, though religion plays a part in Islam - and only a part.

As previously stated, on the basis of Islam's claims, Great Britain is a "religion" because it has the Church of England as part of its structure - while it also imposes laws of behavior and conduct with punishments for not adhering to them - as exists in Islam, the "religion".

In theory, at least, the culture of American Muslims should be American. Of course, this being America, each ethnic community has its distinct cultural memories -- the (Moslem) Iranians in Los Angeles are different from the (Moslem) Arabs in Dearborn.

In fact, the proposed structure is known in Islamic history as a rabat -- literally a connector. The first rabat appeared at the time of the Prophet.

The Prophet imposed his rule on parts of Arabia through a series of ghazvas, or razzias (the origin of the English word "raid").

The ghazva was designed to terrorize the infidels, convince them that their civilization was doomed and force them to submit to Islamic rule. Those who participated in the ghazva were known as the ghazis, or raiders.

After each ghazva, the Prophet ordered the creation of a rabat -- or a point of contact at the heart of the infidel territory raided. The rabat consisted of an area for prayer, a section for the raiders to eat and rest and facilities to train and prepare for future razzias.

Later Muslim rulers used the tactic of ghazva to conquer territory in the Persian and Byzantine empires. After each raid, they built a rabat to prepare for the next razzia.

It is no coincidence that Islamists routinely use the term ghazva to describe the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington.

The terrorists who carried out the attack are referred to as ghazis or shahids (martyrs).

Thus, building a rabat close to Ground Zero would be in accordance with a tradition started by the Prophet.

To all those who believe and hope that the 9/11 ghazva would lead to the destruction of the American "Great Satan," this would be of great symbolic value.

Faced with the anger of New Yorkers, the promoters of the project have started calling it the Cordoba House, echoing President Obama's assertion that it would be used to propagate "moderate" Islam.

(Alan note: no such thing! There are some moderate Moslems but they either practise "tayseer" (fitting in with the locals to protect themselves) - or are not that fervently Moslem - as was the case with Islam under the late Shah in Iran. You were free to practise national Shia Islam - or not. In neither event were you subjected to any legal pressure and only minimal, usually devout family, social pressure).

The argument is that Cordoba, in southern Spain, was a city where followers of Islam, Christianity and Judaism lived together in peace and produced literature and philosophy.

In fact, Cordoba's history is full of stories of oppression and massacre, prompted by religious fanaticism. It is true that the Muslim rulers of Cordoba didn't force their Christian and Jewish subjects to accept Islam. However, non-Muslims could keep their faith and enjoy state protection ONLY as dhimmis (bonded ones) by paying a poll tax in a system of religious apartheid.

If whatever peace and harmony that is supposed to have existed in Cordoba were the fruit of "Muslim rule," the subtext is that the United States would enjoy similar peace and harmony under Islamic rule.

A rabat in the heart of Manhattan would be of great symbolic value to those who want a high-profile, "in your face" projection of Islam in the infidel West.

This thirst for visibility is translated into increasingly provocative forms of hijab, notably the niqab (mask) and the burqa. The same quest mobilized hundreds of Muslims in Paris the other day to close a whole street so that they could have a Ramadan prayer in the middle of the rush hour.

One of those taking part in the demonstration told French radio that the aim was to "show we are here." "You used to be in our capitals for centuries," he said. "Now, it is our turn to be in the heart of your cities."

Before deciding whether to support or oppose the "Cordoba" project, New Yorkers should consider what it is that they would be buying.

Posted by Anti-Mullah adding comments

The C.A.I.R. Playbook

Witness the playbook of the stealth jihadists. CAIR and all Muslim Brotherhood proxies share the same playbook, the same strategy to work toward "eliminating and destroying western civilization from within."

CAIR is doing a press conference -- look for the same "victimhood" narrative from the Islamic supremacist hate group.

The struggle against jihad The Ottawa Citizen hat tip DB

While Muslim parents pack public meetings with pronouncements that 'Islam is a religion of peace,' their sons and daughters are being taught something else

Across Canada, apologists of the terror suspects repeated the same mantra. The three men arrested were portrayed as "innocent" and the wider Muslim community was positioned as the real victims of the episode. It was as if the Islamist leadership had dusted off the speaking notes from the days of the Toronto 18 trials when leader after leader stood up to claim the young men arrested were framed, not real terrorists.

As Muslim Canadians, both of us, while asking for the due judicial process to take its course, had no hesitation in condemning the rising tide of jihadi radicalism that is sweeping like a contagious disease among Muslim youth, especially of Pakistani ancestry, across Canada. However, by and large the leadership of traditional Islamist organizations and the mosque establishment repeated the now tired and cliché-ridden depiction of Muslims as the real victims.

Not a single imam that we have heard has mustered the courage to say, "The doctrine of armed jihad is defunct and inapplicable in the 21st century." Instead the same tired old clichés were repeated about Islam being a religion of peace and denouncing terrorism, while keeping mum about jihad.

Saira Rahman, a filmmaker, told the Winnipeg Free Press, "It's so very frustrating. It's very unfair -- you're demonizing communities again and creating a situation where everyone's guilty till proven innocent." She was not alone in being in denial.

From Ottawa, the epicentre of the latest terror threat, Nazira Tareen of the Ottawa Muslim Women's Organization wrote, "99.9 per cent of them (Muslims) are law abiding, hardworking, peace loving, caring and contributing citizens of Canada. ... I personally know all the imams of all the mosques in the Nation's Capital Region and all of them are totally against this type of behaviour. We are unanimous in condemning this type of behaviour." Again condemning "behaviour," but has nothing useful to say about the underlying jihadi ideology.

Obviously Tareen was not aware of the Environics Poll of 2007 that found 12 per cent of Canada's Muslims having a favourable disposition towards the Toronto 18 terrorists and 14 per cent who identified themselves with "extremists" within the Muslim community.

This means there could be as many as 100,000 Muslim Canadians who are hostile to Canada and western civilization. A scary number by any measure.

If individual Muslim Canadians were pushing the victimhood agenda, their organizations were doing no better. The Canadian Islamic Congress, which supported the introduction of Shariah law in Canada, issued a statement saying:

"Canadian Muslims, more than other citizens, are deeply concerned and disturbed ... especially about the psychological, social and emotional impact of these arrests on the wellbeing of Canadian Muslims." One was left scratching one's head: What about non-Muslim Canadians who were allegedly the real targets of these suspected terrorists? The CIC statement went further. It expressed concern about "how these arrests would be managed in Canada and what kind of impact the media reports will have on Canadian citizens of Muslim faith." Added to the spin was the accusation of journalistic "sensationalism, prejudgment, or speculation."

Unfortunately, the Muslim victimhood agenda was helped by the leader of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff, who stepped into the fray by claiming that the terror suspects need to be treated as innocent. He then made this outrageous remark: "It's important for Canadians to realize in the Toronto case, the courts acquitted many people."

Not true, Mr. Ignatieff. While charges were dropped in some cases, not a single member of the Toronto terror plot tried by the courts was acquitted. Everyone who was tried before the court was either convicted or confessed. As card-carrying Liberals, we were shocked to read how our leader was buying in to the Islamist agenda.

The Ottawa arrests have links to a Montreal Mosque, another hotbed of Islamist activity. Two of the suspects attended the Islamic Community Centre Mosque in Brossard. At the mosque too the men in charge were on the defensive, claiming no knowledge of any extremist activity.

Faisal Shahabuddin, a member of the mosque's board when asked to explain how two members of the congregation had allegedly gotten themselves involved in the terror plot, stated, "Why should I explain if we don't know it's true?"

Posted by Atlas Shrugs