Yet another news flash on the whereabouts of the self-described “bridge-building” couple behind the Ground Zero mosque:
Last week, Daisy Khan was poised to travel to the Middle East, planning a $12,000 taxpayer-funded jaunt to join her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in the United Arab Emirates, Aug. 29-Sept. 2, courtesy of the State Department.
But she didn’t go. According to a staffer at the Manhattan office shared by Khan and Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative and American Society for Muslim Advancement, Khan is still in New York, though when I called she was unavailable for questions because she was “in a meeting.” The U.S. Embassy in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi now has a statement posted on its web site, dated Aug. 27: “Speaker Program Postponed.” The wording suggests it was Khan herself who called off the trip: “Daisy Khan, who was scheduled to visit the UAE on a speaker program as part of the U.S. Embassy’s 2010 observation of the month of Ramadan, has postponed her visit.”
What’s going on? In the best case, one might hope that even the State Department finally woke up to the perversity of using taxpayer money to send to the Middle East, as a messenger of the American people, a Kashmiri-born emigre who — while availing herself of the many benefits of life in America (including the prerogative to denigrate Americans while cynically arranging to cash in on Ground Zero) – has been busy denouncing Americans en masse as bigots, and on national TV Aug. 22 called America a place “beyond Islamophobia.”
But crediting State for wise decisions on this front is a long shot. There are some good folks buried here and there within the Foggy Bottom bureaucracy — officials who place American national interests ahead of the worship of political correctness – but I have the strong impression that they make their views known at considerable peril to their careers.
Another possibility is that Khan has her hands so full right now with damage control that she’s run out of time for travel. News continues to emerge — thanks in big part to the reporting efforts of the NY Post (most other major newspapers seem unwilling to dirty their hands with real reporting) — about the past dealings of the public troika behind the Ground Zero mosque project: Khan, Rauf and their real-estate partner, Sharif El-Gamal. There is by now a welter of information concerning not only disturbing comments blaming America for Sept. 11 and refusing to condemn the terrorists of Hamas, but also a growing list of nitty-gritty items involving alleged unpaid back taxes, unhappy tenants of the Lexus-loving imam and his wife, misreported fund-raising and so on. Is it possible that spinning non-responses, or at least diverting the media with accusations of “Islamophobia,” has cut into the time Khan had allocated for her “bridge-building” State Department junket to the UAE?
Or is there some later trip now in the works? Khan herself told me in a brief phone interview last month that her husband’s State Department tour originally included Saudi Arabia, along with Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. When I then asked the State Department for confirmation, State took days to answer anything on the record, and when an answer finally came, the Saudi leg had disappeared — but according to both Khan and an internal State Department memo, it had not been scrapped entirely. It was merely postponed. Now Khan’s trip to the UAE has been “postponed.” Is this a diplomatically polite way of saying it won’t happen? Or should we brace for news that State is arranging yet more taxpayer-funded “outreach” trips for this Cordoba couple, as they proceed with fund-raising for the $100 million Cordoba House, a.k.a. Park51?
Within the House of War, it is OK to lie to Infidels.
It is the will of Allah the moon god, and following Mohammad class 101. Most of the globalist at State have not taken the class. They have only taken how to stab America in the back, but calling it the North American Union mandatory class.
I am a resident of Abu Dhabi, and I’m hoping you can tell me where I might find one of the beaches with artificially cooled sand. I’ve never seen such a thing in my five years here, but I’d love to visit such a beach. Can you tell me where it is?
Also, The National is a print newspaper, and it is only published in English, so there is not an “English-language online edition” of the paper. What you’re talking about is the paper’s website.
Your google-fu is weak young net-hopper
-the Palazzo Versace hotel-
go there for 820 square meters of cooled sand.
[Ed. note: Hi there. In re the issue of beaches, cooled or un- ... During a visit to Abu Dhabi in early April, I had a look at the Emirates Palace Hotel (http://www.emiratespalace.com/en/home/index.htm), and was told by my guide that the accompanying beach had an artificial cooling system for the sand. It's possible I was misinformed, and pending a clear resolution of the issue, I'm glad to make a correction: Abu Dhabi may or may not have any artificially cooled beaches, current or in the works. But it does have some gold-tipped minarets, and according to the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in 2007 it had a per capita GDP of $54,000, among the highest in the world, more than half of that from oil. Here's the link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eNAC-t7SQJoJ:www.abudhabichamber.ae/user/SectionView.aspx%3FPNodeId%3D1003+abu+dhabi+per+capita&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us .]
The Murder Mosque shall not be built..
Oh, it’s forbidden for anyone to even think about praying at an event the governemnet money supported somehow because fot eh First Amendment (for anything non-muslim, that is) but mammoth gov’t taxpayer-fleeced $$$ can pay for Feisel “Taqiyya” Rauf and his wife to go to the middle east to drum up money for the conquest mosque (which, if they don’t get enough, Democrats will want us taxpayers to pay for too).
They are building a DRAW BRIDGE. Most Americans aren’t the dimwits the media portrays. Since they are incapable of learning that reality on the ground, we all know who the dimwits really are.
If all the nuts who think Islam is truly a “religion” would read what they are all about we would. See their hearts and minds roll. These mosques are used for very little enlightenment
They are exposed. We know what they teach and how they kill and mutilate. Can a sane person fathom what a human feels ( whoops .. (No Eros here) to look at life as aki
and humans with
I was cut off . I am trying to say or imagine the deep misery the muslims. Live in thinking as they interact with the infidels to know they must kill us eventually!! What a dark outlook about life that can be. About joy, love, serenity, hope,music,art. Etc.
Stay in your land and fix it. Do not come here
ou deserve so much credit for the work you do, Claudia. Snifter clink.
Ever heard of the Emirates Palace? Cold water pipes under the sand keep the guests from burning their toes! If you live there, you should be able to find it – its pretty much the biggest, highest, grandest, most in-your-face hotel in the area (7 stars). Ring any bells, nitpicker?
@Tom Watson:
I’ve been to the Emirates Palace about 50 times. It doesn’t have a cooled beach. You (and Claudia) are thinking of the announced (but not built) Versace Hotel in Dubai, 150km from here, which was said in its early press releases to include a “cooled beach”. But it does not yet exist, and it’s not clear that it ever will.
I am glad he is having a good time. In due time, Rauf’s name will be associated with the decline and fall of Islam, not its supposedly inevitable success and expansion.
It’s clear that the majority of Americans don’t like being told how to think; being scolded for having an opinion contrary to any stateist viewpoint; and generally being denigrated for having common sense and discerning. Notice; that nobody is calling for these fine upstanding islamists within our administaration to be ousted. Who do they think they are, telling us to be quiet and roll over to their demands without the least bit of inquiry? Trouble is, we have a Congress full of this same mindset.
I’m sick of this stuff being foisted upon us. A man that espouses anti-American revisionist garbage should NOT be working for the State Dept. Ellison is in agreement with Rauf; so are the President’s Islamic advisors. Time to clean House.
At the most crucial time in the history of U.S. Israel relations; when Russia is alligning themselves with Islamists and Dictators everywhere, and a growing confidence in America’s demise is now being demonstrated right here at home; what are we doing? Nothing. The President’s off politicking and resurrecting Katrina, he’s blaming Republicans for no jobs; he’s campaigning again; evidence? Not a word about the most important descision of his life; will he show unwavering support and commitment to Israel? That tiny democracy that is in the sights of every Islamist around the world; along with the U.S.A.
Unbelievable!! I would respectfully ask that we pray for our President and for his family.
Seems Rauf has a bad name as a landlord in New Jersey.
Landlord’ Rauf Has History Of Complaints
Can imagine the rats that will start spreading from GZ if the cultural center cum mosque is built.
“Can imagine the rats that will start spreading from GZ if the cultural center cum mosque is built.”
And what about a huge Islamic center, capable of hosting 1000+ warm bodies at a time, in the middle of the commercial/financial center that is lower Manhattan ?
Demands that the non-sharia-compliant usurious financial transactions going on all around the mosque should cease ?
Demands for halal restaurants ?
Lets have an Open Cartoon Day at the “Centre” just to see how well it fits in with American tolerance values.
Maybe Daisy is busy working on the “slumlord” thing.
…tenants in New Jersey buildings owned by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who’s leading the mosque project, describe him as a veritable slumlord.
“All he likes is money,” one tenant, Vilma Then, says. “Nothing [in her building] ever gets fixed.”
Or rehabilitate the reputation of the building’s owner.
Indeed, Sharif El-Gamal, who owns the site — as The Post’s Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein reported Sunday — owes nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the city in back payments…Gamal, 37, also reportedly pleaded guilty to at least six misdemeanors while in his teens and 20s.
It’s nice to know who, exactly, this President, Mayor Bloomberg and liberals in general support so strongly in self-righteous tones of human rights and religious freedom.
Asked by the National reporter in Abu Dhabi whether he would have chosen a different site for his mosque and Islamic center if he had foreseen the controversy, Rauf replied…“the Prophet Mohammad instructed Muslims not to dwell on past decisions and wonder about alternative outcomes.”
I think that translates to No Freakin’ Way José.
Between Ramadan dinners and hosting the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s looking like the White House should begin flying the star and crescent.
Coming August 31: ‘Direct Access’ Stimulus Grants for the Muslim Brotherhood
Those “direct access stimulus grants” should help with the whole sabotaging America from within thing.
This mosque will be built, if they can find a willing contractor, and its proponents will glory in the fact that it was built in the face of vociferous, dissension by a majority of “religiously bigoted” Americans; more pertinent to the extent of the victory of Islam over the kaffir, a victory mosque rising at Ground Zero despite massive “infidel” opposition.
Jihadist terrorists will be elated and will go about bringing the “great Satan” to it’s miserable knees with increasingly determined fervor. Thank you Bloomberg, Obama, et. al., your “devotion” to the tenets of the U.S. Constitution and disdain for the great American unwashed is an inspiration to all that will bow five times each day to the east in the mosque at Park51.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2010/08/bloomberg-likes-menins-interfa.html
I thought you would all like this photo of the [alleged] Jewish mayor defending Islam in front of a display of Italian hams.
There is no comment from Mario Batali and Lidia and Joe Bastianich (perhaps they had already gotten the memo from Libya’s Qaddafi calling for all Italians to convert to Islam???)
on how they felt having the grand opening of their Eataly NY become the forum dujour on the subject of reporter’s questions on the latest on the Ground Zero Mosque (CB1 chair Menin’s recommendation for interfaith space, Imam Rauf as NJ slumlord, and El-Gamal as NYC real estate tax deadbeat.)
El-Gamal is trying to divorce his ‘vision’ from Rauf+Khan.
I wonder if CBS will still air their El-Gamal interview on 60 Minutes on Sept. 5, since it was taped BEFORE the revelation of unpaid NYC real estate taxes.
Maybe CBS should find a construction engineer who can comment as to how you blast a foundation to support an 11 (latest is 11-stories) or 13 or 15 story building over the #2 and #3 subway tunnel.