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 Kahn — 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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