We certainly shouldn’t, Russell, since that was Muslims, too. Andrew McCarthy will tell you all you need to know (and more!) about the attack.
If Russell had in mind the Oklahoma City bombing and mispoke, he should also be advised that Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian terrorist. Indeed, McVeigh was “an avowed agnostic“.
Hat tip: First saw the link at Ace’s, who posted it in his Email Response to a Rightie Suggesting We Support the Ground Zero Mosque.
And two more things:
1. Contrary to what AP would like to believe, The Ground Zero Mosque actually is at Ground Zero. On September 11, 2001, this part of the JetBombs fell on the Burlington Coat Factory building:
This part of the planes that crashed on the World Trade Center buildings actually fell on the Burlington Coat Factory building and damaged it.
In a conversation this morning with Jeff Dunetz, we both discussed whether the building has been checked for human remains that scattered all through the neighborhood, and whether any would be found in a search. I don’t know the answer to that.
Also at Ground Zero was St Nicholas Church, which has been denied permission to rebuild.
2. The Mosque is intended to be a magnet center for Muslims and Sharia – particularly in its location at the financial center, as a vehicle for Sharia finance; The area is already served by two other mosques. How many Muslims are in the area now? Sultan Knish did the numbers:
Imam Rauf and his media defenders have compared this to building a Jewish community center. But there are over 25,000 Jewish household in Lower Manhattan, or almost 20 percent of the population. There is no statistically significant Muslim population in the area. The 2000 census showed 3,522 people living in the Ground Zero mosque zip code, 375 of whom identified as Asian. Considering the proximity of Chinatown, it’s likely that they actually are Asian, as opposed to Pakistani or Bangladeshi. (And the director of Al Arabiya has confirmed that: “there are no practicing Muslims in the area who need a place to worship“.) What the census numbers also show is that the mosque is being built in an area with a small residential population, that is heavily commercial, with far more offices than homes. Even if everyone living in that zip code were a Muslim, Rauf would still be proposing to spend nearly 30,000 dollars per Muslim on the mosque. But since they are not Muslims, what Rauf is proposing is a 100 million dollar expansion in an area whose Muslims are outside commuters and generally use basement and storefront mosques.
Building a 100 million dollar facility for Muslims that most of them can only use on their lunch break or briefly after work, before they go home to Brooklyn or New Jersey, is not about serving the community. It’s about making a statement. There would be no way to raise that kind of money otherwise. Rauf is not building a facility that local Muslims need. His flock comes from different boroughs and states entirely. They hang around Lower Manhattan as part of the Hallal Mafia, peddling unhygienic burned food from carts, or in storefronts selling cheap knockoffs of brand name merchandise, pirated DVD’s and used clothes below Broadway. Some of them work as financial analysts helping Wall Street get the whole Sharia Finance thing right.
There might be a call for a 100 million dollar facility aimed at Muslims in Jersey City or off Atlantic Avenue, but no need or use for it near Ground Zero. There is no reason to build a Mosque there, except to make a statement. Rauf admitted as much early on, billing the mosque as part of a campaign of tolerance or healing. knowing that most liberals would not look past such euphemisms and enthusiastically embrace the project to showcase their vaunted tolerance, and rejection of “right wing extremists”. That Rauf himself is quite the extremist has not interested them at all. The same Time Magazine which wrings its hands over the “politicization” of Ground Zero has whitewashed Rauf and his own plans to politicize the site. Just as the rest of the media has ignored the inconsistencies in Rauf’s changing story, questions about where the money is coming from, and the most elementary question– who actually needs the Ground Zero Mosque.
In today’s news, Iran cash might fund Ground Zero mosque, as the developers of the Ground Zero mosque are refusing to flat out reject Iranian funds for the project.
Russell won’t blame the Christians for that, we hope.
(post re-edited to include several omitted paragraphs and links)
