We Must Never Forget 911&hellip;&hellip;and Americans Must Not Allow Cordoba House to Go Up Anywhere Near this Sacred Place

     As I stood by the computer screens this chilly morning on September 11th, 2010 in Connecticut watching the annual New York City 911 memorial on MSN LIVE on this 9th anniversary of the tragedy, I remembered vividly where I was on that day&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;a day that lives forever emblazoned in our minds&hellip;&hellip;.and on our hearts&hellip;&hellip;..
     I remember acutely the phone call I got from my sister-in-law Cathy that morning at 8:50 am telling me to turn on the TV as a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center just 3 minutes before&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;I hung up the phone and ran downstairs to turn on the TV only to see a second plane crash into the South Tower at 9:03am&hellip;..  
On the TV, over the next days, amid the smoke and the wreckage I could see our brave fire fighters and policemen and many lay folk pouring into the burning buildings to rescue whomever they could&hellip;&hellip;..
At the end of the day, despite the valiant efforts of all involved, 2,752 people would die&hellip;.one of the worst losses of men, women and children suffered by the United States in a single unprovoked terrorist incident on American soil.
     While I viewed the memorial services in their entirety (as I do every year) on this 9th Anniversary of the tragedy, I wondered off on to other computer screens to read the latest happenings in the Wall Street Journal and NY Times&hellip;&hellip;
     As the names of our beloved brave fallen brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, and friends were read aloud, and the bells tolled for the victims, the media seemed to be focused on one issue&hellip;&hellip;..the issue of the Day for our United States&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;  &ldquo;What will arise from the ashes of the 911 tragedy?&rdquo;
     In the past weeks and months the airwaves and the print media have been filled with news of a proposed mosque called &ldquo;Cordoba House&rdquo; to be built in lower Manhattan steps away from Ground Zero.  Politicians of all stripes and colors have weighed in on the topic.  President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg say the U.S. must be tolerant of all religions and allow Cordoba House to be built since it is the legal right of Muslims to build a mosque anywhere in the five boroughs of Manhattan so long as such complies with NYC building and zoning codes.  Meanwhile former Mayor Giuliani and former House Speaker Gingrich have asked Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf to consider moving the site in deference to the sensitivities of the families of the 911 victims.
     Nevertheless the debate being framed as such ignores certain fundamental facts that the American public needs to know.  
     We keep hearing from Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf that &ldquo;U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime that happened&hellip;...&rdquo;and that the outcome of this debate &ldquo;will affect America&rsquo;s national security.&rdquo;  In today&rsquo;s NY Times (9/16/10) for example, the Imam repeated that if he moved the mosque project, &ldquo;it would anger Muslims overseas and endanger American troops.&rdquo;
     On their face these statements seem like bold veiled threats but what is really going on is even more sinister and disturbing.  One simply needs to hear similar statements from across the Pond by British Islamist Anjem Choudary who notes that all Muslims must follow the Islamic ideology spelled out in the Quran.
     What Americans do not realize is that the Quran makes it the goal of all who practice Islam to strive to enact Sharia Law worldwide.  Further, the Quran states explicitly that THE WORLD WILL NOT BE AT PEACE UNTIL SHARIA LAW AND ISLAM REIGN WORLDWIDE.  In other words Jihad (violence) against the West is ok to further ISLAM.  And finally, the Quran mandates a practice called TAQIYYA through which Muslims are allowed to deceive Non-Muslims (Western Infidels) to protect and spread ISLAM&hellip;&hellip; until presumably the whole world worships Allah and follows Sharia Law.  
     Given these teachings found in the Quran, it is no wonder why Imam Choudary stated earlier in the year on British BBC television that, &ldquo;ISLAM is not a religion and it is not at peace with the West.&rdquo;  
     Along these lines, the very name chosen for the mosque to be built near Ground Zero  &ldquo;Cordoba House&rdquo; was not chosen by accident either.  As former House Speaker Gingrich has pointed out, many centuries ago, when the Moors defeated the Christians in Cordoba, Spain, a cathedral was converted into a mosque and named Cordoba House.  Every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as symbolic of Islamic conquest. 
     In fact, according to many conservative news sources, the placement of mosques throughout Islamic history has been an expression of conquest and superiority over non-Muslims. Muslims built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in order to proclaim Islam&rsquo;s superiority to Judaism. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was built over the Church of St. John the Baptist, and the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople was converted into a mosque, to express the superiority of Islam over Christianity. Historian Sita Ram Goel has estimated that over 2,000 mosques in India were built on the sites of Hindu temples for the same reason.
     So it is with the new Cordoba House, just two blocks away from Ground Zero; the building of it there would be a deliberate act to celebrate the toppling of the Towers by devout Muslims following their instructions to Jihad as proclaimed in the Quran.  Never mind that it desecrates the hallowed ground of the dead 911 victims and their families.  And never mind that no one in authority in the United States knows where the money ($100MM) is coming from to build this 13 story mega-mosque&hellip;..
     On that note, one would think, given Congress&rsquo;s passage of the Patriot Act after 911 that this issue would be front and center on everyone&rsquo;s minds&hellip;&hellip;and yet, to date, no one building the mosque has revealed the funding sources for this mosque and neither local, state or federal officials have investigated this issue.
Given the controversial requirements found in the Quran and the incendiary remarks made by Imam Rauf and Imam Choudry what can our leaders do to promote peaceful co-existence between those who practice the ideology of Islam and those of us with different beliefs while respecting the will of the American people?

     There are two overwhelming precedents:

Switzerland:

     Americans should know that on November 29, 2009 a majority of Swiss voted to amend their National Constitution to ban the construction of new minarets in Switzerland.  Notably arguments about freedom of religion were dismissed because the Swiss realized that the minarets were political symbols not religious symbols;  i.e., the thin end of a wedge that would bring Sharia Law to Switzerland with its forced marriages, &ldquo;honor killings&rdquo; and general oppression of women&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.

Auschwitz:
     
     The Carmelite Nuns moved into Auschwitz in the
1980s.   Almost immediately Jewish people and Christian Poles clashed over this.  Many Poles and Jews have a shared history but differ on various grounds.  Pope John Paul II recognized this and even though the Carmelites had legal title to be where they were, he had the Carmelites move as they were doing more harm than good.
William McGurn at The Wall Street Journal summed up correctly how a majority of Americans feel when his article on the WTC Mosque ended saying &ldquo;The Right to do Something Does Not Mean it is the Right Thing to Do&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&rdquo;
     In other words, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf should respect the will of the American people, the overwhelming majority of whom feel that Cordoba House has no place near Ground Zero, and give up building it 600 feet from that sacred place where so many innocents of all beliefs were made to suffer and die at the hands of so few Muslim Jihadists&hellip;