
A Manhattan judge has thrown out a lawsuit from a retired firefighter who sued to block construction on the proposed Park51 Islamic Center near Ground Zero, but the conservative group that represented him says it will appeal the decision.
Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders was cleared of all five charges in the Netherlands on Thursday, where he had faced up to a year in prison for allegedly inciting violence through his anti-Islam rhetoric.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)At the Conservative Political Action Conference next month -- the one decried as being "infiltrated" by the Muslim Brotherhood by the likes of sharia alarmist Frank Gaffney -- an event will be held titled, "The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks."
The event is a movie premiere, hosted by mosque opposition leader Pamela Geller and her partner Robert Spencer. It will be followed by "a question and action and strategy session on how to stop the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Pamela Geller is planning to hold another protest next week against the proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero, or as she calls it, "the Ground Zero Victory Mosque."
This January 12 protest will be held at a City Council meeting, called to decide whether to build Wal-Mart stores in New York City. Geller argues that the City Council wants to say "no to Wal-Mart but yes to the Islamic supremacist mosque. The limousine liberals deign to deny the working class and the poor jobs and prices they can afford."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Park51, the proposed Islamic community center and mosque in downtown Manhattan, has applied for federally-funded grants, prompting shrill cries that the "Ground Zero mosque" is looking for a taxpayer handout.
The Daily Beast reported yesterday that Park51 had applied for $5 million worth of grants. The organization, in a statement, acknowledged applying for a grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Park51 says it would use the money both for its construction and services it plans to offer, including domestic violence prevention and foreign language classes.
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Christians -- including Catholics, Mormons and Protestants -- are more likely to think the Park51 Islamic center in downtown Manhattan should be re-located further away from Ground Zero than non-Christians, says a new poll.
The media furor around the planned community center, which will include a prayer space, has died down. But the center is still being planned and it's unlikely to escape controversy between now and its completion.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Robert Spencer, the author of JihadWatch.org, says he first became aware of the threat of Sharia "after seeing repeated attempts to assert the primacy of Islamic law over American law." One of those early attempts, he told TPMmuckraker, came in late 2006, when Muslim cab drivers in Minnesota made news by refusing to take passengers carrying alcohol. The incidents resulted in the cabbies going to the back of the queue, letting passengers with booze get into another cab.
Spencer has been one of a handful of neocons -- along with Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, among others -- who have been sounding the alarm about Sharia law for years. They warn that Sharia, a system of laws defined by the Koran, is taking hold in the United States, and that it will eventually threaten the very Constitution.
Their warnings, so long spoken from the fringe, are now at the heart of today's anti-mosque rhetoric.
We started digging in the archives to find the origin of this fear. What we found may not be conclusive, but it shows a path that has lead to increasingly mainstream figures, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, calling for a federal ban on Sharia law.
It was inevitable. A millionaire Russian politician who claims to have been abducted by aliens, and also happens to be president of the World Chess Federation, has offered $10 million to buy the site of the proposed Cordoba House Muslim cultural center in downtown Manhattan. Like we said, inevitable.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)If today's rally against the Park51 Islamic center was an exercise in contradictions about tolerance, then Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders was the perfect pick for keynote speaker. In his remarks Wilders repeatedly lauded America's record of tolerance while asserting that "openness can never be open-ended. A tolerant society is not a suicidal society."
"We must never give a free hand to those who want to subjugate us," Wilder said. "New York is rooted in Dutch tolerance. New York is tolerant, not intolerant. What if New York was intolerant?" Then it "would not be New York, it would be Mecca."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)In downtown Manhattan today, about 1,500 people gathered to protest the planned Park51 Islamic center near Ground Zero. Speakers assured the crowd that it's not that they're intolerant, because this isn't about tolerance, exactly -- but so what if it is, because Islam is intolerant? Or something.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Pastor Terry Jones said this morning that his church has canceled its planned Koran burning permanently.
"Not today, not ever," Jones said on the Today show this morning after flying to New York last night. "We're not going to go back and do it. It is totally canceled."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)When the ceremonies conclude in New York City today for the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, some of the commemorators will break off to attend a different kind of rally -- one that brings the Islamophobic fervor of the past few weeks to a head.
Today at 3 p.m. ET, at the proposed site for Park51 on Park Place and West Broadway in downtown Manhattan, people will gather for the "FDI/SIOA 9/11 Rally of Remembrance: Yes to Freedom, No to Ground Zero Mosque," a rally in opposition to the planned Islamic center.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)In a straight-to-DVD movie that will premiere tomorrow night in D.C., Newt Gingrich and Citizens United warn Americans of the impending threat of radical Islam. As one of their talking heads says in the trailer, "This is the end of times. This is the final struggle."
The movie, called "America At Risk," paints the world as a dangerous place filled with radicalized Muslims who want to -- and, importantly, can -- destroy America.
"The war on terror, and the ideology behind it, have only just begun," Gingrich's wife, Callista Gingrich, intones while she and Gingrich stand in front of a green-screened New York skyline.
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Pastor Terry Jones, appearing on today's morning shows, says he will not be burning Korans on Saturday even though the imam of a planned Islamic center near Ground Zero did not agree to move his project further from the site.
"Right now, we have plans not to do it," Jones said on Good Morning America.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)According to the AP, pastor Terry Jones says his Koran burning is suspended, but not canceled, after finding out a New York City imam did not agree to move his Islamic center further from Ground Zero.
Jones told reporters that a different imam from Orlando, who was trying to convince Jones not to burn a stack of Korans on Sept. 11, "clearly, clearly lied to us."
Donald Trump today sent a letter to the developer of the Cordoba House, offering to buy the building proposed for the downtown Manhattan Islamic center for 25 percent more than the developer paid for it.
"I am making this offer as a resident of New York and citizen of the United States, not because I think the location is a spectacular one (because it is not), but because it will end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation that is destined, in my opinion, to only get worse," Trump said in a letter, according to Bloomberg.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Consider Alan Keyes a subscriber to the Sarah Palin theory on the Florida pastor who plans to burn a Koran on the anniversary of Sept. 11. The theory goes like this: Koran burning is offensive -- just like building a place of worship near the former location of the World Trade Center.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, one of the ostensibly mainstream politicians who has come out vocally against building an Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan, today spoke out against a Florida church's plan to burn Korans on Sept. 11.
"People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation -- much like building a mosque at Ground Zero," Palin wrote in a press release. "Book burning is antithetical to American ideals."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)As Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center gets ready to burn copies of the Koran at his Gainesville, Florida church this Saturday (September 11), many national voices are calling for him to change his plans. House Minority Leader John Boehner, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and RGA Chairman Haley Barbour have all criticized the planned Koran burning. And Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander of the Afghanistan War, has gone as far as to say that the plan could put American troops in danger.
But as Jones forges full-speed ahead with his incendiary event, some of the nation's most prominent Islamophobic voices have expressed their opposition (though usually with caveats), to Jones' idea....
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You know the stories, by now: The violent attack on a cab driver, the arson in Tennessee, the sometimes unbelievable vitriol associated with a Manhattan Islamic community center. The plans by a radical pastor to burn the holy book of another religion, plans that have been condemned even by his compatriots on the fringe of American thought.
But why? And why now?
"It's been percolating," John Esposito, the director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, told TPM. As Esposito tells it, America has had a problem with anti-Muslim prejudice since before Sept. 11, 2001. But it was contained, in a way, and even after 9/11 "things were pretty stabilized." The uptick began in 2004, and now it's rising to the surface.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Attorney General Eric Holder, after meeting with interfaith leaders this afternoon, released a statement this afternoon saying that anti-Muslim violence won't be tolerated.
"As the Attorney General has noted on previous occasions, violence against individuals or institutions based on religious bias is intolerable and the Department will bring anyone who commits such crimes to justice," spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
At the meeting, Miller said, "the Attorney General reiterated the Department's strong commitment to prosecuting hate crimes, and noted several successes the Department has achieved in recent months."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Religious leaders from several faiths are meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder today to discuss the recent spate of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence.
At a press conference this afternoon following an interfaith meeting, Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said he and other religious leaders will meet with Holder, at Holder's request, later today.
The Justice Department confirms and says they will release a "readout" of the meeting after it occurs.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)As anti-Muslim sentiment appears to be on the rise throughout the country, with high-profile protests against mosque construction and a handful of violent episodes against Muslims, Muslim groups are pushing back.
Last Monday, a group of young Muslim professionals from the D.C. area launched My Faith My Voice, a web site that encourages fellow Muslims to upload their own PSAs explaining that although they are Muslim, they're not terrorists.
"When we see our loyalty as Americans questioned, that's something we take very seriously," the group's lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, told TPM. "The point of the campaign is one of bridge building, reassurance, an invitation to listen to who we actually are ... that Americans of other faiths will lend an ear and listen."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Remember the birther infomercial, produced by LivePrayer.com, that asked viewers for $30 for a "got a birth certificate?" bumper sticker?
The man behind it, Bill Keller, is now railing against the Islamic center planned for lower Manhattan. He says he'll be holding Sunday services from a room at the Marriott across from Ground Zero every weekend until he can find a permanent spot for his "9/11 Christian Center."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)The majority of New Yorkers want the developers of Park51, known to its opponents as the "Ground Zero mosque," to voluntarily move the community center further from Ground Zero -- but the majority also acknowledges the developers' right to build there if they want.
Newt Gingrich doesn't feel that way. In a radio interview today, he said he wants the national government to step in and stop the developers from building the Islamic community center by whatever means necessary.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)The Department of Justice is investigating two recent, high-profile anti-Muslim incidents, TPMmuckraker confirms.
A DOJ spokeswoman says the department has opened investigations into the attack on a Muslim cab driver in New York City and an apparent arson at the site of a future mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
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Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric trying to build an Islamic community center and mosque in downtown Manhattan, is cutting short his visit to the Middle East in order to deal with the controversy at home.
ABC News reports that Rauf, who has been traveling for the State Department as part of a mission to build understanding between Middle Eastern countries and the U.S., will leave from Dubai tomorrow.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Need a missile for your next corporate event or political rally? Have we got the guys for you.
The missile appeared in several photos of last weekend's protests against the planned Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan. It's pointed at the sky, wrapped in a poster that reads, "Ground Zero Mosque -- Religion Preying On Freedom."
The owner of the missile is an ad agency called JetAngel, which until recently was a charity that carted decommissioned missiles and jet cockpits to children's hospitals to cheer up the kids. But now, as the agency's owner describes in a CraigsList ad, it's "now turning in to an advertising business."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)In the last weeks before the 2008 elections, an organization called the Clarion Fund spent some $16 million to reprint and distribute 28 million copies of their 2005 film about radical Islam and terrorist groups. "Obsession" was inserted into newspapers -- and packaged with scary photos of scarf-clad men -- in swing states.
That move, funded by a single anonymous donor, may still be echoing in 2010's protests about the Cordoba House and other mosques around the country.
Former Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams defended his "Judenrat" blog post in an interview with CNN last night, and called for a Cordoba House-style cultural center reflecting Americana to be built in Mecca as a response to the Islamic center planned for lower Manahattan.
Williams, an avowed critic of the Cordoba House, raised eyebrows yesterday when he took to his blog and called New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer "Judenrats" for their outspoken support of the project. Both men are Jewish, and Williams' comparison of their actions to the local Jewish councils that ran the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe led some to cry anti-Semitism. In an updated version of his original Judenrat post, Williams defended the phrase much as he did in an email to me last night.
"The closest American term for what they are is one that I believe arose in New York," he wrote. "'Rat Bastard' in some circles comes with the same attached open season on the holder of the title."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Mark Williams, former Tea Party Express spokesman and current leader of the tea party support group Citizens for Constitutional Liberty is back with another blog post that's sure to cause at least some eyebrows to raise. Williams, you'll recall, has a habit of using his blog to get himself into trouble over posts widely seen as bigoted and/or blatantly inciting the worst in the conservative movement. Today he's up with a new post calling New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer "Judenrats" for publicly supporting the proposed Cordoba House project in Lower Manhattan.
"Politically correct Judenrats like New York Mayor Michael Boomberg and Scott Stringer (Manhattan Borough President) and domestic enemies who are supporting the mosque - with open ties to Islamic Terrorist organizations and supporting states are doing nothing more than erecting a giant middle finger to be trust at the victims of 911... which includes all of civilized Mankind," Williams writes.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)The controversy over the Islamic Center in lower Manhattan has brought up questions about the fate of a church that was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was a small building that was crushed by the collapse of the South Tower when the World Trade Center was attacked. Then-Governor George Pataki committed in 2001 to making sure that a rebuilt church was part of the planning, and Mayor Bloomberg agreed after he took office. With the state committed to help rebuild the church, a new building six times the size of the original location was proposed nearby. In March 2009, the offer on the table was that the church would directly receive $20-million in public funds, and, since the church would be built above a bomb screening area of the parking structure for the rebuilt towers, the New York-New Jersey Port Authority agreed to pay for a $40-million blast proof platform and foundation for the church.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (6)Perhaps it's no longer surprising in the current climate, but yet another mosque construction project is coming under increased attack from critics this month. It's time to add Florence, Kentucky to the list of controversial Islamic construction projects stretching from Temecula, California to Murfreesboro, Tennessee to, of course, lower Manhattan.
It may be that the Cordoba House project in New York has led to increased attention on -- and opposition to -- the Florence, Kentucky mosque project, which has been in the planning stages since at least 2002. At least one Republican politician has weighed in on both, and the answer is (or, really, is not) surprising: he says one shouldn't be built, while construction of the other is Constitutionally guaranteed.
Here's a description of the project in question from the Northern Kentucky Enquirer:
The site is identified as a 5.58-acre parcel at 900 Cayton Road in Florence. It is in the section that runs between Mall Road and Hopeful Church Road, behind Kroger and the former Hollywood Video site.
Sounds tame enough -- and picturesque to boot. Who wouldn't want to worship next to an old Hollywood Video? When the proposed site was announced July 26, the mosque seemed to be unimportant to the residents of Florence, according to the Enquirer.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (5)Keep America Safe, the group run by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol which brought the world the "Al-Qaeda Seven" campaign in the spring, is out with a new video today featuring the family members of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks who oppose the construction of a Muslim center in lower Manhattan.
The two-minute YouTube video is titled "We Remember," and features first responders and family members of Sept. 11 victims who are opposed to the construction of the Islamic cultural center two blocks away from the site of the attacks, the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is the latest to weigh in on the controversial plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero, posting a statement on his website yesterday laying out this ultimatum: "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia."
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