Imam Feisal Meets With UAE Mosque and Money Crowd

As the imam behind the Ground Zero mosque project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, continues his State Department-hosted “public diplomacy” visit to the United Arab Emirates, the glimpses of his activities over there get ever more interesting. Back home, Americans are now reading the Bergen Record’s dispatches on Rauf’s history as a New Jersey landlord with a tangled financial trail and angry tenants registering recurring complaints about his premises, listing such items as infestations of cockroaches and rats, piles of unremoved trash and “filthy halls.” Meanwhile, in the UAE, U.S. State Department officials have been squiring Rauf around on the final leg of his taxpayer-funded $16,000 swing through the Middle East (that tab includes an allowance of $496 per day to keep him comfortable in Abu Dhabi).

And the U.S. Embassy in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi has now posted on its web site a bulletin dated Aug. 30, making brief mention of some of Rauf’s meetings since he arrived a few days ago — you can find it here, complete with a photo of Rauf at a flower-bedecked banquet table in Abu Dhabi.

Rauf’s UAE pow-wows have included a meeting with “religious officials” at the “General Authority for Islamic Affairs and Endowments.” What, exactly, is this outfit? According to an Abu Dhabi government web site, it’s an “independent legal entity” created under UAE federal law, which engages in activities such as “supervision of mosques” and “investment of the endowment to develop the society.” Among other things, this Islamic Affairs and Endowments authority solicits and directs funds for building and refurbishing mosques.

But we can rest assured that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, currently in need of $100 million or more for his Ground Zero mosque and Islamic center, is not fund-raising while on his taxpayer-bankrolled, U.S. government-hosted tour. The State Department has assured us he would never do that.

Rauf’s State Department-arranged dance card in the UAE has also included speaking to a roundtable of the Abu Dhabi Businesswomen’s Council, hosted by the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Kudos at least to the U.S. Embassy in the UAE for providing at least minimal information on Rauf’s doings while he travels in comfort on the taxpayers’ tab. The U.S. embassies on his previous taxpayer-funded stops, in Bahrain and Qatar, were rather less forthcoming (here’s the official account of his multi-day stay in Doha). The State Department in Washington has been either remarkably uninformed about the specifics of his travels, or pretty much mute. And Rauf himself, before embarking on this tour, spent weeks in Malaysia, where he has longstanding ties and keeps an office. Whatever he was doing there, he has yet to disclose. It does seem that his State Department “public diplomacy” itinerary included a stop in Saudi Arabia; apparently cancelled by State at the last minute. Did he go there anyway? Let’s assume not. But how would we know? While he’s busy expecting the American public to passively submit to his preferred version of Islamic “bridge-building” at Ground Zero, would he be willing to share with this same American public the full details of his travels, tickets, and where and when and what exactly he’s been doing during his months abroad?

But … you know the refrain by now… we can rest assured that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, currently in need of $100 million or more for his Ground Zero mosque and Islamic center, is not fund-raising while on his taxpayer-bankrolled, U.S. government-hosted tour. The State Department has assured us he would never do that.

The Ground Zero Imam’s Troubling Texts

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/09/01/the-ground-zero-imams-troubling-texts/

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It is on this specific assertion that Rauf departs from secular democratic ideals.

Writing in Islam: A Sacred Law, What Every Muslim Should Know About Sharia, he points out the difference between the American government based on man-made law, and an Islamic system, which Allah authored:

God’s role in the explicit philosophical construct of the law makes a big difference between the modus operandi of a righteous Muslim judge in a Muslim court and a righteous Western judge in a Western court. […]

The Muslim judge explicitly “reports to God.”

The judge who sits in the Western court is only explicitly responsible to the Constitution, the interpretations of a civil law and its rules.

Rauf, then, is endorsing a theocracy in which there is no separation between religion and state.

Indeed, he goes even further in his argument, claiming that religious Sharia law must govern all aspects of human life:

[S]ince a Sharia is understood as a law with God at its center, it is not possible in principle to limit the Sharia to some aspects of human life and leave out others. […]

The sharia thus covers every field of law – public and private, national and international – together with enormous amounts of material that Westerners would not regard as law at all…

Among the fields of law Rauf claims must be governed by Sharia are laws controlling religious observances, criminal law (which, according to the Imam, “includes crimes such as murder, larceny, fornication, drinking alcohol, libel”), family law, and economic laws.

According to him it is imperative that these laws be followed by all humanity for fear of displeasing God:

…if you don’t want to be accused by God of being a depraved, disbelieving wrongdoer, you’ve got to abide by “what Allah has sent down…”

Rauf’s book also describes the punishments that must be meted out to those who disobey Sharia:

Theft, for which the punishment according to the Quranic rule is:

“As for the male thief and the female thief, cut off their hands, as a punishment for what they have earned, an exemplary punishment from Allah…”

The punishment for a fornicator, not bound by marriage, is according to the majority of jurists one hundred lashes of the whip and exile for one year.

Rauf diverges irredeemably from the core American principle separating religion and government in a secular democracy.

For all the talk of his constitutional right to build a mosque, Rauf’s writings reveal his desire to ultimately extirpate the 1st Amendment (as well as the 21st) from the Constitution.

No American, especially not self-described liberals like Maureen Dowd, should wish to see this happen.

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