No mosque money

NY Post ^ | December 06, 2010 | Editorial

[Scanian]

Citibank is suing the developer of the proposed Ground Zero mosque to recover some $100,000 in overdue credit charges.

Not to worry, though, says Sharif El-Gamal -- getting yourself sued, he alleges, is a way to get "financial institutions" to "restructure debt."

Sounds a little loosey-goosey to us -- and certainly not a practice that's appropriate when tax dollars are involved.

Which, as chance would have it, is cause for concern: It seems that El-Gamal and mosque co-developer Imam Feisal Rauf have applied for some $5 million in grants from a fund set up with federal post-9/11 money meant for downtown cultural projects.

On its face, the use of federal funds for this project would be the height of irony. Picture it: an Islamic center hard by Ground Zero -- the very site where Islamists struck Americans on 9/11 -- built in part with post-9/11 money from . . . Americans.

Heck, if you're going to rub your victims' noses in the dirt, why not use their money to do it?

Could there be any more reason to oppose this project?

Well, yes: See above, defaulting on loans as a means of forcing the renegotiation of terms.

This isn't to say that the developers don't have the right to apply for federal money.

But the decision-makers have every right to turn it down flat.

Which they need to do.

Then again, who are the decision-makers? Turns out it's those rocket scientists at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. -- i.e., the folks who still haven't managed to tear down the old Deutsche Bank building, which was ruined almost 10 years ago in the strike on the World Trade Center. Uh-oh.

Those who back the mosque, like Mayor Bloomberg, argue that supporting it is necessary to show tolerance for Islam...

[StonyBurk]

Is he a Barney Frank clone? Or just a Barack Hussein Obama minion?

[sheik yerbouty]

He has embraced his dhimmitude and TROP regards him as a useful infidel..