Posted on 12/16/2009 11:28:23 AM PST by Steelfish
Mysterious Group Buys Building Next to Ground Zero For Mosque Wednesday, December 16, 2009 Jim Hoft
A mysterous Muslim group with unknown sponsors has purchased a building steps away from Ground Zero. Hudson New York reported:
An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the WorldTrade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques.
At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards away from where Osama Bin Laden’s airborne Islamist bombers killed nearly 3000 people back in 2001.
The Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, told the New York Times — which put the story on its front page Wednesday — that he has assembled several million dollars to turn it into ‘’an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors.’’
The 61-year-old Imam said he paid $4.85 million for it — in cash, records show. With 50,000 square feet of air rights and enough financing, he plans an ambitious project of $150 million, he said, akin to the Chautauqua Institution, the 92 Street Y or the Jewish Community Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at gatewaypundit.firstthings.com ...
Some spin, here:
Shariah Index will rate countries’ Islamic law
Rasha Elass
Last Updated: July 21. 2009 2:21AM UAE / July 20. 2009 10:21PM GMT
Imam Feisal Rauf, the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, leads the Shariah Index Project for Muslim countries.
Stuart Taylor for The National
KUALA LUMPUR // Many countries are Islamic, but some may be more Islamic than others. Now moves are afoot to rate nations according to how closely they adhere to the principles of Islam.
The Shariah Index Project is led by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a New York-based cleric who heads the Cordoba Initiative, a multinational project to improve relations between Muslim countries and the West.
He announced it on Sunday, on the final day of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality conference in Malaysia.
The project has been in the works since 2006, with researchers quietly holding behind-the-scenes meetings with scholars, activists and government officials. “We have been soliciting the opinion of scholars throughout the Muslim world, asking them what defines an Islamic state, from the point of view of Islamic law,” he said.
“What are the principles that make a state Islamic? We can say among them is justice, protection of religion and minorities and elimination of poverty, and so on.”
The Cordoba Initiative, which co-sponsored the Wise conference, is a non-profit organisation with offices in New York and Kuala Lumpur. It is funded by the Malaysian government and other sources in both western and Muslim countries.
So far the project has produced a book of scholarly essays on the concept of measuring a nation’s “Islamicity”, providing a theoretical foundation for the index.
By the end of this year, it expects to release the results of an unprecedented poll, conducted with the Gallup Organisation, that asked people in 44 majority-Muslim nations how well they felt their country complied with Islamic principles.
“It will create an annual rating, a score to rate countries on how compliant they are,” said Imam Feisal.
“And we’d like to index both Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) and non-OIC countries, because we know some non-OIC countries will score higher than some OIC members on some principles like justice, protection of minorities and so on.”
Imam Feisal admitted the project was ambitious, with difficulties including the technicalities of conducting such a broad poll, and of finding consistent sources of funding for such an expensive process.
Determining Islamic principles had been the easy part, he said. In classical Islamic jurisprudence the ruler must be someone who is “wise and upholds the Shariah”, he explained. “Early scholars debated a third point: whether the ruler must also be pious.“And the answer is no. As long as the ruler is committed to upholding the Shariah, piety should not be a hurdle to reigning over people. “Though on this point in particular there was a big split with the Shia, who disagree.”
He added that measuring the dedication and devotion of a person was too difficult to be done by a poll.
The pillars of Shariah are based on five – some say six sacrosanct rights and principles. Breaching any of them is considered a major sin that requires punishment.
The most important is the protection and furthering of life. Then there is the protection of religion – which includes all three Abrahamic faiths and, through most of Islamic history, other religions as well.
It was this principle that the Muslim world evoked during the controversy over cartoons lampooning the Prophet that were published in a Danish newspaper. The same principle prohibits Muslims from satirising elements of any religion.
Another pillar is the protection of dignity and honour, which can be used as a basis for punishing slander, which recently became a crime in the UAE under the country’s new media law.
The same principle is behind UAE cases where drivers have been prosecuted for making rude gestures at other road users, who took it as an insult to their dignity.
Similarly, a woman can sue a man, even a stranger, for a lewd or inappropriate comment that “undermines her honour”.
Protection of lineage, another pillar of Shariah, is the basis for criminalising adultery and, as was decided by muftis in Dubai last year, for banning IVF.
Protection of the mind or intellect includes the protection of sobriety, the basis for prohibiting Muslims from drinking alcohol or using any mind-altering substance, except under a doctor’s orders.
The final pillar of Shariah is the protection of property, an element that many scholars say contributed to the economic growth of early Muslim states.
www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090721/NATIONAL/707209836/1138.
Abu Dhabi Media Company PJSC.
On a quick search, this what I got: http://www.natefind.com/sold/45-park-pl-manhattan-10007/625869
45 Park Pl, sold on Jul 16, 2009
Sold on Jul 16, 2009 for $4,850,000
45 Park Pl
Manhattan, NY 10007
Commercial Real Estate
Building Stories: 4
Zoning:
Boro-block-lot: 1-126-9
Seller(s)
Co-Executor, Kukiko Mitani
85 East End Avenue
New York, NY, 10001 US
Co-Executor, Howard Waltman
85 East End Avenue
New York, NY, 10001 US
Estate Of Stephen Pomerantz
85 East End Avenue
New York, NY, 10001 US
Melvin Pomerantz
57 Panoramic Way
Berkeley, CA, 94704 US
Buyer(s)
45 Park Place Partners Llc
552 Broadway
Suite 6n
New York, NY, 10012 US
Grants and Grantees / Cordoba Initiative, The
The Cordoba Initiative,
Aspen, Colorado
$30,000 for 1 year Awarded on November 27, 2006 General support to a growing organization dedicated to the reducing the distrust and animosity in the relationship between the United States and much of the Islamic world.
Program: Peace and Security
Program Goal: Muslim and Western Understanding
Geographic Focus: Africa, Asia, Middle East, United States
[from Rockefeller Brothers Fund]http://www.rbf.org/grantsdatabase/grantsdatabase_show.htm?doc_id=616440
ON THE INTERNET:
www.asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html
www.cordobainitiative.org/who_we_are.html
#
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2004/03/feisal-abdul-rauf-blames-christians.html
“Feisal Abdul Rauf blames Christians”
SNIPPET: “Feisal Abdul Rauf, a New York imam, expects us to believe that jihad warfare was started by the West and can only be ended by the West. He is therefore either concealing or ignorant of the fact that violent jihad is a developed tradition within Islam and found in core Islamic texts (including but not limited to the Qur’an, as well as Hadith and books of Islamic jurisprudence). In those it has nothing to do with the behavior of infidels. It only has to do with the fact that they are infidels. Take, for example, this quotation from the Muslim prophet Muhammad:
When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. . . . If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim, book 019, Number 4294)
That is offensive jihad. It is buttressed by numerous other sayings of the Prophet, by the Qur’an, and by Islamic legal scholars. But Feisal Abdul Rauf puts it all on the West, and gets invited to Australia by Premier Bob Carr.
The US and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end, says an Islamic cleric invited to Sydney by Premier Bob Carr.
New York-based Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who impressed Mr Carr at an international conference last year, arrives in Sydney today for two weeks of meetings and public talks.
Speaking from his New York mosque, Imam Feisal said the West had to understand the terrorists’ point of view.”
Posted by Robert on March 21, 2004 9:13 AM
Someone who hoped the crocodile would eat him last?
Someone, who like the buyer that understands Property Rights.
In this particular case there is much more to consider.
Muslims make a point of putting mosques over the hallowed ground of non-Muslims, as a way of showing domination.
May the arrogant S. O. B. rot in hell.
What good?
The imam is Sufi and his current mosque is in the area but a few more blocks out.
If the objective is truly to ‘promote understanding’ , moving close to Ground Zero and smoozing with the Aspen Institute types is an idiotic way to do it.
stepping back in time...
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2854
#
http://www.danielpipes.org/4227/how-the-west-could-lose
“How the West Could Lose”
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
December 26, 2006
SNIPPET: “After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists?
On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the cold war. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the gulag?
Yet, more than a few analysts, including myself, worry that it’s not so simple. Islamists (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia) might in fact do better than the earlier totalitarians. They could even win. That’s because, however strong the Western hardware, its software contains some potentially fatal bugs. Three of them – pacifism, self-hatred, complacency – deserve attention.”
"My first question is: How does ANYONE buy ANY piece of property in Manhattan for 4.85 million dollars?"
So who sold it too them? They’re as responsible for this happening.
Ratner and Soros are both Jews. Why would they be helping Muslims do this horrible thing?
Well, of course, remembering that Soros is a Jew who brags about standing by and calmly watching while the bribed Hungarian official who was his guardian when he was a teenager confiscated the property of other Jews and sent them off to the camps, I guess that answers my question.
It doesn’t affect them personally, it’s extra income, so it’s all cool.
Sure! Let 'em build! Cultural diversity and all that...uh, uh, what should we call it? I know Mr. Uh Uh can name it, but what do we call it?
I'll start the bidding at self-imolation.
Thanks for the ping, Candor7.
I’m sitting here shaking my head. This is just so wrong...so very, very wrong. Diversity is not gonna work when it’s clear these people(?) want us DEAD.
What the frick?
Disgusting!!!!!!!!
"Who was the owner of that piece of property. I can’t believe the selling price. Money laundering?"
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