They won't build it! Hardhats vow not to work on controversial mosque near Ground Zero

A growing number of New York construction workers are vowing not to work on the mosque planned near Ground Zero.

"It's a very touchy thing because they want to do this on sacred ground," said Dave Kaiser, 38, a blaster who is working to rebuild the World Trade Center site.

"I wouldn't work there, especially after I found out about what the imam said about U.S. policy being responsible for 9/11," Kaiser said.

The grass-roots movement is gaining momentum on the Internet. One construction worker created the "Hard Hat Pledge" on his blog and asked others to vow not to work on the project if it stays on Park Place.

"Thousands of people are signing up from all over the country," said creator Andy Sullivan, a construction worker from Brooklyn. "People who sell glass, steel, lumber, insurance. They are all refusing to do work if they build there."

"Hopefully, this will be a tool to get them to move it," he said. "I got a problem with this ostentatious building looming over Ground Zero."

A planned 13-story community center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, Park51 has exploded into a national debate.

Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers' Association, said unions have not yet taken a "formal position" on Park51, but he understands why members would be hesitant to work there.

"It's a very difficult dilemma for the contractors and the organized labor force because we are experiencing such high levels of unemployment," he said. "Yet at the same time, this is a very sacred sight to the union guys."

"There were construction workers killed on 9/11 and many more who got horribly sick cleaning up Ground Zero," Coletti said. "It's very emotional."

L.V. Spina, a Manhattan construction worker who created anti-mosque stickers that some workers are slapping on their hardhats, said he would "rather pick cans and bottles out of trash cans" than build the Islamic center near Ground Zero.

"But if they moved it somewhere else, we would put up a prime building for these people," he said. "Hell, you could do it next to my house in Rockaway Beach, I would be fine with it. But I'm not fine with it where blood has been spilled."

Spina, who sells 9/11 apparel on his website, said he's printed thousands of stickers and plans to produce thousands more.

Popularity aside, there are some construction workers choosing not to set themselves against the project.

"Hundreds of guys here are wearing stickers as a sign of protest, but I'm on the fence about it," said Frank Langan, 50, a site superintendent from Queens working at Ground Zero.

"It's a tough debate," he said. "I sympathize with workers' position, but at the same time, you can't single out all Muslims because of a small number of terrorists."

This is not about religious freedom, there are already mosques in downtown Manhattan. This is about sensitivity to the surviving victims of 9/11 and who decides how this sacred spot will be commemorated. Will it be Americans and the families of the 9/11 victims, or by foreign born nationals, defenders of Hamas, who are using Saudi money to build this unwanted “shrine”. It is more than a little presumptuous of these Muslims to demand that we accept their shrine for American victims when the terrorists who did this acted in the name of the very same Islam; why is it so difficult to ask for a little sensitivity from our Muslim brothers to stop accusing our victims of bigotry and intolerance and perhaps show some toleration of their own.

I find it repulsive to be lectured about toleration from Islamist propagandists. When one million Christians in Saudi Arabia cannot publicly practice their religion under pain of flogging and jail, I am dumbfounded by the hypocrisy. When they stone women for adultery, mutilate females, engage in honor killings, stab film makers to death, throw homosexuals off buildings, treat women like animals, refuse to educate girls and sell non Muslim black Africans into slavery - I am confused, where is the “brotherhood”, where is the gentleness of Islam these proponents tell us about. Where are their cultural center shrines for those victims? Can they clean their own house before they demand to clean ours?

They see the speck in our eye but fail to see the beam in their own.

Go to Saudi Arabia and with this Hamas money begin to build churches for the foreign born Christians who are working there - do that and we will start to believe you are serious about “brotherhood”.

I am also tired of the excuse of “don’t lump all Muslims together” which is very convenient when it is used to excuse the wanton murder of Christians, Jews and Hindus in a number of countries. By the time they are finished excluding all the “bad” Muslims, there may be none left to wallow in moderation. The fact remains, the so-called unicorn-like ‘moderate’ Muslim is afraid to speak out against these heinous crimes perpetuated in the name of Islam, and that collective cowardice forfeits the high moral ground in calling the living victims of 9/11 intolerant bigots. They have yet to earn the right to say anything about our alleged intolerance when Muslims have practiced bigoted murder in every country they reside, and the ‘moderates’ remain silent.

It is so much easier for their purposes to attack the “intolerant and bigoted” West than it is to look inward at their own hideous practices and attempt to change that ocean of toxic waste.

From within their mosques they have planned the violent overthrown of their host nations. From Finsbury in England, to Hamburg, Germany to the Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn to the mosque in Jersey City where the first World Trade Center bombing was planned - unfortunately they will continue to be places where violent overthrow is conceived and carried out. We have had the Lackawanna Six, the Fort Dix murder attempt, the Ft. Hood Shootings, the Christmas Day jetliner bombing that almost was, the Times Square bombing that almost was, the Detroit Sleeper Cell with the planned attack on Disney Land, and the bombings in the London Underground and the rail bombings in Spain, the hotel murders in Mumbai and many more. Islam does not seem to be listening to its ‘moderates’ at all and we must therefore live with a violent and arrogant Islam in our midst, while we are lectured by their so-called moderates who don’t have the guts to shout their murderous radicals down. Most likely because the moderates are so greatly outnumbered.

Islam can only cure itself, and the radicals are in complete control, so with the combination of the paucity of moderates, their general cowardice and their utter futility in making change, the West has to fight this unholy scourge alone.

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