N.Y. mosque imam: Extremism is global threat
The imam leading plans for an Islamic center near the Manhattan site of the Sept. 11 attacks said Friday he hopes to draw attention during his trip in the Middle East to the common challenges to battle radical religious beliefs, the Associated Press reports.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is on the first leg of a 15-day Mideast tour funded by the U.S. State Department, refused to discuss the political firestorm over the plans for an Islamic cultural center about two blocks from the World Trade Center towers. Foes of the project say it is insensitive and disrespectful to the victims of 9/11 and their families. The debate has become politicized ahead of November's midterm congressional elections.
Instead, Rauf preferred to focus on shared concerns. Speaking after leading Friday prayers at a neighborhood mosque outside Bahrain's capital Manama, he said radical religious views pose a security threat in both the West and the Muslim world.
"This issue of extremism is something that has been a national security issue — not only for the United States but also for many countries and nations in the Muslim world," Rauf said. "This is why this particular trip has a great importance because all countries in the Muslim world — as well as the Western world — are facing this ... major security challenge."
The imam also said he has been working on a way to "Americanize Islam." While he did not elaborate on what an American version of Islam might look like, he did note that different interpretations of the faith have emerged over the religion's nearly 1,400-year existence.
"The same principles and rituals were everywhere, but what happened in different regions was there were different interpretations," he said. "So we recognize that our heritage allows for re-expressing the internal principles of our religion in different cultural times and places."
This is Rauf's fourth U.S-government sponsored trip to the region, according to the State Department. He traveled twice to the Mideast in 2007 during the Bush administration and once earlier this year. Rauf will also visit Qatar and the United Arab Emirates during this trip to talk about Muslim life in America.
Details of the imam's specific plans in each country have been closely guarded — possibly in reaction to the rancor in the United States over plans proposed by Rauf's organization, The Cordoba Initiative, for an Islamic cultural center near the site of the World Trade Center towers.
President Barack Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center in New York as a matter of religious freedom, though he's also said he won't take a position on whether they should actually build it. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg came out in support of the mosque, calling it a test of the separation of church and state.
New York Gov. David Paterson suggested last week that leaders of the project might want to consider relocating out of sensitivity to families of those killed on Sept. 11.
He said he had the support of Islamic clergy, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who led the city through the attacks and their aftermath. The governor and state officials won't say what other site would be suitable for the center or where the state owns nearby land.
This week, Paterson said he had hoped to meet with developers in a couple of days to talk about the concerns of those still hurt and angry over the Sept. 11 attacks. He told WNYC Radio's "The Take Away" on Friday that he's still seeking a meeting, but that the group postponed a Monday meeting because of Rauf's travels.
Muslims have been holding prayer services since last year in the building that the new project will replace.
Comments
Am I the Rodney Dangerfield of Natural Law studies now?? Where has all the respect and love for my thinly concealed rhetoric for the rich and powerful gone to? The journalistic poor and gay panhandlers are supposed to be grateful for the crumbs of respect that you give them, now they make fun of me. People are so mean! That darned Michael Sean Winters, he will not apologize for saying more cleverly than others what a lot of people are saying about me. If it weren't for the fact that he has taken a lot of ironic mocking himself I might be able to get some sympathy turned my way. But this vicious person who is saying inconveniently a lot of the things that I claim gay people should be saying according to the Robert Georgeous plan for society, is turning things around on me! Boo-hoo! But I got him back. Here is what I said on the Mirror of Justice:
"If anyone has the slightest doubt that what I said about Winters and his modus operandi is true, please open the link and see if you don't find what I said more than amply confirmed. Winters' own words fully reveal the kind of person he is. He offers no apology for the ugly smears and taunts that prompted my criticisms of him. He retracts nothing. He admits no error. On the contrary, he engages in more of his vile innuendo---suggesting that he merited no rebuke from me, and that I criticized him only because I am "hurting" from a family tragedy ("souls that are hurting tend to say hurtful things")---while purporting to applaud me for speaking up for religious liberty. The comments following his post make it plain that his readers have no difficulty seeing through this ploy. They are on to the guy. Evidently, a few of them have been on to him for some time now."
Everyone who criticizes me is vicious, except if they do it in a very tame way like on the Mirror of Justice. Calling me out as a successful fraud is beyond the pale. I have got to get back on the Glenn Beck show and ask Glenn if he can get me into the gold - selling business. Thom is a big fan of Catholic TV web station, maybe I can do ads there for Gold coins like Glenn and that Watergate criminal. Maybe i can even start a gold company myself devoted to Church law as a beacon of stability, with gold coins of course, in a pleasing vision of dystopian futures. Imagine an ad for a gold coin with something like "Anniversary of the Pio-Benedictine Code 1917" on it. In the background we show mushroom clouds and marching homos. They will snap up those coins when they see that! Am I brilliant or what!
Posted by: Robert Georgeous | August 20, 2010 3:46 PM
PIAPS HAS OBVIOUSLY INSTRUCTED THE ROMAN POPE TO HAVE HIS SURROGATE IN NEW YORK INTERVENE IN THE GROUND ZERO ISLAMOFASCIST MOSQUE CONTROVERSY!!!!!!!!:
The archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, says he would be "honored" to serve as a mediator in the ever- growing controversy over the proposed mosque hard by Ground Zero."If I can be a part, say but the word," Dolan said during an impromptu news conference.
HOW CAN POPERY “MEDIATE” AN ISSUE WHEN THEY HAVE ALREADY PREDETERMINED THEIR ANTI-AMERICA POSITION?!?!?!?!
PAM GELLER, DON’T FALL FOR THIS JESUITICAL PLOY!!!!!!
IT IS NOW CLEAR TO EVEN THE CASUAL OBSERVER, THAT PIAPS IS MAKING EARLY MOVES TO ESTABLISH HER ONE-WORLD RELIGION!!!!!
THIS WAS INDICATED BY EMMINENT SCHOLAR DR. TIM LAHAYE AS WELL!!!!!!
WE KNOW THAT SAINT PATRICK’S TEMPLE IS ONLY 1.5 MILES AWAY FROM THE UNITED NATIONS, TO WHERE PIAPS WILL DISPATCH CLINTOON IN THE FINAL TRIBULATION PERIOD!!!!!!
THIS MINISTRY URGES OUR NEW YORK READERS TO PRINTOUT THE MORNING AFTER TO PASS OUT TO THOSE DOING THE WORK OF FREEDOM IN PROTESTING AND DEMONSTRATING TO UPHOLD THE DIGNITY OF GROUND ZERO!!!!!
HEY, POPE!!!! HEY, PIAPS!!!!
YOU ARE BOTH EXPOSED!!!!!
AMERICA------YEAH!!!!!!
Posted by: AMERICAPHILE MINISTRIES | August 21, 2010 3:29 PM
Where is Wintersmix?
Posted by: Augustine from the Hippo | August 21, 2010 5:14 PM
Dear Mr. Augustine,
My name is Hortense, and I am a parishioner at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington. I am writing because you asked about that dear boy Michael Sean. Well my job in the parish is to refill the votive candles, and so even though I attend Mass on Sundays I was there this evening trying to scrape some wax off the floor when I heard the fight start. Apparently this is what happened. During the 6 o'clock Saturday Mass, which I know Michael always attends because he gives me a kiss when he always lights a candle for his friend named "Chastity", a terrible fight happened. It was terrible. They told me Michael just turned around during the Sign of Peace and tried to shake the hand of a gray haired man behind him. I heard people call the gray haired man George. The gray-haired man then yelled something like : "You are destroying my Natural Law Cocoon, you are wicked!" And then the gray haired man jumped on Michael and tried to hit him, and said "I am hitting you for religious liberty!!" Michael just said, "So much for you right-wing Catholicism!" And you know Michael is strong because he just flung the gray haired man into the the pew in front of him where that poor old Cardinal who used to be Archbishop here was taking a snooze. That poor dear comes here a lot because his retirement home claimed that he was, you know, a little to forward with some of the male staff. But then as Michael Sean was trying to kneel down to get ready for communion, the gray haired man yelled "Get him Tom!" and another person, a young looking man in gray sweat pants jumped on Michael's back and yelled "You had all your fun didn't you, you never suffered for being Catholic like me!!!" Michael just looked at the gray haired man and the young man in gray sweat pants and said, "You two are the Catholic Batman and Robin from hell . The next time you follow me or have one of your friends follow me to my parish church you are going to have some Natural Law shoved up your Love Canal!!" I didn't understand what Michael meant about going on a romantic ride at a carnival. It was all so confusing. And poor Michael, he is very nice and always gives he a kiss when he lights his candle for his friend Chastity.
Well, you asked about Michael so I would let you know.
Posted by: Hortense, Concerned Parishioner | August 21, 2010 7:58 PM
Oh dear. He should have turned the other cheek. Perhaps it was just too confusing for him. The last time I saw him it was in the little boys room downstairs at the Phoenix. We were having a conversation about the very subject. I said “Why is it so hard to turn the other cheek darling?”
And in that impish Capote like way of his he said “I would like too, but I just can't decide which one!”
I took a long glance behind him and had to agree. “They do make a lovely pair, don't they,” I said.
We laughed so hard. Then we went upstairs to the drag show and it was Archbishop [redacted by Opus Dei] and we felt like conspirators because we were the only girls who knew who that queen really was. Then we rode the roller coaster, so to speak.
I do hope he is doing better. I love that man.
Posted by: Augustine from the Hippo | August 21, 2010 9:48 PM
Dear Augustine,
You impress me with your rather Divine cheekiness. And with your intimate knowledge of the holy personage now dedicated to higher things like the very noble task of identifying Robert George and his baby-sycophant Thomas Peters as total frauds. My own view is that M.S.W. is a good person whose very understandable love of his Church has been been put through the grinder of very tragic recent Church history. We are all so small compared to the massive crushing force of events and tectonic cultural changes, All we can sometimes is parse them correctly. On that score M.S.W. is doing a very poor job in my opinion, and has been used by characters with convictions quite the opposite of the humaneness of his own.
If I had not interacted with this now holy personage I would not be so bold to inject humor. Coincidentally, he was there at Badlands the very night I met my partner in 1986! How's that for serendipity. We later saw him there a number of times. I recall especially one guy with whom he was quite taken (de gustibus, not my type) of whom he said:
"Look at this guy that I got. He's built like a brick shit -house!!" With the memory of that comment we are back in the realm of turning-cheeks and such. Ah, youth, too bad you are wasted on the young! In my view what is left to us oldsters is either to wish the young a healthy, happy and sane enjoyment of their youth, or the resentful and guilt-laying nostalgia of the anciently bitter. M.S.W.'s current quixotic convictions I am afraid are a bit too much of the latter in part.
But I am of the opinion that generally once a good person always a good person, and once a creep always a creep. M.S.W. was always a good person, and his love of his Church has forced him to deal with many who are not.
You can take a good man and make him better, or sometimes you can take a good man and make him worse. But you are still dealing with a good man. That is the whole story in a nutshell.
Posted by: Cultural Historian | August 22, 2010 12:01 PM