Islamic Mosque to be built Near Ground Zero in New York

Posted December 17, 2009

By Chelsea Schilling

2009 World Net Daily

A new Islamic mosque will open its doors just steps from Ground Zero where Muslim terrorists murdered 2,751 people in the name of Allah on Sept. 11, 2001—and its leading imam, who conducts sensitivity training sessions for the FBI, has reportedly blamed Christians for the starting mass attacks on civilians.

The five-story building at Park Place, just two blocks north of the former World Trade Center site, was the site of a Burlington Coat Factory.  But a plane’s landing gear assembly crashed through the roof on the day19 Muslim terrorists hijacked the airliners and flew them into the Twin Towers in 2001.

Now Muslim worshippers currently occupy the building, and they plan to turn it into a major Islamic cultural center.

“The men and women stand up, raise their hands on either side of their head, and murmur ‘Allahuakhbar,’ bow and kneel again, “ reports Spiegel Online.

“Only in New York City is this possible,” Daisy Khan, executive director the American Society for Muslim Advancement, or ASMA, told the magazine. Khan is the wife if Imam Feisal Abdul Fauf, founder of ASMA.

They have leased the new prayer space as an overflow building for another mosque, Jasjid al-Farah, at 245 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where Rauf is the spiritual leader.

The building – vacant since that fateful day when time stood still as millions of Americans grieved the loss of loved ones, friends, family members, co-workers and strangers – was purchased in July by real-estate company Soho Properties, a business run by Muslims. Rauf was an investor in that transaction.

Just down the street, the Museum of Jewish Heritage honors victims of the Holocaust, and St. Peter's Church, New York's oldest Catholic house of worship, is located around the corner.

Rauf has announced his plans to turn the building into a complete Islamic cultural center, with a mosque, a museum, "merchandising options," and room for seminars to reconcile religions, "to counteract the backlash against Muslims in general, " Speigel reports. The project may cost as much as $150 million.

Rauf told the New York Times purchasing the building "where a piece of the wreckage fell sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11."

"It was almost obvious that something like this had to arise from the ashes of 9/11," Khan told Spiegel. "In some way, this has the hand of the divine written over it. It's almost as if God wanted to be involved."

The move is supported by the city. The mayor's director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs, Fatima Shama, told the Times, "We as New York Muslims have as much of a commitment to rebuilding New York as anybody."

On June 4, 2009, President Obama gave a speech to the Muslim world from Cairo, in which he stated:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. … So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

Click to read full article at the WND