JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

08/18/10 04:55 PM

Thank you.  A wonderful, understated story that nonetheless adds tremendously useful information, absolutely vital for those of us who do not live in New York.

08/18/10 05:00 PM

The proposed mosque site is not only near Ground Zero, it is also PART of Ground Zero!

This is because an engine of one of the attacking planes fell right through the roof of the building of the proposed mosque, making it a direct hit.

Your reporter should check this fact first before theorizing about the “proximity” of the proposed mosque site to the target of the 9/11 attacks.

08/18/10 05:23 PM

Aside from the proximity, and a less than 4 minute walk throught heavy motor and pedestrian traffic is really close in New York, ashes from people burned in the conflagration rained down over the proposed site.  I think it telling that the Muslims wanting to build a mosque have refused an alternate, less sensitive location, offered by the governor of New York State.  They are not subtle in their wish to declarte victory over the West.

08/18/10 05:38 PM

How close to Ground Zero, Freedom of religion etc are all debating issues and besides the point. There is only 1 issue - Will or won’t the mosque be a dominating feature of the area and perhaps, particularly when viewed from the completed Ground Zero structure. My bet is it will be dominant. What is the largest structure of the Jerusalem skyline? the Al Aksa mosque of course - designed to deliberately overshadow the Temple Mount, on which site it is built - intending to show the superiority of Islam over Judaism. Same Islamic philosophy as the Al Aksa mosque is being used for the CORDOBA mosque. Cordoba? Why? Just a nice name? No - a historic site of the Moslem success in Spain. Don’t join the fooled masses. Open your mind to what Islam is doing around the world. A script writer couldn’t have set a better scene than a giant mosque dominating a place where Islamists sent the USA a message.

08/18/10 06:50 PM

I’m surprised he didn’t walk with a yardstick!  The real issue is that Islam is a replacement theocracy.  Islam replaced Solomon’s Temple with their Al Aqsa Mosque, the Christian Visigoth church with the original Cordoba Mosque, the church of the Byzantine Empire with the Hagia Sophia Mosque, and thousands of Buddhist temples, Christian churches, Jewish synagogues and more with their mosques throughout the Middle East.  Their terrorists destroyed our WTC which they view as a “church” to economic success, and now they want to get as close it to as possible.  This is what should not be permitted.  Obviously we are not bigots; they have 100+ mosques in NY; it is this site of triumph that must not be permitted for a mosque. Furthermore, the building sustained structural damage and contains a plane fuselage and human ashes - too involved with Ground Zero, too accommodating to them. Islam requires we accommodate in many respects; this is their modus operandi. Many businesses and schools were forced to implement changes to accommodate, this is all part of their shari’a law...getting the vanquished to accede.  We are on a slippery slope; the mosque in this location would be a terrible mistake.  The imam wants Shari’a law, the most intolerant inhumane laws on earth.  He is a Wahabbist, and he is dangerous.
If we continue to keep our head in the sand, we will only have to face east and pray to Mecca (that doesn’t allow any religions other than Islam).

08/18/10 07:28 PM

I was sad you did not walk by the porn shops. 

I love (or when I say love, I mean I am sad) that some people in our free society have no complaints over porn shops and other merchants, but have a problem with a mosque

I also love that no one mentions that there were at least two Muslim prayer spaces in the WTC when it was standing, plus one in the Pentagon; yet there is outrage over Park51

08/18/10 08:55 PM

American Muslims are a fifth column inside the US leading a ruthless attack on America on the way to Islamization. I´m a Mexican Jew and see this as clear as day. Our whole community sees it. Why are Amercans both Jewish and Gentile so oblivious to this threat.
Muslims have no loyalty to the United States of America. They despise America and the more you try to accomodate them, the weaker you seem to them and the more brazen they become.
The Xmas day bomber and the Times Square bomber aren´t isolated incidents. They are the last two of an ongoing campaign to weaken America and kill Amercans, Jews and Gentiles.
How do you deal with a fifth column? You go after them and uproot them from US soil.

08/18/10 10:56 PM

I don’t think I’ve ever read so many false statements in such a short space in my life.

1) Imam Rauf is a Sufi, utterly different from Wahhabists. His wife, Daisy Khan, a devout Muslim does not wear a head scarf. Try reading his book, What’s Right with islam, instead of making up falsehoods about them. (2) The NYC JCRC and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs have said publicly that the Cordoba folks (Rauf & Khan) have had years of warm and helpful relations with the Jewish community.

(3) The Park51 center cannot possibly “tower over” Ground Zero. There are much larger buildings between its site & Ground Zero.  You can’t see either one from the other place.

4) Islam did NOT replace So;omon’s Temple, nor Herod’s temple, with the Dome of the Rock. They had both been destroyed long long before—centuries before—and the space was wild and waste. jewish law forbade & forbids any Jew from going up there for fear of unwittingly walking into the space of the Holy of Holies.

5) Cordoba was the city where Rambam (Maimonides) studied and began to wriote (mostly in Arabic) his commentaries on Torah. It was at the heart of Andalus, the time & place of the Golden Age of Jewish history when Jews, Christians, & Muslims dialogues, enjoyed life together, wrote poetruy some of which is still in our siddurim today. Check out Ibn Gabirol, fior example. And Jews were respected— Samuel HaNagid, for instance, was prime minister to the Muslim king of Granada and led its armies to victory. Cordoba is asymbol of interfaith sharing.\, not domination.

What all these letters share is hatred and fear of all Muslims. These letters smell of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, now turned into a crazed hatred of Muslims instead of Jews.

-- Rabbi Arthur Waskow
The Shalom Center
http://www.theshalomcenter.org

08/19/10 12:46 AM

Waskow confuses the time of Maimonides great studies with the “Golden Age” that reached a peak in the tenth century, and then faded until in 1148, thirteen years after Maimonides birth the Almohades conquered Córdoba , and threatened the Jewish community with the choice of conversion to Islam, death, or exile. Maimonides’s family chose exile. For the next ten years they moved about in southern Spain, avoiding the conquering Almohades, but settled in Fes in Morocco.  In1164 he left Fes, visited Israel. ad settled in the Cairo suburb , Fustat, It was in these years that he did his great work; nof while he was a youngster in Cordoba.,

08/19/10 08:57 AM

New york doesn’t need a mega-mosque paid for by the Saudi’s run by a hamas apologist. And if “rabbi” Waskow would get off his knees and read what Rauf says to moslem audiences he would realize it. But then again given his history being a dhimmi is right up his alley.