UPDATE: The location of the Ground Zero Mosque…it isn’t just 45 Park…they bought 43 AND 45 Park….two adjacent buildings….together, the width and height is massive….and finally ABC got it right. It’s 15 stories in the plan. MOSQUE IS ON THE TOP FLOOR.
This is the sign that directs people to Ground Zero masjid. It’s ALL the same strip of buildings
.
Scroll down for directions to Community Board # 1 location
….
9/11 Families Reject Towering Mosque Planned for Ground Zero Site
Friends:
The press release below is our first coordinated salvo to stop the installation of a Shariah recruiting center just 600 feet from where Tower One collapsed. Our opponent is a smooth-talking, charismatic cohort of the OIC, CAIR, the Israel-hating Alliance for Civilization operating from the UN, ISNA, and more. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is funded by the governments of Malaysia, Qatar and others outside the U.S. The financing for this is entirely opaque. We hope that this will be an opportunity to educate our fellow citizens about Shariah.
Last January, when Muslims in Malaysia fire-bombed 11 churches, synagogues and Hindu temples because a Catholic newspaper used the word “Allah” to describe the Christian God, Imam Rauf–the imam proposing a 15-story, $150 million dollar mosque and interfaith center at Ground Zero–chided the newspaper for being “socially inappropriate.” It is illegal for non-muslims to distribute religious literature in Malaysia, where Imam Rauf has an office.
The imam knows how to calibrate his message to his audience. In 2006 he published a book in the U.S. entitled, What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America, asserting, among other things, that Shariah is nothing more than a set of rules helping us to Love They Neighbor. In 2007 he published the same book in Malaysia entitled, A Call to Prayer from the WTC Rubble: Islamic Da’wah from the Heart of America Post 9/11.
Here’s the advice the smiling, soft-spoken cleric gives to his co-religionists in the Muslim world: “Our model should be the Prophet Muhammad when he worshipped in Mecca before Islam had taken hold. He did not pray the noon and afternoon prayers in a loud voice lest that would incite anger of the unbelievers.” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, The Star, Jan. 13, 2010
We think he underestimated us.
..
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 24, 2010
Media@911familesforamerica.org
9/11 Families Reject Towering Mosque Planned for Ground Zero Site
New York, May 24, 2010 — 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America (9/11 FSSA) adamantly rejects the plan for a mosque to be built atop a planned 15-story structure that would tower over the site where nearly 3,000 people were killed by Islamic terrorists.
According to the project’s leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the mosque and “Muslim-led community center” is to be called the Cordoba House, named after the historic period when the Islamic Caliphate in Cordoba ruled much of Europe and non-Muslims lived as second-class citizens under Islamic rule.
Victims’ families view the imam’s expressed plan to “leverage” the mosque’s proximity to Ground Zero to engage in proselytizing and to “grow the Muslim community,” as shockingly insensitive to the history of the site where their loved ones were slaughtered in the worst terrorist attack by extremist Muslims in America’s history; following the attack, 20,000 body parts were recovered in a nine-month operation to remove 1.8 million tons of rubble from Lower Manhattan.
“Imam Rauf is a Muslim cleric who, immediately after 9/11, blamed the attacks on U.S. treatment of Muslims, asserting that Osama Bin Ladin was ‘made in the U.S.A,’” said Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 FSSA, whose brother was the pilot of the American Airlines flight which was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. “We do not accept the Cordoba organization’s view that we need Imam Rauf to lecture us about religious tolerance in a city still dealing with the consequences of the attack that he claims we brought on ourselves.”
Last Monday, representatives of 9/11 FSSA met with Sharif El-Gamal, owner and CEO of Soho Properties, the corporation that purchased the two buildings where the mosque will be built at 43-45 Park Place, and asked him to name the investors in the mosque project. Mr. El-Gamal refused, citing the advice of his attorneys, stating that “this is private property” and that “we can build this ‘as of right.’” The property was purchased with $4.85 million in cash.
Imam Rauf is now publicly stating in a professionally-organized PR campaign that the building will be a community center, “not a mosque.” However, Mr. El-Gamal showed 9/11 FSSA members architectural renderings in which a mosque, located on the top floor of the 15-story building, would have a commanding view of the entire Ground Zero neighborhood
Equally troubling is the fact that, while the stated purpose of the project is to engage in interfaith dialogue and cultural egalitarianism, Imam Rauf embraces Shariah, the Arabic word for Islamic law, a sociopolitical system of jurisprudence based upon the Koran which supersedes man-made law and which rejects the Constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state. Islamic countries that embrace Shariah and political Islam are known for brutal policies that discriminate against women, gays, and religious minorities. Shariah law is entirely incompatible with the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment and would violate 1st Amendment protections of speech, assembly and the free exercise of religion.
We feel that the attempt to use our loved ones’ deaths and the painful legacy of 9/11 still felt by New Yorkers to engage in a campaign to reverse America’s core doctrine of religious freedom — and to do s under the guise of interfaith understanding — is a gross insult to the memory of those who were killed on that terrible day.
9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America asks concerned Americans — regardless of race, color, creed, or ethnic origin–to join us in denouncing this effort to chip away at America’s bedrock principle of religious freedom.
Say NO to a MOSQUE at GROUND ZERO!
Join us in lower Manhattan at Community Board #1. ( You do not have to live in the area to attend)
Community Board 1’s Financial District Committee unanimously supported the project earlier this month. The full board will weigh in on Tuesday, May 25, 2010.Community Board #1
WHEN : May 25th – 6:00 PM
WHERE : Three Legged Dog Art and Technology Center
80 Greenwich Street (at Rector Street) – New York City
.
Get directions here
Located in downtown Manhattan 80 Greenwich St.
between Rector and Edgar Streets.
3LD Art & Technology Center is embedded in the ground floor of the Battery Parking Garage.
TRAINS:
1 to Rector Street (often closed weekends due
to construction see link above)
R, W to Rector Street (the closest stop)
4, 5 to Wall Street
J, M, Z to Broad Street
A, C to Broadway/Nassau
E, PATH to World Trade Center
near Ferries to and from NJ and Staten Island
CARS:
From Battery Tunnel enter Trinity Place, turn left
on Edgar Street to Greenwich or Battery Parking
Garage.
From West Street South turn left on Albany Street
(marked Battery Tunnel), proceed East on Albany
two blocks and take a right on Greenwich. Go south
two blocks to the Battery Parking Garage.
BUS:
M1, M6 downtown via Broadway
IT is so sad how we have become a nation of acceptance. Take the example of Austraila and throw them out of the country. I am sick of our present administration bowing down to murders and criminals. Peace at what price? We have been insulted by the Mexican President and our administration has traveled abroad to kiss the feet of notorious dictators. What a mistake we have made voting in this group of liberal socialist.I am unable to travel to N.Y. but I am willing to do anything I can to further your cause and save MY COUNTRY
“No mosques at Ground Zero,” or as I prefer to call it, “Ground Hero(s)!” That is plain enough language that even the most tone deaf and insensitive imam.
Building a mosque at that sacred ground, would be the equivalent of a rapist getting a statue outside the bedroom window of his victim!
When does the suffering end for the families of victims? Whoever sold this land, should return the 30 pieces of silver.
May God bless the 9/11 families and derail this project.