This is the final installment of a three-part investigative report on the Dutch government’s contribution to the financing of the Ground Zero Mosque. It was translated by our Flemish correspondent VH from the Dutch-language section of the ICLA website. Read part I and part II.
The Two Faces of Imam Rauf
In a 2007 report, Militant Islam Monitor stated:
ASMA promotes jihad through da’wa and the Islamisation of the West by grooming “Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow” (MLT). At the Saudi backed 2006 MLT conference in Denmark “moderate” Islamists discussions of how to increase Muslim political and social influence was euphemistically termed “bridge building”.
The duration of the project is from 13 October 2008 to June 30, 2011.
As mentioned earlier, this is indeed consistent with the budget period in the Audit (October 13, 2008 to June 30, 2011).
Question 2: If yes, do you acknowledge that it is absurd to build a mosque right at Ground Zero and that this is also an insult to (the families of) the victims of 9-11? If not, why not?
Answer: See question 1
Question 3: If so, are you, given the offensive plan to build said mosque, willing to immediately withdraw the subsidy to ASMA? If not, why not?
Answer: No. Because there is no question of support for the construction of a mosque.
Given the above, the answer to question 3 is much too pertinent. The far-reaching financial and personal interdependence means that grants to ASMA/WISE directly or indirectly serve projects such as the Ground Zero mosque.
Daisy Khan of Cordoba Initiative and ASMA/WISE said in The Washington Post: “there is a ‘divine hand’ in the Ground Zero mosque project: ‘the building came to us’…it ‘will be symbolic’.”
But the directors of ASMA/Cordoba Initiative who are subsidized by the Dutch MDG3 Fund have even deliberately looked for a controversial location for their bridge building.
The Star Online wrote in January: “The cleric [Rauf] admits that over the years, Islam has been perceived in the US as a national threat to security.” And this is why “the independent, multi-national initiative [The Cordoba Initiative/ASMA] deliberately sought a property near where the towers once stood.”
The withdrawal of the subsidy to ASMA, which focuses on promoting equal rights for women in countries such as among others Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt, is therefore not being considered.
Aaron Klein writes on ASMA:
In February, Obama named a Chicago Muslim, Eboo Patel, to his Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Patel is the founder and executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, which says it promotes pluralism by teaming people of different faiths on service projects. Patel is listed as one of 15 “Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow” (MLT) on the website for the American Society for the Advancement of Muslims, or ASAM (ASMA), which is led by Rauf. In Patel’s 2007 book, “Saving Each Other, Saving Ourselves,” he recounts discussing with Rauf the future of Islam in the U.S. Rauf “understood the vision immediately and suggested that I visit him and his wife, Daisy Khan, at their home the following evening,” Patel recalled. Khan founded the ASAM with her husband and has aided him in his plans for the mosque near Ground Zero. “The living room of their apartment on the Upper West Side was set up like a mosque, with prayer rugs stretched from wall to wall,” wrote Patel in his book.
Raymond Ibrahim on the ME Forum:
Such, then, is the dual significance of the Cordoba Initiative: What appears to many Americans as a gesture of peace and interfaith dialogue, is to Muslims allusive of Islamist conquest and consolidation; mosques, which Americans assume are Muslim counterparts to Christian churches — that is, places where altruistic Muslims congregate and pray for world peace and harmony — are symbols of domination and centers of radicalization; the numbers of the opening date, 9/11/11, appear to Americans as commemorative of a new beginning, whereas the Koranic significance of those numbers is suicidal jihad. Of course, the two faces of the Cordoba House should not be surprising considering that the man behind the initiative, Feisal Abdul Rauf, also has two faces.
One face for Bert Koenders’ Millennium Development Goals, the other for the Muslim world?
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