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Mon, Aug 09, 2010 | The Dry Bones Blog | Ottawa Citizen | By Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city council speaker Christine Quinn announce this week's decision to deny landmark status to the site of a planned Muslim centre near the World Trade Center site. (Photo by: Michael Nagle, Getty Images)

Mischief in Manhattan

We Muslims know the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation. An interesting analysis by dissenting Muslims, published in the Ottowa Citizen.

Last week, a journalist who writes for the North Country Times, a small newspaper in Southern California, sent us an e-mail titled “Help.” He couldn’t understand why an Islamic Centre in an area where Adam Gadahn, Osama bin Laden’s American spokesman came from, and that was home to three of the 911 terrorists, was looking to expand.

A taxi travels past the 45 Park Place, the proposed site of an Islamic cultural center and mosque, in lower Manhattan of New York, the United States, Aug. 3, 2010. New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday against granting landmark status to 45 Park Place, clearing the way for a controversial mosque near the World Trade Center site. (Xinhua/Rong Jiaojiao)

New York currently boasts at least 30 mosques so it’s not as if there is pressing need to find space for worshippers. The fact we Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel. The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as “Fitna,” meaning “mischief-making” that is clearly forbidden in the Koran.

The Koran commands Muslims to, “Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book” — i.e., Jews and Christians. Building an exclusive place of worship for Muslims at the place where Muslims killed thousands of New Yorkers is not being considerate or sensitive, it is undoubtedly an act of “fitna”

So what gives Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the “Cordoba Initiative” and his cohorts the misplaced idea that they will increase tolerance for Muslims by brazenly displaying their own intolerance in this case?

Do they not understand that building a mosque at Ground Zero is equivalent to permitting a Serbian Orthodox church near the killing fields of Srebrenica where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered?

There are many questions that we would like to ask. Questions about where the funding is coming from? If this mosque is being funded by Saudi sources, then it is an even bigger slap in the face of Americans, as nine of the jihadis in the Twin Tower calamity were Saudis.

If Rauf is serious about building bridges, then he could have dedicated space in this so-called community centre to a church and synagogue, but he did not. We passed on this message to him through a mutual Saudi friend, but received no answer. He could have proposed a memorial to the 9/11 dead with a denouncement of the doctrine of armed jihad, but he chose not to.

It’s a repugnant thought that $100 million would be brought into the United States rather than be directed at dying and needy Muslims in Darfur or Pakistan.

Let’s not forget that a mosque is an exclusive place of worship for Muslims and not an inviting community centre. Most Americans are wary of mosques due to the hard core rhetoric that is used in pulpits. And rightly so. As Muslims we are dismayed that our co-religionists have such little consideration for their fellow citizens and wish to rub salt in their wounds and pretend they are applying a balm to sooth the pain.

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About the authors,

Raheel Raza is author of “Their Jihad … Not my Jihad”, and Tarek Fatah is author of “The Jew is Not My Enemy” (McClelland & Stewart), to be launched in October. Both sit on the board of the Muslim Canadian Congress.