Cordorba House! A Good Or Evil Concept?

Here are two opposing points of view and I believe that both sides should be known and heard. I personally thought it was very strange that Mayor Bloomberg and the NYC zoning board as well as the Historical Agency would unanimously approve this new building unless there was more to the plan than we have been getting in the media. Food for thought?


Many of us are supporters of Newt Gingrich and we will campaign for him should he decide to run as the next president of the United States. On July 21, 2k10, Newt wrote the following:

"There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over. The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks - is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex. “Cordoba,” in Islamic symbolic terms, means Islamic rule in the West. Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to "symbolize interfaith cooperation" when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way. Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for "religious toleration" are arrogantly dishonest. They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City. Meanwhile, there are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia. In fact no Christian or Jew can even enter Mecca. And they lecture us about tolerance. If the people behind the Cordoba House were serious about religious toleration, they would be imploring the Saudis, as fellow Muslims, to immediately open up Mecca to all and immediately announce their intention to allow non-Muslim houses of worship in the Kingdom. They should be asked by the news media if they would be willing to lead such a campaign. We have not been able to rebuild the World Trade Center in nine years. Now we are being told a 13 story, $100 million megamosque will be built within a year overlooking the site of the most devastating surprise attack in American history. Finally where is the money coming from? The people behind the Cordoba House refuse to reveal all their funding sources. America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could. No mosque. No self deception. No surrender. The time to take a stand is now - at this site on this issue." The above comment was sent out by e-mail and I forwarded it to a friend of mine who lives in Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia. He had the following critique on Newt's statement: "Frank, I am disappointed that you forwarded this to me and disappointed with Newt that he wrote it. I am a little closer to this situation than most people. The airplane that hit the second tower went into the building about 10 stories below my daughter’s desk. Fortunately, she was running 15 minutes late that morning and wasn’t in or below the tower when it was hit. She knew people who died. She watched people she didn’t know jump to their deaths rather than die in the fire. She and her husband had to leave their apartment 3 blocks from the WTC for ten days because the health department forced them out of the health hazard area. They knew some orthodox Jews who lived in northern Manhattan and they walked to their home and were graciously taken in. They have a daughter now and they live three blocks from Ground Zero and five blocks from the site of the new community center/mosque. My daughter and her husband strongly support the community center/mosque project. (No, they are not Muslims but they are good Americans.) The organizers of this community center/mosque are not fearsome jihadists, they are Sufi Muslims – if you don’t know what Sufis are like, think “whirling dervishes” or look up Sufi. I talked to my daughter last night. (We call her every September 11 to let her know that we are so grateful that she is still alive.) She told me the Muslim planners of the community center plan a small prayer room* among a lot of other things like meeting rooms and a swimming pool. Having little experience with urban community centers, the Muslim planners worked with local Jews who already operate community centers in the area so they could plan their new center to be as useful as possible to the greater community. The facility will apparently serve the same basic function that Peachtree Pres. serves for our area – my wife goes there to use their gym; I go there to attend civic meetings – like many who go there, we are not Presbyterians. Likewise, the Manhattan center won’t cater only to Muslims – the area around Ground Zero is very multicultural, so a mosque will fit right in with everything else. In fact, I think there is already a real mosque five blocks from Ground Zero. And, incidentally, there were Islamic prayer rooms in the WTC which were destroyed by the terrorists. I believe that if some Americans intimidate the organizers of this community center/mosque and force them to relocate it elsewhere, little else could make the terrorists happier because America will be tarnishing its own ideals. If we turn against our Constitution (or bend the protections it guarantees just a little), that would be a far greater insult to the memory of the 911 victims than any building. We need to stay strong and honorable in spite of what the terrorists do to us. If Saudi Arabia denies some citizens their basic human rights, that is hardly a justification for us to do likewise to some of our citizens. We are America. We stand for something that hopefully the Saudis will understand sooner rather than later." “a neighbor in Atlanta’s Buckhead community” I added the picture. franklively.124online.com