A Divine Hand Behind the Ground Zero Mosque?

Cheating Is an Art

Daisy Khan received $1 million from the Dutch government for the international project WISE, the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality.

Khan wants to work together with other Muslim women to spread the truth of Islam that has, according to her, inspired positive social changes for nearly fourteen centuries.

Why the wonderful truth of Islam is not sufficient to support her project and that she needs money from our country, is something she doesn’t explain. She also gives no explanation for the fact that Muslim women in Islamic cultures around the world are oppressed and suffer from serious violence.

Why is the project of Khan really necessary when the truth of Islam is so inspiring and awesome? Why have the social changes that Islam has made not led to a reasonable life for women? Khan tells nothing about that.

Building Bridges

Anyway, according to Khan, violence, terrorism, extremism and even the attacks of 9/11 have nothing to do with Islam. Her husband feels the same.

According Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who, along with Khan, was the initiator of the proposal for the construction of the mosque near ground zero, there is no positive reference in the Quran to be found for murder or violence. At least that is what he told FBI agents during the sensitivity training, which he was hired to lead after 9/11.

Osama bin Laden is therefore, according to Abdul Rauf, not a product of Islam but of the United States. And, according to him, 9/11 was a crime in which the U.S. was an accomplice.

Now, therefore, the Cordoba House has to be built near ground zero in order to build bridges and to heal wounds.

Symbolism

Khan was recently interviewed about the mosque project. She said the building where there was once a Burlington Coat Factory, which will be demolished so the mosque can rise, was not found by Abdul Rauf or her.

The building came to us she said; the building found us. The building was abandoned because it was damaged by “a plane,” Khan says innocently. It could be perfectly used for their mosque, and she concludes that there is “symbolism” and “a divine hand” involved.

This is a very distasteful remark. Khan does not say that it was one of the planes from 9/11 that damaged the building.

It is logical that she omits that from her story; otherwise, it becomes clear that she thinks that there was a divine hand behind 9/11.

The building came to us, she said, the building found us; 9/11 would then have occurred so that Khan and Abdul Rauf could build a mosque near a symbolic place and give a message to the extremists of 9/11.

We know that the couple believes that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam and that they think America is complicit in the attacks. To what “extremists” do they want to send a message to with the construction of the mosque? Al-Qaida or the United States?

Holding Hands

Khan did not expect opposition to the Cordoba House. At least not in organized form. However, she had thought, before, that perhaps since some relatives of the victims of 9/11 still feel the pain of the loss of their loved ones, “holding hands” was needed. Can you be more patronizing?

Yes, you can. Khan said it in another interview about Wafa Sultan, one of the witnesses of Geert Wilders. Khan says Wafa Sultan was traumatized as a child because she had witnessed fellow students being killed by extremists at her school. Khan believes what Sultan says is incoherent.

She really tries to understand what “these kind of people” say, but, according to her, you cannot put aside the 1,400 years of evolution of a religion and then talk about a bad religion.

Freedom for Apostates

According to Khan, she invited Sultan to attend the various conferences that she had organized with Dutch money, but Sultan had always refused to attend. Khan is lying here and showing her contempt for her audience and, of course, for Sultan.

According to Sultan, the religious freedom that Abdul Rauf and Khan are pleading for is no more than a one-way street. And that’s true. The wounds must be healed, and the bridges have to be built, in the same way that this couple thinks about the divine intentions behind the Cordoba House.

But, meanwhile, they would not sign a pamphlet that was submitted to moderate Muslims arguing for religious freedom for apostates from Islam, including Wafa Sultan and Ibn Warraq.

War is deceiving, Muhammad would have said. Cheating is an art, says Sultan, who understands Khan very well.