Tag Archives: Islamic State

Pamela Geller: The Ground Zero Mosque Project Is Back 0 (0)

Posted on by Leave a comment

by Pamela Geller

Lest we forget, the building of the intended “Islamic center” was destroyed in the 911 Islamic attacks. Human remains were found on the site. 9/11 families were joined by immigrants from India, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Africa, Iran and Europe to show opposition to the construction of a mega-mosque at our protest at Ground Zero. Others flew in from overseas to speak or just to share their particular ethnic communities’ experiences at the hands of moslems.

The news was buried under two dense paragraphs and five large photos in an article in New York YIMBY about a different project: “Construction has also yet to begin on 51 Park Place, which is slated to become a 71-foot-tall, 16,000-square-foot Islamic cultural center.”  The infamous Ground Zero Mosque project, a long buried effort to build a triumphal mosque at the site of the worst jihad terror attack in American history, is back.

Construction has yet to begin, but it will: the shady developer behind the Ground Zero Mosque scheme, Sharif El-Gamal, has been working to build this sinister structure for years.

We defeated the Ground Zero Mosque project once before.  The 16-story mosque that El-Gamal initially planned to build there has not been built.  Our efforts in showing what an insult it was to the American people and to the victims of 9/11, and how many Muslims worldwide would inevitably view it as a triumphal mosque built on the site of a jihad attack, defeated it.  Tens of thousands of people came out for our rallies in lower Manhattan against this celebration of this 9/11 attacks, and El-Gamal was beaten in the court of public opinion.

It was a long battle.  President Obama announced his support for the mosque at an Iftar dinner, no less.  Then-mayor of New York City and current presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg supported the mosque as well, claiming hysterically that “if we don’t build it, the terrorists will win!”  The media actively campaigned for it — the elites in their increasingly fragile ivory towers relentlessly stumped for the Cordoba mosque (euphemistically called an Islamic center with a prayer space) for years.

And yet despite all this opposition and much more, the people stood up and fought the Ground Zero Mosque and won.  An army of Davids.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.  Crains New York reported on El-Gamal’s new project in 2015 in a story that demonstrated how the developer was hoping to sneak his triumphal mosque into existence: “Mr. El-Gamal’s Soho Properties has proposed a 667-foot condominium tower at lower Manhattan’s 45 Park Place.  The glass skyscraper, which has yet to break ground, will include at least 15 full-floor units of 3,200 to 3,700 square feet, and average prices higher than $3,000 a square foot, according to plans released to Bloomberg by the developer.”

That sounded normal enough.  But then the article added: “Adjacent to the tower, Soho Properties will build a public plaza connected to a three-story Islamic museum and prayer space.”  An Islamic prayer space is a mosque.  The article also said: “An Islamic museum ‘is just as much of an insult,’ Pamela Geller, a blogger and one of the center’s most vocal opponents, wrote in an email.  ‘It will be like having a museum touting the glories of the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor.’”

I think an Islamic museum at Ground Zero dedicated to the half-billion victims of jihadi wars, land appropriations, sharia, cultural annihilations, enslavements, and sharia enforcement is an excellent idea, but is that what Sharif El-Gamal had in mind?  Of course not.  And how did El-Gamal plan to finance this?  The answer was predictable.  The New York Post reported in May 2016 that “the developer of the failed Ground Zero Mosque has nailed down ‘Sharia-compliant financing’ for a new, luxury condominium tower and Islamic cultural museum on the same site, he and his banking partners said.”

Then in May 2017, the New York Times ran a story entitled “Condo Tower to Rise Where Muslim Community Center Was Proposed.”  The Times said that “45 Park Place, a 43-story condominium that will soon rise three blocks from the World Trade Center,” was “something of a consolation prize for the developer,” as it “replaces the developer’s 2010 plan to build a 15-story Islamic mosque and cultural center on this site, an idea that erupted into a national controversy and cable news network bonanza.”

In the last couple of years, there has been virtually no news about this “Islamic museum.”  But the New York YIMBY story shows that the project has been advancing under cover of darkness.  A 71-foot-tall structure is three stories high, as in the revised plans announced in 2015.

El-Gamal has many friends and allies among New York City’s political and media elites.  It is likely that de Blasio city officials and the New York Times and other city papers all met with El-Gamal and agreed to keep the reporting on this project to an absolute minimum, so that it could get built without incurring the righteous anger of the public again.  The first time around, they courted publicity and tried to make El-Gamal a hero.  We demolished that and destroyed their plans.  So now they’ve clearly decided to go ahead surreptitiously.

It is disgusting that El-Gamal continues to taunt Americans and poke at America’s most egregious recent memory.  El-Gamal was there when we had tens of thousands in the streets opposing his Ground Zero mosque.  He knows how angry and upset people get at these Islamic structures on the site of jihad war.  The 9/11 Muslim terrorists extolled Allah no fewer than 90 times in their last letters.  Will those letters be on display at this Islamic cultural center/museum?

There is an important lesson to be learned here — and one we would be wise to adopt.  They never stop.  No matter how absolutely they lose, how many setbacks they suffer, they keep on pursuing their supremacist goals.

The Ground Zero Mosque project was and is a middle finger to the American people.  There has never been a mosque of reconciliation and healing built on the site of a jihadi attack.  Ever.  It is, on the other hand, an Islamic pattern to build triumphal mosques on the cherished sites of conquered lands.  History is riddled with triumphal mosques built on the sites of jihad attacks or appropriated from other religions: the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, and innumerable mosques built on the sites of Hindu temples that were demolished by Muslims all attest to that.

And now it looks as if Sharif El-Gamal is going to be able to build his own triumphal mosque at Ground Zero after all.

GR: https://gellerreport.com/2019/12/gzm-back.html/

Pamela Geller is the founder, editor and publisher of The Geller Report and President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). She is the author of Fatwa: Hunted in America (foreword by Geert Wilders) (Dangerous Books), The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton) (Simon & Schuster) and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books). She is also a regular columnist for numerous publications.

Co-Exist!–Deceptive Diagnosis Leads to Deceptive Remedy 0 (0)

Posted on by Leave a comment

Co-Exist!–Deceptive Diagnosis Leads to Deceptive Remedy- “Katy Perry’s worldview apparently has been formed by bumper stickers…”

by Bill Lockwood

Katy Perry, the social media pop star, commented on this week’s Islamic terror attack in Manchester, England. While on “The Elvis Duran Show” she related that she feels “devastated” by the attack. To solve the “horribleness” of these types of events, Perry suggested that we all need simply to “unite and love on each other, and like, no barriers, no borders, like, we all need to just co-exist.”

Katy Perry’s worldview apparently has been formed by bumper stickers that are prolific in the San Francisco Bay area. One version of the sticker uses an Islamic crescent moon for the “C”, a peace sign for the “O”, a combination of male and female symbols for the “E”, the Star of David for the “X”, a pentagram of modern occultism for the dot on the “I”, a yin-yang of eastern religions for the “S”, and a Christian cross for the “T.”

In a more sophisticated version of “just love each other” from Katy Perry, Omer Taspinar, in a 2009 SAIS Review of International Affairs, suggested that the “new strategy” to prevent radicalism is by American funding of “social and economic development” in the Middle East. In other words, siphon-off the wealth of taxpayers to put an end to Manchester, England-type of jihadi attacks.

The last administration of Barack Obama was larded with liberal Marxist academicians who preached this same “pop star” theology of Perry about “let’s just all learn to love each other.” Maria Harpf, the State Department spokeswoman for Obama boldly suggested that to “stop the slaughter” of innocent civilians by Islamic State militants Americans need to pony-up more money. Why? Because the main problem, per Harpf, is “poverty.” This is the “root cause” of jihadic violence and it becomes the duty of America to “help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people.”

Lack of jobs. Lack of western money. Economic depression. Not enough love. Let’s just all agree to co-exist. Liberalism is steeped in these nonsensical and unrealistic views of the world. I suggest this is the primary problem facing America: liberalism’s delusional view of reality. What is its taproot?

Socialism

Socialism is worldview that is totally at war with Christianity. This is so because the foundation of socialism is a materialistic concept of the world. Every action of man is explained solely on the basis of what a person does or does not own or is able to “access” in society. This is the “devil’s gospel” of materialism, which is why materialists such as Harpf, Perry, and an academy full professors continually harangue “the system.”

The one cause of all human problem has a materialistic root. This means that all ills in society—be it violence, jihad, thievery, murder and mayhem stem directly from the lack of this world’s goods and opportunities or these types of “injustices” in the system.

What then is the remedy? How is the free world to help stop the violence in the world? The Devil’s Gospel is: “redistribute the wealth” and material possessions—or at least pay boatloads of money to establish better conditions. All problems can only be resolved by government-sponsored (not free-will giving) redistribution.

The above is what many preachers in nominal “Christian” pulpits apparently have not taken time to discover, as evidenced by their lack of cross-examination of materialistic and socialistic philosophies. Even the National Council of Churches majors in this mis-diagnosis of misbehavior, suggesting that the cure lies in more redistribution. The cultural malaise that is occurring in the western world is grounded almost totally on socialistic folly.

Pulpits have forsaken the God-given diagnosis of the world’s problems. Sin. And this forgetfulness is the more amazing since the entire biblical worldview demonstrates that sin embedded in the heart of man (Rom. 4:15; 6:23) is the source of all of society’s ills. And sin is the result of personal free-will choices that people make. Forgiveness in Christ is the remedy.

What our cultural elite absolutely refuse to entertain is the truth. Behavior of people is rooted in their ideology—not pocketbook. What a person, or group believes is the single motivating factor. Until the west totally abandons the worldview of socialism violence will increase. Jihadi terror will continue.

Islam

Specifically regarding Islam—the problem is the religious ideal itself. Not “extremists,” not “fringe radicals”—but the doctrine of Mohammed as codified in the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sirah (his biography).

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, is the perfect example for those calling themselves Muslims. Yet, Muhammad’s authoritative biographer, Ibn Ishaq, made perfectly clear that conversion to Islam had little to do with religion and everything to do with violence and jihad. The last chapter that came from his mouth is his marching orders for future generations of Muslims: “Fight and slay pagans wherever you may find them” (Surah 9:4).

Katy Perry and the New Agers of San Francisco may sway and sing for “Co-Existence” and Maria Harpf, now a television commentator, may lament the lack of American tax-payer money sent to Islamic nations, but Americans who have not been brainwashed by socialistic or Islamic doctrine can see that the root is the ideology behind the behavior.

Shedding of Blood 0 (0)

Posted on by Leave a comment

Shedding of Blood

by Bill Lockwood

A chasm as wide as the world separates Christianity and Islam. Whether one compares the founders or the doctrines or the practices, the difference is as stark as beams of sunlight piercing the gloom of inky darkness. The living Christ is the light of the world while cultures created by following a dead Muhammad are comparable to descending into dark dungeons of ignorance. To see and feel the distinction, consider in the following the doctrine of what might be called The Shedding of Blood. Christianity and Islam each have a teaching surrounding the shedding of blood.

Prophetic Preparation

Christianity. The Old Testament canon was completed almost four centuries prior to the arrival of Christ and contains more than 300 specific prophecies that were fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ. At the heart of these predictions is Isaiah 53 which, with great specificity, speaks of the shedding of blood in the life of the Messiah. It was a vicarious suffering on behalf of mankind.

“Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrow: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. … And as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people for whom the stroke was due? … Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he has put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul of offering for sin” (Isaiah 53:4, 5, 8, 10).

Islam. What does one find when one turns to the religion founded by Muhammad? There were no predictive prophecies of him, of course, because true prophecy requires divine inspiration, which is lacking in Islam. However, later biographers of Muhammad invented “predictions” which they put into the mouths of individuals which were supposedly spoken by persons before Muhammad. One of the earliest of such biographers was Ibn Ishaq.

And what “prediction” do we read in Ishaq’s treatment of Muhammad? Ishaq relates that a “Jew” came to the Muhammad’s Arabian tribe of the Koreish which lived in Banu Qurayza. He was looking for a “prophet” from among that people and he issued a “warning.” This “Jewish warning” was that a “prophet” would “emerge” who would be “sent to shed blood and to take captive the women and children of those who oppose him.” Ishaq reminds the reader that later, when Muhammad “besieged Banu Qurayza” (626 A.D.) the “young men” remembered this prediction. (The Life of Muhammad, p. 94).

One was predicted to shed his own blood in a vicarious sacrifice for the sins of mankind; the other was to wear an iron sword and “shed blood” by besieging cities and destroying people.

The Founding of the Religions

Christianity. One fourth of the gospel material (Matthew-John) centers on the voluntary self-sacrifice of Jesus shedding His own blood on behalf of others. The writer of Hebrews emphasizes that “without the shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). Actually, the very theme of the Hebrews demonstrates that the Old Testament has been replaced by the New and that all of the sacrificed animals under the Old system were but types of Christ who has now “once for all” shed his blood for the redemption of mankind. He “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (9:26).

At the core of Christianity is the blood of Christ. Through faith “in his blood” which was voluntarily shed (John 10:17, 18) our redemption was purchased (Rom. 3:23-25) and we are now “justified by his blood” (Rom. 5:9). The entirety of the New Testament is summarized in his blood (1 Cor. 11:25).

But the shedding of blood is only efficacious to us because, as all four gospel records relate, Jesus was bodily resurrected from the dead. Hinging upon this truth is the entire corpus of Christianity (1 Cor. 15:1-4; 12-15). This is why Christianity is “good news.” The late New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce explains:

“For the Christian gospel is not primarily a code of ethics or a metaphysical system; it is first and foremost good news, and as such it was proclaimed by its earliest preachers. … And this good news is intimately bound up with the historical order, for it tells how for the world’s redemption God entered into history, the eternal came into time, … in the great events of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ” (F.F. Bruce, New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?).

Therefore, it matters not how many times President Obama or those of his ilk point to the bloody Crusades of Medieval times as a period of shame. These were apostate Roman Catholic physical wars that had nothing to do with any doctrine of Christianity.

Islam. What do we find when we turn to the religion of Islam? There is indeed the “shedding of blood.”

Islam is defined by the trilogy of texts: Koran, Sira (the biography of Mohammed) and Hadith (his traditions). The complete foundation of Islam is laid in these authoritative texts. What did Mohammed do, and what did he say? Without this there is no such thing as Islam.

Muhammad claimed that Allah commanded him to fight bloody wars with unbelievers in Islam until they become Muslim and carry out the ordinances of Islam. All Muslim scholars without exception agree on this. In the hadith collected by Bukhari Muhammad said, “I have been ordered by God to fight with people till they bear testimony to the fact that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger, and that they establish prayer and pay [money]. If they do it, their blood and their property are safe from me.” (Bukhari, vol. I, p. 13).

These wars were not just “defensive wars.” Dr. Muhammad Sai’id Ramadan al-Buti, one of the modern Azhar scholars in Egypt, his book Jurisprudence in Muhammad’s Biography, explains: “The Holy War, as it is known in Islamic Jurisprudence, is basically an offensive war. This is the duty of Muslims in every age when the needed military power becomes available to them.” With this dictum all Saudi scholars agree.

The practice of Islam is the Iron Rule. Might makes right. “And one who attacks you; attack him in like manner as he attacks you” (Surah 2:194). There is nothing “defensive” about “Fight and slay the pagans wherever you may find them” (Surah 9:5). “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly” (47:4). “Know that Paradise is under the shades of swords” (Jihad in Allah’s Cause, Bukhari, Vol. 4, book 56, no. 2818).

The above texts are not aberrations. This is the heart of Islam. Measuring in the complete trilogy the amount of texts devoted to Jihad is one-third. The Koran gives the great vision of jihad and spells it out in detail. The Sira is a strategic manual of how to wage jihad and two-thirds is dedicated to violent jihad. “Basically, when Mohammed was a preacher of religion (the first period of his life, bl), Islam grew at the rate of 10 new Muslims per year. But when he turned to jihad, Islam grew at an average rate of 10,000 per year” (Bill Warner, Factual Persuasion).

The founder of Christianity shed his own blood in sacrifice for others; the founder of Islam personally shed the blood of multitudes to force compliance.

Marching Orders

Christianity. Following the example of Jesus Christ himself, Christians are commanded to copy their Master. Instructed “not to please ourselves” (Rom. 15:1) but, like the Lord, be self-sacrificial for others. “Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not Himself…” (15:2, 3).

Going forward, the purpose of the cross and the shedding of Jesus’ blood is “leaving you and example that you should follow his steps … who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judges righteously” (1 Pet. 2:22,23). The New Testament is replete with such-like admonitions of self-sacrifice, putting others and their needs above our own.

Islam. Since Mohammed’s time his doctrines have inspired the murder of more than 270 million and the rape of tens of millions of women. Led by the example of the false prophet Mohammed himself, Islam hacked its way across Europe, violating treaties and destroying kafir (unbeliever, non-Muslim) cultures. The pretended inspiration of the Koran has motivated centuries of violence after the order of the marauding Bedouin.

Muhammad’s final instructions to his followers were to wage jihad which is why his religion is named “Islam”—submission. This violent fighting is not optional for the Muslim. “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing that is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knows, and ye know not.” . How then are we continually lectured today by our cultural leaders that violence-mongers are only a “handful” of Muslims who are somehow “misinterpreting the Koran”?

The contrast between Christianity and Islam is as stark as can be imagined. Turning to the Bible from the Koran is like stepping off of shifting sand onto solid rock. Most damaging of all, therefore, is the common paradigm that Christianity is a religion and Islam is a religion, and the two somehow must be on an equal footing before our Constitution.

With the ongoing blood-letting rampages in America, from the Ft. Hood shooting by Maj. Hasan, to the Boston bombing at the hands of the Tsarnaev brothers, to the recent San Bernardino, California Islamic terror massacre by Farook and his female partner Malik, it would seem that Americans would be willing to peer beneath the false façade that Islam is merely another religion. But alas! Too many are still scratching their heads in bewilderment, unable to understand that Islam is nothing less than political communism with a sharp religious edge.

The late Belgian Muslim jihadist responsible for the recent Paris blood letting, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, can be seen in a photograph that has now been published world-wide. In a silent message he is seen holding forth in his outstretched right hand a copy of the Koran and in his left he clutches the flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). From the professorships in the university to the media and law enforcement the question that continues to be so elusive is, “How did he become radicalized?” But to those who have not been so willfully blinded by politically correct whitewashing the answer is obvious.

Back to Homepage