Abu Wabu

Pamela Geller gets the job done with Rauf's own words.

ATLAS EXCLUSIVE! GROUND ZERO MOSQUE IMAM FEISAL'S EXTREMISM EXPOSED: IN HIS OWN WORDS: "the United States has more blood on its hands than al Qaida," Elimination of Israel, the N-Word, "Fahrenheit 911"

This is just the beginning of Rauf's poison:

We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims.You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it.

Jim Geraghty in NRO's Morning Jolt newsletter:

Hey, everybody who told us that if we didn't like the idea of a mosque so close to Ground Zero, we were unfairly judging an exemplary imam who has dedicated himself to brotherhood and bridging the traditions of Islam with Western principles of tolerance and pluralism? Yeah, you're invited to shut the hell up for a long, long time...

Now, as I mentioned, at the heart of this abominable comment is a semi-legitimate point that the sanctions on Iraq turned out to be horrifically counterproductive and played a role in exacerbating the suffering of the Iraqi people. Of course, the primary responsibility for that misery can be laid at the feet of Saddam Hussein and his regime; his decisions spurred those sanctions, his refusal to compromise kept them in place, and his regime made sure that they seized whatever they needed and let the civilians suffer. Madeleine Albright probably never grasped how her defense of the sanctions regime would play throughout the Muslim world, but why should she think of that -- she was only secretary of state at the time.

But notice Rauf doesn't say "many Muslims believe" or "some argue." He offers the notion that the U.S. is a bigger mass murderer than al-Qaeda as proven fact, which A) inexcusably conflates deliberate massacres with unintended civilian casualties and deaths more accurately attributed to Saddam's regime and B) is an argument rather hard to square with a self-proclaimed "pro-American" attitude. Can an American believe that his fellow countrymen are the bad guys in the war on terror and still be patriotic? Can you love your country if you believe that it has slaughtered more innocent people than Osama bin Laden? And are the American people supposed to nod approvingly if this guy teaches this in his mosque?

Rauf could not be reached for comment, because your tax dollars are being used by the U.S. State Department to send him around the Middle East, to reach out to Muslims who aren't sure what they think of America.

And as if that weren't enough, Rauf's wife seals the deal with her own words.

Asked if America was "Islamophobic," Khan responded that it's like "metastasized anti-Semitism."

"It's not even Islamophobia, it's beyond Islamophobia -- it's hate of Muslims," she said. "And we are deeply concerned."

Yeah, well, so are a majority of Americans, but they're deeply concerned about being lied to and being accused of bigotry and hatred by a supposed "moderate" imam and his "charming" wife.

Maetenloch at AoSHQ:

After 9/11 I believe most Americans wanted to be fair and were willing to hold any judgment of Muslims in abeyance expecting that they would be the first to condemn and root out the terrorists and the radical interpretations of Islam driving them. But sadly in the 10 years since then the actions of Muslims have been rather underwhelming.

I can think of at most maybe one or two times that I’ve heard any Muslim in the media denounce terrorism without the inevitable ‘but’ appearing somewhere. And while surveys of Muslims show a majority oppose terrorism, the fact that 20%+ are okay with suicide bombing is not exactly reassuring.

And there’s now a pattern of Islamic figures held up as moderate role models turning out to be quite radical when examined closely - the Ground Zero Mosque’s Imam Rauf is just the latest example of this. Frankly the American people have shown remarkable sensitivity and tolerance towards Muslims despite 9/11. A tolerance seldom reciprocated by Muslim groups here or abroad.

Plus since 9/11 Americans have become much more knowledgeable about Islam in general. As Spengler points out over a million American soldiers and civilians have had first hand experience with sharia and Islam as it’s actually practiced in the middle east. All of this has contributed I think to a general souring of Americans towards Muslims in America and Islam in general.

The MSM likes to portray this all as uninformed hate and fear of the other. But maybe Americans took good long look at Islam and decided they didn’t like what they saw.

And the more we see, the less we like it, because as Andrew McCarthy points out in Inventing Moderate Islam, the bottom line for Islam is that it is incompatible with secular society, which is to say our society. Is that a baseless accusation expressed by one o' those mouth-breathin Muslim-haters? No. It's the law according to none other than the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual guide, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a view shared by his good friend Imam Rauf:

The sad fact, the fact no one wants to deal with but which the Ground Zero mosque debate has forced to the fore, is that Qaradawi is a moderate. So is Feisal Rauf, who endorses the Qaradawi position — the mainstream Islamic position — that sharia is a nonnegotiable requirement. Rauf wins the coveted “moderate” designation because he strains, at least when speaking for Western consumption, to paper over the incompatibility between sharia societies and Western societies.

Qaradawi and Rauf are “moderates” because we’ve abandoned reason. Our opinion elites are happy to paper over the gulf between “reformist” Islam and the “reformist” approval of mass-murder attacks. That’s why it matters not a whit to them that Imam Rauf refuses to renounce Hamas: If you’re going to give a pass to Qaradawi, the guy who actively promotes Hamas terrorists, how can you complain about a guy who merely refuses to condemn the terrorists?

When we are rational, we have confidence in our own frame of reference. We judge what is moderate based on a detached, commonsense understanding of what “moderate” means. We’re not rigging the outcome; we just want to know where we stand.

If we were in that objective frame of mind, we would easily see that a freedom culture requires separation of the spiritual from the secular. We would also see that sharia — with dictates that contradict liberty and equality while sanctioning cruel punishments and holy war — is not moderate. Consequently, no one who advocates sharia can be a moderate, no matter how well-meaning he may be, no matter how heartfelt may be his conviction that this is God’s will, and no matter how much higher on the food chain he may be than Osama bin Laden...

...Today, “moderate Islam” is an illusion. There is hardly a spark, much less a wildfire. Making moderation real will take more than wishing upon a star. It calls for a gut check, a willingness to face down not just al-Qaeda but the Qaradawis and their sharia campaign. It means saying: Not here.