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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Survey: Why the Muslim World Disagrees With Imam Rauf
2010-09-21
By FOUAD AJAMI

From his recent travels to the Persian Gulf—sponsored and paid for by the State Department—Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf returned with a none-too-subtle threat. His project, the Ground Zero Mosque, would have to go on. Its cancellation would risk putting "our soldiers, our troops, our embassies and citizens under attack in the Muslim world."

Leave aside the attempt to make this project a matter of national security. The self-appointed bridge between America and the Arab-Islamic world is a false witness to the sentiments in Islamic lands.

The truth is that the trajectory of Islam in America (and Europe for that matter) is at variance with the play of things in Islam's main habitat. A survey by Elaph, the most respected electronic daily in the Arab world, gave a decided edge to those who objected to the building of this mosque—58% saw it as a project of folly.

Elaph was at it again in the aftermath of Pastor Terry Jones's threat to burn copies of the Quran: It queried its readers as to whether America was a "tolerant" or a "bigoted" society. The split was 63% to 37% in favor of those who accepted the good faith and pluralism of this country.

This is remarkable. The ground burned in the Arab-Islamic world over the last three decades. Sly preachers and their foot soldiers "weaponized" the faith and all but devoured what modernists had tried to build in the face of difficult odds. But from this ruinous history, there has settled upon countless Muslims and Arabs the recognition that the wells are poisoned in their midst, that the faith has to be reined in or that the faith will kill, and that the economic and cultural prospects of modern Islam hang in the balance.

To this kind of sobriety, Muslim activists and preachers in the diaspora—in Patterson, N.J., and Minneapolis, in Copenhagen and Amsterdam—appear to be largely indifferent. They are forever on the look-out for the smallest slight.

Mr. Ajami is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Posted by:

#5  5am Sunday October 10, Michael Moore's house: worship time for the Ramadamadingdong followers. Bring your car horns, vuvuzelas, trumpets. It's an American RIGHT to worship as you choose wherever and whenever you choose and anyone who says no is unamerican.

Dear Lord wants it loud and proud, 5am, Sunday, October 10, Michael Moore's house. Video it for YouTube - and try to interview him on his reaction too.
Posted by: anon1   2010-09-21 22:18  

#4  The imams who met at the GZ mosque site said the building of the mosque should continue.

And guess who was missing? Rauf wasn't there because he's in hiding. He's getting protection from the NYPD.

Molly Norris couldn't be reached for comment on how she was offered protection.
Posted by: Infidel   2010-09-21 20:18  

#3  I guess these imams who met at GZ were part of the 42% who weren't surveyed.

Given that the imams are part of the Muslim diaspora, emigrants to the U.S., and not part of the Arab world -- especially Imam Rauf, who is Malaysian, not an Arab ubermensch at all -- no they were not part of the surveyed population, JohnQC.
Posted by: trailing wife   2010-09-21 19:38  

#2  Elaph survey says 58% of muslims surveyed said the mosque project was folly (they didn't say don't build it however). The imams who met at the GZ mosque site said the building of the mosque should continue. This was reported on Fox yesterday but I can't find it anywhere else. I guess these imams who met at GZ were part of the 42% who weren't surveyed.
Posted by: JohnQC   2010-09-21 18:07  

#1  To this kind of sobriety, Muslim activists and preachers in the diaspora—in Patterson, N.J., and Minneapolis, in Copenhagen and Amsterdam—appear to be largely indifferent. They are forever on the look-out for the smallest slight.

And why should they not? They have carefully observed our history, the buttered bread of our crutch leaning protected classes. No lectures or instruction required, they now ride the same wave of multi-culturalism and entitlement. Infidels can labor and be unmercifully taxed to support them. Everyone knows work is halal.
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-09-21 17:35  

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