This weekend I went on the record for opposing the mosque at Ground Zero. I wanted to bring attention to this issue at my birthday party at 49 Grove however one reporter interrupted my speech to call me a racist and say that I was against freedom of religion and scream obscenities at my friends. Funny, I guess this same reporter is against freedom of speech since I wasn’t even able to finish a sentence before he tried to assault my campaign manager.

I am not a racist. I do not have anything against Muslims or the millions of moderate Muslim Americans that live in this country. But this mosque is not being built by moderate Muslims.

The leaders of this mosque have ties to radical Islam. They have lied about the sources of their funding. They have gone on the record blaming American ideology for the events of 9/11. They perpetuate a radical ideology – an ideology that goes against everything Americans (Muslim Americans included) stand for.

Supporters of the mosque would have you believe that anyone against it is denying Muslims their constitutional right to freedom of religion and are racists in their beliefs. The issue of the mosque is not about race nor is it about religion.
Freedom of religion is one of our Constitution rights. This also means that we have freedom FROM religion; we can choose what we want to believe. This is not the case in for Muslims- under Islamic law.

According to Islamic law, a person who leaves Islam is to be killed. Death for apostasy is sanctioned in Sharia law and is required according to the Koran. Not only is submission to Sharia law required of all Muslims according to Islamic doctrine and law, it is also required of all non-Muslims.

They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them (Koran, 4:89)

The leader of the Ground Zero mosque, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, has direct ties to radical Islam- an ideology built on hatred of America. Rauf has failed to respond to the requests from numerous citizens awareness groups requesting he pledge to respect the Bill of Rights and to repudiate the Islamic obligation of killing those who leave Islam. To the contrary, in an interview with 60 minutes, Rauf issued numerous anti-American statements and stated that the “United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” and that “in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”

Article 6 of the US Constitution states:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;

Since Rauf upholds Islamic Law, which is in direct opposition to our Constitution, how can we afford him constitutional rights?

The very law he lives his life by and his ideology is the archenemy of the freedoms our country is built on. The Ground Zero mosque cannot then be built anywhere within the United States as the ideology promulgated in mosques is in opposition to the Constitution.

Imam Rauf says that New York Muslims provided nearly $5 million in cash to buy the Ground Zero location. Yet in fiscal year 2009, Rauf received large international donations. In the year ended June 30, 2009 — days before Feisal closed the purchase — he received at least $1.3 million. The largest donation, $576,312, came from Qatar – a country long known for harboring terror financiers and even the government stands accused of funding international terrorism.

I say – Show us the money Imam Rauf! Where is your funding really coming from?

Supporters of the Ground Zero mosque claim that since only a few Muslims are involved in terrorism that we should therefore encourage the majority non-violent/non-jihadist “moderate” Muslims by supporting their mosque building. However Imam Rauf is not a moderate muslim and these mosques are easily infiltrated with radical ideology. For example, in 2008, a survey deemed “Mapping Sharia in America Project,” by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy infiltrated mosques and Islamic Centers throughout the United States in an effort to bring to attention those that posed a threat to the national security of the country.  Agents- consisting of former FBI, CIA, and U.S. military counterintelligence and counterterrorism personnel –  discovered that out of the initial 100 (mosques and Islamic centers) mapped, 75 were preaching sermons calling for insurrection and jihad.  Such places also had Saudi-trained Imams.

The site of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero is hallowed ground – it is 600 feet from Ground Zero (less than 2 football fields) – directly on top of bodies of the men and women who were murdered there. We are in an ideological war and the ideology that motivated the atrocities of 9/11 is radical Islam and its perpetual war against non-Muslims. It is self-deceiving and self-destructive to pretend that this is not so.
This is not my opinion, this is fact – said by Osama bin Laden himself:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, “and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah (Osama bin Laden)

Our history is replete with examples of ideological fanatics running wars and committing atrocities. A center dedicated to glorifying and spreading the very same ideology that motivated the heinous murders of 9/11, built on the site of those murders, is offensive to the victims and would be testimony to our moral and ethical weakness as a society.
We are in a war with an opposing ideology whose purpose, through jihad is to cause our destruction. There is nothing at stake in this but everything we stand for.