Hisham Elzanaty, the majority owner of the former Burlington Coat Factory, apparently is looking to use his controlling interest in the property to both force a sale of it and to move the planned mosque to an existing building further away from Ground Zero. Yet the story within the story is the stark evidence that mainstream media outlets are either blatantly in the tank for a mosque overlooking Ground Zero or ignorant of the facts with which to do credible reporting. Either way, their news divisions have not done their homework on Sharif El-Gamal, Imam Rauf, or the money behind the mosque.
Elzanaty obviously wants to move the mosque to a 6-story building near the Brooklyn Bridge. According to Fox 5 NY TV reporter Charles Leaf, Elzanaty says, “It was his idea to put a mosque in lower Manhattan … not [Sharif] El-Gamal and not the imam, Rauf, and its his money (Elzanaty’s) that purchased the building. He says his whole intent from the get-go was simply to provide a proper place to pray for Muslims in lower Manhattan.” Sharif El-Gamal disputes Elzanaty’s control and says there have been no discussions about moving the mosque.
To begin to understand this, first listen to this brief interview, conducted this afternoon by WOR talk radio host Steve Malzberg, of retired FDNY and 9/11 survivor Tim Brown of theBravest.com:
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Watch Charles Leaf’s Fox 5 report from Tuesday night. A Muslim who worked on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center survived 9/11; he wants the mosque moved away from Ground Zero. Elzanaty’s lawyer confirms who controls the investment:
Then see Ron Allen’s report for the Today Show from this morning:
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Then see Tim Brown’s Fox & Friends interview that immediately followed Sharif El-Gamal’s Today Show interview:
You can view El-Gamal’s interview here, as well as see Charles Leaf on with Fox 5 TV this morning.
Note that NBC’s Matt Laurer alleges to El-Gamal, “Some of the discussion has been well thought out, measured; a lot has been bitter and personal against you.” Yet Laurer did not ask him about the $576,312 dollars Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan received from Qatar just before the Factory was purchased for $4.85 million in cash, both his and Imam Rauf’s conflicting statements on whether they will accept more donations from Iran and Middle Eastern nations, or for his opinion on Wahhabists having already funded three-quarters of the mosques and Islamic centers in America.
El-Gamal says terrorists have “hijacked my religion.” Muslims have conducted more that 16,000 deadly attacks since 9/11 and they murdered more than 83,000 people of all faiths. While far from every Muslim is a terrorist, nearly every current-day terrorist is a Muslim.
As an adult, Sharif El-Gamal has been arrested for soliciting a prostitute (in addition to being arrested for assault, with a total of seven arrests on his record). Imam Rauf says a “strip joint” near to Ground Zero and the Factory refutes it as sacred ground. The families of the 2,976 men, women, and children murdered on 9/11 did not choose where their loved ones were slaughtered. We will leave to another day to detail the government sanctioned perversions in practice in many Islamic nations yet the arrest, tax, and landlord records of those involved with the Ground Zero mosque provides them no moral authority to designate what is and is not America’s sacred ground.
We are far from done reporting all we now know about Imam Rauf, the money, and his associations. Before we continue, is it too much to ask that the mainstream media catch up and report the facts to the American people?
Say what? Proselytizing for Islam from the "
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Way too much to ask! Nobody should be expecting them too so we should each do our own part to do what we can. Thanks for having this site.
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