Feds Funding Ground Zero Imam's Mideast Trip
NEW YORK POST: The imam behind a plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero is set to depart on a multi-country jaunt to the Middle East funded by the State Department -- raising concerns that taxpayers may be helping him with the controversial project's $100 million fund-raising goal.

Feisal Abdul Rauf is taking the publicly funded trip to foster "greater understanding" about Islam and Muslim communities in the United States, the State Department confirmed yesterday.

"He is a distinguished Muslim cleric," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, when asked about the journey, reportedly to include stops in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar.

"I think we are in the process of arranging for him to travel as part of this program, and it is to foster a greater understanding about the region around the world among Muslim-majority communities," he added.

Crowley said no fund-raising for the mosque and cultural center during the trip would be permitted. "That would not be something he could do as part of our program," he said.

Abdul Rauf said funds for the center will come from Muslims and members of his congregation.

But a London-based Arabic-language newspaper that interviewed Abdul Rauf reported that he says he also will collect money from Muslim and Arab nations around the world -- raising the possibility his goodwill mission could help him build contacts in oil-rich states. >>> Geoff Earle in DC and Brendan Scott in Albany | Tuesday, August 10, 2010

HT: Atlas Shrugs >>>

La mosquée de Ground Zero, le projet qui embarrasse Obama
Le projet d'ouverture d'une mosquée aux abords de Ground Zero pourrait empoisonner la campagne des démocrates à quelques mois d'élections cruciales pour Barack Obama. Photo : Le Point
LE POINT: Dans l'État de New York, l'élection du prochain gouverneur se jouera, à l'automne, autour de l'ouverture controversée d'une mosquée près de Ground Zero. Le projet, initié par un imam pourtant réputé pour sa grande modération et défendu par le maire de la "Grosse Pomme" Michael Bloomberg, déchire la classe politique. L'édile sans étiquette y voit un symbole de paix et de tolérance, mais les conservateurs ne l'entendent pas de cette oreille.

Au mieux, ils jugent le projet indélicat pour les familles de victimes des attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Au pire, ils y voient une véritable insulte à la mémoire des morts. Le républicain Rick Lazio a donc mis au défi son adversaire démocrate Andrew Cuomo de participer à un débat exclusivement centré sur cette question. Quant au candidat des ultra-conservateurs du Tea Party, Carl Paladino, il a déjà fait savoir que, s'il était élu, il pèserait de tout son poids pour empêcher la création de cette mosquée. >>> Par Chloé Durand-Parenti | Mardi 10 Août 2010

Shut Up, He ExplainedMayor Michael Bloomberg to New Yorkers
THE WEEKLY STANDARD – EDITORIAL: Last Tuesday, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke on the subject of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. His remarks will be read with curiosity by future generations of Americans, who will look back in astonishment at the self-deluding pieties and self-destructive dogmas that are held onto, at once smugly and desperately, by today’s liberal elites. Our liberation from those dogmas, and from those elites, is underway across the nation. But it’s worth taking a look at Bloomberg’s speech, if only to remind us of what we need to ascend from so our descendants can look back with curiosity at the ethos to which we did not succumb.

As is the way of contemporary liberals, Bloomberg spoke at a very high level of abstraction. He appealed to the principle of religious toleration, while never mentioning the actual imam who is responsible for and would control the planned Ground Zero mosque. To name Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf might invite a consideration of his background, funding, and intentions. Do Rauf and his backers believe in the principles underlying the “inspiring symbol of liberty” that greets immigrants to the United States and before which Bloomberg stood? Bloomberg didn’t say. It apparently doesn’t matter. Toleration means asking nothing, criticizing nothing, saying nothing, about whom or what one is tolerating. This is the Sergeant Schultz standard of toleration: I know nothing.

Knowing nothing, or wishing to know nothing, about the mosque, Bloomberg took it upon himself to lecture his fellow New Yorkers on their obligation to be true to “the best part of ourselves.” That part is apparently the part of us that allows at once for intellectual obfuscation and moral preening. Bloomberg never acknowledged that sane and tolerant people might object to a 15-story Islamic community center and mosque right next to Ground Zero. He could not be bothered to take seriously the reservations and objections of a clear majority of his constituents. “In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists—and we should not stand for that.” So public sentiment be damned. There’s nothing to be learned from the ignorant and bigoted residents of New York.

Instead, Bloomberg lectured: “On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?’ ” True, certainly true. But Bloomberg did not permit himself to ask what vision of god, what set of beliefs, inspired those who set those buildings aflame. Bloomberg said that it was our “spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.” But attacked by whom? Bloomberg wouldn’t say. >>> William Kristol | Monday, August 16, 2010

How Does Obama Measure Up? Some nonpartisan benchmarks
THE WEEKLY STANDARD: President Obama is under water in public opinion polls, judged more unfavorably than favorably. He now pops up in Republican campaign ads that link Democratic candidates to his unpopular administration. And a growing list of Democrats would rather he stay away while they are running for office this year.

He’s a political liability to his party. But that may not be the best way to rate Obama’s 19-month tenure in the White House. There’s a nonpartisan, nonideological measure that’s a bit subjective but still renders a valid verdict. Created by Fred Greenstein, professor of politics emeritus at Princeton, it uses six criteria to evaluate the performance of a president.

Greenstein has applied it to presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton—that is, presidents no longer in office. But it’s also fair to use the six criteria to test how a sitting president is doing. Here are the criteria as applied to Obama.

PUBLIC COMMUNICATION. This was Obama’s strength as a candidate, but it’s been a glaring weakness as president. He’s a good explainer but a poor persuader. He doesn’t inspire. He devoted dozens of speeches in 2009 to touting his health care plan, including a nationally televised address to Congress last September. Public support dwindled. The program passed only because of large Democratic majorities in Congress elected in 2008 and likely to disappear in the midterm election in November.

Because presidents can always command an audience, they’re tempted to appear in public too often. Ubiquity undermines the office. The public loses interest, and the effectiveness of the bully pulpit dissolves. Every president since Ronald Reagan has succumbed to this temptation, Obama especially. The worst example: He was interviewed on TV during the halftime of the Duke-Georgetown basketball game last winter. >>> Fred Barnes | Monday, August 16, 2010

Listen to This Bloody Idiot!

Pat Condell: Ban the Burqah!

Muslim Group Holds 'Anti-terrorism' Summer Camp
THE GUARDIAN: Hundreds attend three-day al-Hidayah event at University of Warwick campus to learn how to fight arguments of extremists

Young Muslims arrive at al-Hidayah 2010 at the University of Warwick campus. Photograph: The Guardian
After a modest breakfast came the first choice of the day: to take part in sporting activities ranging from five-a-side football to archery, or to join the Sunday morning nature stroll around the campus. Then it was down to the serious business: a series of lectures, workshops and presentations, punctuated by prayers and countless impromptu street-corner debates.

This is al-Hidayah 2010, a three-day event that kicked off on Saturday and attended by 1,300 Muslims – mainly young men and women – that has been billed as the UK's first anti-terror camp.

Devotees of Muslim scholar Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri have gathered at the University of Warwick's campus to be taught practical ways of countering extremist views in their schools, universities and communities. They have been learning how to engage with people expressing extremist views and are being directed to passages in the Qur'an and other Islamic texts to allow them to argue against them.

The camp follows the publication by Qadri, founder of the moderate Minhaj-ul-Quran International (MQI) movement, of a headline-grabbing "fatwa on terrorism", a 600-page volume claiming to "remove decisively" any theological justification for Islamist terror.

"People have long asked where are the moderate Muslim organisations? What are they doing to combat extremism," said MQI spokesman Shahid Mursaleen. "We are trying to train young people here to counter the arguments they hear from the radicals, to give them the knowledge so they can question the extremists and contradict their ideology." >>> Stephen Morris | Sunday, August 08, 2010

Other articles on Tahir ul-Qadri >>>

Richard Dawkins Sparks Outcry After Likening the Burka to a Bin Liner
THE TELEGRAPH: Richard Dawkins, the outspoken atheist, has courted fresh controversy by likening the burka to a bin liner.

The 69-year-old author and Oxford academic said he is filled with “visceral revulsion” when he sees women wearing the traditional Islamic covering.

But he held back from advocating a ban on the all-enveloping cloak, insisting that such legislation would fly in the face of Britain’s liberal tradition.

Professor Dawkins referred to the burka as a “full bin-liner thing” in an interview with the Radio Times in which he discussed his forthcoming documentary on the dangers of faith schools.

He has sparked fury among Muslim groups, who have accused him of being “ignorant” and “Islamophobic”.

But he stood by his remarks last night, telling the Daily Mail: “I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.” >>> Heidi Blake | Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Pat Condell: Stop the Mosque from Being Built at Ground Zero

This Disgusting Individual – Michael Bloomberg – Talks Crap!

Make Makkah the Most Beautiful City: Prince Khaled
Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal receives Pakistani Consul General Abdul Salik Khan at his office in Jeddah on Sunday. Photograph: Arab News
ARAB NEWS: JEDDAH: Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal has emphasized the need for preparing a well thought out and comprehensive development plan for Makkah to make it one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

“We’ll be responsible before God and coming generations if we do not work to make Makkah one of the most beautiful and modern cities in the world,” the governor told a meeting of top executives.

He said Saudi Arabia has the potentials to achieve this goal. “We have a strong and determined leadership that provides all-out support to this direction. We have also enough funds and good people who are capable of achieving this objective.” >>> Galal Fakkar | Sunday, August 08, 2010

Iranian Lawyer – Mohammad Mostafaei – “I Am Crazy About Human Rights” (Exclusive Interview)

Oman Says No Plans to Ban BlackBerry Services
ARAB NEWS: MUSCAT: Oman has no plans to block BlackBerry services, the small Gulf state said on Monday, as regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia worked with the device's maker on a solution that could avert a ban of some services.

Offering the services was part of its "philosophy of free market in the sector," Oman's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said in a statement reported by state news agency ONA. >>> Reuters | Monday, August 09, 2010

The Obama Presidency Increasingly Resembles a Modern-day Ancien Régime: Extravagant and Out of Touch with the American People
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – NILE GARDINER: What the great French historian Alexis de Tocqueville would make of today’s Obama administration were he alive today is anyone’s guess. But I would wager that the author of L’Ancien Régime and Democracy in America would be less than impressed with the extravagance and arrogance on display among the White House elites that rule America as though they had been handed some divine right to govern with impunity.

It is the kind of impunity that has been highlighted on the world stage this week by Michelle Obama’s hugely costly trip to Spain, which has prompted a New York Post columnist Andrea Tantaros to dub the First Lady a contemporary Marie Antoinette. As The Telegraph reports, while the Obamas are covering their own vacation expenses such as accommodation, the trip may cost US taxpayers as much as $375,000 in terms of secret service security and flight costs on Air Force Two.

The timing of this lavish European vacation could not have come at a worse moment, when unemployment in America stands at 10 percent, and large numbers of Americans are fighting to survive financially in the wake of the global economic downturn. It sends a message of indifference, even contempt, for the millions of Americans who are struggling just to feed their families on a daily basis and pay the mortgage, while the size of the national debt balloons to Greek-style proportions. >>> Nile Gardiner | Saturday, August 07, 2010

Michelle Obama’s super-glitzy holiday with Sasha in Marbella is probably costing the American taxpayer at least one million dollars. Any estimates which are less than this are risible.

To any person with sound judgement, this is an incredible sum to spend on a holiday in these austere times, especially for someone in public office. The average American is hurting, and hurting badly. How sensible is it, then, for the Prez, or his wife, to go on such an extravagant trip abroad? The fact that it can be done doesn’t mean that it should be done.

Excuse me for asking, but what was the purpose of the trip? Was it to take Sasha on a nice short break? If it was, then Obama and Michelle are guilty of giving their children false values. As the leader of a nation which is broke, and in deep depression, neither he nor his wife should spend taxpayers’ money as though there’s no tomorrow; because at this rate, there really will be no tomorrow!

In times of severe economic hardship, people in public office should show solidarity with the people that put them into office: They need to suffer a little too. That way, they gain in support and respect. The way that the Obamas are doing things, all they do is lose in popularity and increase people’s contempt for them. Obama will surely pay a heavy price at the next election. – © Mark

Related >>>

U.S. and EU Fail to Isolate Iran
LOS ANGELES TIMES: China, Russia, India and Turkey move into the lucrative void left by U.S. and EU sanctions that aim to halt Iran's nuclear program.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at a 2007 ceremony celebrating nuclear technology at the nuclear plant in Natanz. Photograph: Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington — Efforts by the United States and its European allies to build a united front to halt Iran's nuclear program are facing increasingly bold resistance from China, Russia, India and Turkey, which are rushing to boost their economies by seizing investment opportunities in defiance of sanctions imposed by the West.

The Obama administration and the European Union opted to try to toughen United Nations sanctions against Iran with their own unilateral restrictions on foreign companies that do business with Tehran's energy sector, hoping that squeezing the country's most lucrative industry can force the Islamist government to bend on its nuclear program.

But the four countries condemned the additional sanctions, and in recent weeks went further: Since the new U.S. sanctions took effect July 1, all four have moved ahead with trade and investment deals that violate the sanctions or threaten to do so in the future.

The countries say they will honor the weaker set of sanctions imposed on Iran in June by the U.N. Security Council, but are under no obligation to follow the more stringent rules that the United States and European Union tacked on in July.

The U.S. sanctions prohibit petroleum-related sales to Iran, yet China and Turkey have sold huge cargoes of gasoline to Tehran, and Russian officials say they will begin shipping gasoline as well later this month, according to industry officials. The four countries also have signed deals or opened talks on investments worth billions of dollars in Iran's oil and gas fields, petrochemical plants and pipelines.

The countries "are making it very clear they are not going to go along with the new American and European efforts to ratchet up pressure on Iran," said Ben Rhode, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Continue reading and comment >>> Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times | Sunday, August 08, 2010

Britain Begins to Feel the Pain of Austerity Cuts
THE NEW YORK TIMES: LONDON — Last month, the British government abolished the U.K. Film Council, the Health Protection Agency and dozens of other groups that regulate, advise and distribute money in the arts, health care, industry and other areas.

It seemed shockingly abrupt, a mass execution without appeal. But it was just a tiny taste of what is to come.

Like a shipwrecked sailor on a starvation diet, the new British coalition government is preparing to shrink down to its bare bones as it cuts expenditures by $130 billion over the next five years and drastically scales back its responsibilities. The result, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a research group, will be “the longest, deepest sustained period of cuts to public services spending” since World War II.

Until recently, the cuts were just election talking points, inchoate warnings of a new age of austerity. But now the pain has begun. And as the government begins its abrupt retrenchment, the implications, complications and confusions in the process are beginning to emerge. >>> Sarah Lyall | Monday, August 09, 2010

Ground Zero Mosque Defies Logic
THE AUSTRALIAN: NOW that Tom Friedman in The New York Times has endorsed the construction of an Islamic centre at Ground Zero, no one can be against it.

But since he has not even made a real argument for it, aside from recounting his experience at a Broadway jamboree in the White House, where the only Muslim name was the President's middle one, which is nothing more than a non sequitur, the column stands alone with neither evidence nor logic.

Still, everybody is for it . . . except Abe Foxman and his Anti-Defamation League who are correct but had better keep quiet lest they bare the stigma of prejudice that comes from being against something whose only justification is that it has no reason.
So what is the real positive excuse for a mosque at Ground Zero? Perhaps to demonstrate that we don't hold anything against the men who did it.

Or to show that we have nothing against the culture from which they came. And nothing against the societies across all Islam that cheered the news of the 3000 dead.

But, of course, these are not accurate assertions of our emotions, then or now. Even as we try to understand them, we despise them. No mosque built on the ground where mothers and fathers, children and grandparents, relatives and friends and lovers were sacrificed will ever console or conciliate.

At best, it will remind of the cool brutality and fierce passion that animated these ghoulish people of faith to murder on a scale so huge almost to daunt the imagination. Ironically it will backfire because it will (rightly) remind visitors of the religious identity of the perpetrators. >>> Marty Peretz, The Australian | Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Pat Condell: The Faith of Idiots

Orthodox Attitudes to Gay People Shift
THE GUARDIAN: A statement on homosexuality that has garnered more than 100 rabbinic signatures is a watershed for Orthodox Judaism

If you think the Christian world has a problem with gay people, you should try orthodox Judaism. For centuries homosexuality has been taboo; it's not what nice Jewish boys or girls do. The biblical proscription against "men lying with men as though with a woman" (Leviticus 20:13) is considered the very bedrock of Jewish morality. For traditional Judaism marriage is the highest state of social bonding – a true union of body and soul. Despite some odd exceptions in biblical and rabbinical literature, (Jeremiah is told by God to stay single, Ben Azzai, one of the greatest of the Mishnaic teachers, remains a bachelor by choice), even celibacy was frowned upon. Part of this opposition was no doubt based on a response to the cultural environment – pagan in the biblical era, Christian in the rabbinic one. But despite major shifts in sociological contexts, the ban against homosexuality was rigidly enforced throughout the centuries. Whilst in other areas the rabbis often showed great flexibility and understanding, this particular area remained off-limits.

In recent years, however, homosexuality, among even the most Orthodox sectors of Judaism, has become a growing feature of contemporary Jewish life. In both America and Israel – the world's two largest Jewish communities – it has not been uncommon for rabbis and others to "come out", often suffering the consequences that such a confession entails. Moreover, reports of homosexual relations between rabbi-teachers and their students have been a regular feature of news items in both communities. In Israel and the US these behaviours have been the subject of a number of feature and documentary films. Continue reading and comment >>> Mordechai Beck | Monday, August 09, 2010

Jewish Hardliners Crack Down on Fun in Israel
THE INDEPENDENT: It is the time of the year when school is out for Israel's ultraorthodox students. But this year, a Jewish morality police is patrolling in force to make sure they do not have too much fun.

Leading rabbis and heads of religious colleges, or the yeshivas, have warned students to continue their studies of the Torah, dress appropriately and avoid "the great danger, spiritually and concretely, of hitchhiking". The ultraorthodox, who make up roughly 10 per cent of all Israelis, live a closeted life. They voluntarily choose not to own a television or radio, and are barred from using the internet.

But Rabbi Mordechai Blau, leader of the group, Guardians of Sanctity and Education, feared that some temptations would simply prove too much, and deployed an army of snoopers to photograph members of the ultra-orthodox community, also known as Haredi, at a mixed-sex pop concert.

Revellers who ignored warnings to shun ultra-orthodox popstars from Brooklyn, New York, now face being slung out of their yeshivas, or having their children barred from attending the religious schools of their choice. >>> Catrina Stewat in Jerusalem | Monday, August 09, 2010