The Theft of Ground Zero

The most egregious aspect of the Ground Zero 
mosque controversy is something that 
people don't think or talk about: the 
incalculable theft involved in this second 
wave of the 9/11 attacks.  These Islamic 
supremacists are grifting the system big time.  
And yet the biggest theft of all is one that 
everyone has overlooked. 

The biggest theft of all is that they have 
stolen Ground Zero itself from America like 
thieves in the night.  They have ripped it from 
our collective soul and national psyche.

Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan have stolen Ground Zero.  They have kidnapped it.  Hijacked 
it.  Before these heartless Islamic supremacists declared their stealth jihad, Ground Zero 
was like Pearl Harbor or Antietam or Gettysburg: the site of a catastrophic loss of life 
through an unprecedented act of war.  Ground Zero was the site of the largest attack on 
American soil in our history.  Ground Zero was where we would mourn our dead.  
Ground Zero was where moms, dads, aunts, uncles, kids, construction workers, 
stockbrokers, waiters, postmen, and other ordinary Americans became the infantry -- 
soldiers without uniforms.  Ground Zero was hallowed ground. 

But no more.  Not since these raiders came in the dark of night with their fifteen-story mega-
mosque.  They have succeeded in stealing our memory, our cherished remembrance of 
that horrible day.  They stole Ground Zero.  Before the advent of Daisy Khan and Feisal 
Abdul Rauf, Ground Zero was just that: it was September 11.  But now Ground Zero is 
all about a mosque.  It has morphed (like the Ground Zero mosque controversy itself) 
into an angst-ridden conflict about insensitivity toward Muslims, "backlash" against 
Muslims, and American attitudes toward Islam.

Remember also that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been unmasked as a New Jersey slumlord.  
He just had his slum buildings placed in receivership despite getting taxpayer dollars to make
repairs.  Rauf snagged more than $2 million in public financing to renovate low-income 
apartments; he kept the money and never made the repairs. He took the money and forced 
good people to live with vermin and in dilapidated conditions. 

Yet not once did any American media outlet ask him where all that money went.

There is more.  Rauf and his wife Daisy listed their one-bedroom apartment as 
a mosque in order to conduct what appears to amount to tax fraud.  Rauf sought "church 
status" -- to avoid paying taxes.  He got the wildly valuable tax-exempt status for his 
Muslim organization after deceiving the IRS by claiming that as many as five hundred of its 
members prayed in that tiny one-bedroom apartment (which was also listed as Daisy's 
residence).

Meanwhile, we, the American people, fund Rauf's State Department junkets to terror states 
-- and now the Ground Zero mosque organizers want even more tax money.  Yet Daisy 
Khan said recently on ABC News that "we don't want use taxpayer money."  This was yet 
another outrageous lie.  In fact, Daisy Khan and Imam Rauf may float public debt to 
raise the money for the Ground Zero mega-mosque.  And outrageously, they have 
applied for a $5-million grant from the 9/11 fund to rebuild lower Manhattan.

The language of morality is in such grave disorder today that it is Daisy Khan and 
Feisal Abdul Rauf who are lauded and venerated, revered, and respected, despite their 
long record of dishonesty and deceit.  Rauf is even a nominee for Time Magazine's 
Person of the Year, while those few who dare speak about the real meaning of Ground 
Zero and why it disrespectful and dishonorable to build a giant mosque there are kicked 
to the curb like so much rubble -- to paraphrase Rauf's description of the human remains 
at the World Trade Center.