Islamists in "Moderate" Disguise are Still Islamists

Carol Platt Liebau | September 10, 2010 5:00 PM

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, M. Zuhdi Jasser -- an American patriot who is also a Muslim -- has some questions for Imam Rauf:

Imam, tell me if you can look into the eyes of children who lost a parent on 9/11 and convince them that this immodest Islamic center benefits them. How will it in any way aid counterterrorism efforts or keep one American any safer? You willfully ignore what American Muslims most need—an open call for reformation that unravels the bigoted and shoddy framework of political Islam and separates mosque and state.

There are certainly those who are prejudiced against Muslims and who are against mosques being built anywhere, and even a few who wish to burn the Quran. But most voices in this case have been very clear that for every American freedom of religion is a right, but that it is not right to make one's religion a global political statement with a towering Islamic edifice that casts a shadow over the memorials of Ground Zero.

Jasser is right, of course. Also rightly, he concludes that "Islamists in 'moderate' disguise are still Islamists. In their own more subtle ways, the WTC mosque organizers end up serving the same aims of the separatist and supremacist wings of political Islam."

That's exactly what Rauf is doing. And my prediction is that the agenda of Rauf and his ilk will be increasingly revealed, as they continue to reject the efforts of people of good will (like Donald Trump) to resolve the issue satisfactorily for all. That's because for the imam, there's only one satisfactory outcome: A mosque standing in the shadows of Ground Zero.