Charlotte Observer's Ground Zero Mosque Dhimmitude

Jack Betts, the associate editor of the Charlotte Observer, wrote an op-ed piece last Sunday about an ad by a Republican contender in the 2nd congressional district of North Carolina. The ad by Renee Ellmers is critical of the Ground Zero Mosque and questions her opponent, Dem. Rep. Bob Etheridge, on his position of the matter.

Mr. Betts believes that criticism of this project will encourage the “extremist” by letting them believe they're winning the war because of our “religious intolerance.” Mr. Betts obviously doesn’t understand that Islam is a political ideology in the guise of a religion. It doesn’t matter what we say or what we do, they are at war with us no matter what.


Mr. Betts succinctly points out that the proposed mosque is actually a “community center” and that the agent of this benevolent facility, Imam Rauf is an upstanding citizen of the community:

In New York, Feisal Abdul Rauf, a graduate of Columbia University and a longtime New York Giants fan, proposes to build a community center that would include a restaurant, swimming pool, day care center, gymnasium, classrooms, a memorial to the victims of 9-11 and an Islamic prayer room. Rauf, imam of a New York mosque, is vice chairman of the Interfaith Center of New York who has, the New Yorker magazine reports, conducted sensitivity training for FBI agents and police. "He denounces terrorism in general and the 9-11 attacks in particular, often and at length," the magazine said

Imam Rauf denounces terrorism except of course those acts committed by Hamas and Hezbollah. I wonder if Mr. Betts knows the meaning of the word: taqiyya

Mr. Betts continues his handwringing piece by refuting the historical assertions the ad makes that Muslims build victory mosques on the ruins of conquered civilizations:

And as the News & Observer reported the other day, the mosques Ellmers' ad cited were not "victory mosques." Notions that Muslims built mosques to celebrate those victories "are sheer flights of fancy with no historical testimony to support it," Duke University associate professor of Islamic studies Ebrahim Moosa said.


The Dome of the Rock was built 50 years after Muslims captured Jerusalem as a shrine where pilgrims could visit the site where, they believe, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to accept a message from God, the newspaper reported. The building cited in Cordoba was constructed 73 years after Muslims toppled that city. The building is now a cathedral. The Blue Mosque in Istanbul was built more than 150 years after Constantinople fell.

The News and Observer made no statements about the Dome of the Rock, see link below. But let’s look at how the indigenous population of “Palestine” was treated by the invading Muslims summarized by the historian Bat Ye’or:

Abu Bakr organized the invasion of Syria [Syro-Palestine] which Muhammad had already envisaged. He gathered tribes from the Hijaz, Najd, and Yemen and advised Abu Ubayda, in charge of operations in the Golan, to plunder the countryside, but due to a lack of adequate weaponry, to refrain from attacking towns. Consequently, the whole Gaza region up to Cesara was sacked and devastated in the campaign of 634. Four thousand Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan peasants who defended their land were massacred. The villages of the Negev were pillaged by Amr b. al-As, while the Arabs overran the countryside, cut communications, and made road perilous. Towns such as Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, Cesarea, Nablus, and Beth Shean were isolated and closed their gates. In his sermon on Christmas day 634, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, lamented over the impossibility of going on pilgrimage to Bethlehem, as was the custom because the Christians were being forcibly kept in Jerusalem: “not detained by tangible bonds, but chained and nailed by fear of the Saracens,” whose “savage, barbarous and bloody sword” kept them locked up in town….Sophronius, in his sermon on the Day of the Epiphany 636, bewailed the destruction of the churches and monasteries, the sacked towns, the fields laid waste, the villages burned down by the nomads who were overrunning the country. In a letter the same year to Sergius, the patriarch of Constantinople, he mentions the ravages wrought by the Arabs. Thousands of people perished in 639, victims of the famine and plague that resulted from these destructions.

The countryside [in Syro-Palestine, Iraq, Persia, and Armenia] suffered constant razzias, while those who escaped the sword swelled the contingents of enslaved women and children, shared out among the soldiers after the deduction of the fifth [share of the “booty”] reserved for the caliph.

According to [the Muslim chronicler] Baladhuri (d. 892 C.E.), 40,000 Jews lived in Caesarea alone at the Arab conquest, after which all trace of them is lost.

So, the Muslims built the Dome on the Rock after they destroyed and enslaved the indigenous population. It’s true the Blue Mosque was built a 150 years after the conquest of Constantinople, but Mr. Betts failed to mention that the Hagia Sophia, a cathedral, was converted into a mosque almost immediately; and he completely distorted the Cordoba Mosque. The Brussels Journal tells that tale:

All the churches in that city [Cordoba] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent, but the possession of this fane [church or temple] had been guaranteed by treaty. For several years the treaty was observed; but when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque. The [Muslim] Government having approved of the scheme, the Christians were compelled to hand over half of the edifice. This was clearly an act of spoilation, as well as an infraction of the treaty. Some years later, Abd-er Rahman I requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral.

This kind of editorial is what usually comes out of the Charlotte Observer; that’s why this paper deserves its moniker “The Disturber.”

Source:  http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4517
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/09/26/1717700/religion-prejudice-and-9-11.html
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/09/23/697836/ad-blasts-victory-mosque-in-ny.html
The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew Bostom