SIOA Appeals to Cordoba Initiative to Drop Ground Zero Mosque Project In the Name of Mutual Respect and Understanding

NEW YORK, June 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The executive director of the human rights group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), Pamela Geller, has issued an open letter to the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, the leaders of the Cordoba Initiative, asking them to act according to the respect and understanding they espouse by dropping their plans to build an Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero.

SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

Join SIOA's Facebook page here.

The Cordoba Initiative's mission statement says that the group hopes to create among Jews, Christians and Muslims an "atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago."

However, scholars have established that Christians and Jews were actually subjugated under harsh Islamic rule in Cordoba eight hundred years ago. Islamic scholar Raymond Ibrahim points out that "eight hundred years ago,' i.e., around 1200, the fanatical Almohids -- ideological predecessors of al-Qaeda -- were ravaging Cordoba, where 'Christians and Jews were given the choice of conversion, exile, or death.'"

Geller accordingly wrote in her open letter: "Interfaith dialogue is a two-way street... In many of the emails I receive, many Muslims understand the pain 'Cordoba' inflicts -- not just the idea but the name itself (evoking Islamic conquest over the West)."

She added an appeal to Rauf and Khan: "I call upon your conscience, your goodness, your love of America, to move you to reconsider. More rallies will be staged -- tens of thousands will show. People might get hurt in a sit-in trying to stop the ground breaking of a mosque looking down on Ground Zero. Why? In the interest of building bridges?"

Geller then offered an alternative that would demonstrate real interest in interfaith harmony: "Can we talk about this? Can we discuss this? Can the building have a church and a synagogue as well as a mosque? Or perhaps no mosque at all -- much the way community centers like the 92nd Street Y or the YWCA, to which you have compared your plan, don't have churches or synagogues."

"As a man of the clergy," wrote Geller to Rauf, "you must understand the pain this is causing for the victims who mourn their dead, for Americans who mourn their country's losses...You can not have wanted to create such sorrow." The open letter concluded:

What can we do to get you to withdraw this plan? Should we try to raise the money to release you from this tragic mistake? How can we help you? We want to work with you and do the right thing, build bridges and show each other mutual understanding and mutual respect. As a religious man, you would never mean to cause such overwhelming sadness and grief.

Imam Rauf, please withdraw this plan and show the world real understanding and kindness and empathy.

Neither Imam Rauf nor Daisy Khan have yet commented on the SIOA open letter.

SIOA has begun a petition to the Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan based on this open letter, asking them to drop plans for the mega-mosque. Sign it here.

Pamela Geller, Executive Director of SIOA and the American Freedom Defense Initiative, is the founder and publisher of the award-winning news and commentary blog AtlasShrugs.com. She is also a regular columnist for Andrew Breitbart's Big Government and Big Journalism. Geller is the author (with Robert Spencer) of the soon-to-be-released book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton) (Simon & Schuster). The book carries enthusiastic endorsements from Geert Wilders, Andrew C. McCarthy, Brad Thor, Caroline Glick, David Horowitz, and Mark Steyn.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller at [email protected].

SOURCE Stop Islamization of America

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