From the truth is stranger than fiction file, comes this report that a “mysterious” Muslim group has bought space adjacent to the “Ground Zero” World Trade Center site in New York City, with the intention of placing a large mosque there.

The Imam of the new mosque will be Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder and CEO of the American Society for Muslim Advancement.

Rauf paid nearly $5 million in cash for the plot, which raises all sorts of questions.

First of all, where did this money come from? Rauf’s organization has an impressive list of donors, but it seems implausible that it would be so well-funded that it could plop down $5 million in cash on Manhattan real estate. Maybe there is nothing more to the story, but it does raise questions of possible foreign influence due to the ownership system of the overwhelming majority of mosques in America. More to the point, a large percentage of mosques and Islamic centers in the US are owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

As Discover the Networks puts it: “Because NAIT controls the purse strings of these many properties, it can exercise ultimate authority over what they teach and what activities they conduct. Specifically, the organization seeks to ensure that the institutions which fall under its financial influence endorse the principles of Shari’ah (Islamic law) and Wahhabism (an extremist form of Islam).”

NAIT was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism financing trial in US history (NAIT was also revealed to be a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in captured documents stipulated to in that successful trial.).

NAIT is widely believed to be funded mainly by donations from foreign Muslim entities, especially from Saudi Arabia, which explains their Salafi (Wahhabi) orientation. Of course, it is not known at this time if NAIT is involved in the purchase of the building near Ground Zero in New York.

That left us with the task of doing more research into Feisal Abdul Rauf and his American Society for Muslim Advancement.

Rauf portrays himself as a “moderate” Muslim, but he has gone on the record with some troubling comments:

In an interview with BeliefNet.com back in 2005, Rauf said some things that raise red flags. Actually, the whole interview raises red flags. It compares violent Bible verses with similar verses in the Quran, creating a straw man argument. First of all, it is a mistake to equate the Bible with the Quran. Muslims believe that the Quran was written by allah. It is more accurate to equate the Quran with the Ten Commandments in Christianity. This is an important point because allah’s word is considered infallible in Islam, so fundamentalist Muslims take it literally. Tied into this fact is the further fact that the Quran operates in the principle of abrogation. Later verses (called Surahs) abrogate earlier verses. The violent verses in the Quran are the later ones; they abrogate earlier, peaceful verses. So, Islamic fundamentalists take the Quran literally as allah’s word and the later verses in the Quran are the violent ones.

BeliefNet.com ignores these facts and also ignores the distinction between the Old and New Testaments in Christianity and the Bible, but this is perhaps beyond the scope of this article.

Rauf claimed in the interview that there were no longer any examples of violence being preached in American mosques by Muslim Imams. This incredible statement flies in the face of the numerous Jihadist incidents and cases uncovered in the past year including one in which an Imam himself got into a shootout with the FBI, killing an FBI dog before being killed by the G-Men. Then there is the case of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan’s Imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who has fled to Yemen to escape justice. Here is one of al-Awlaki’s sermons:

Further into the BeliefNet.com article, Rauf cites the Spanish Inquisition as an example of “fascism” under Christianity. It’s too bad that no one bothered to point out that the magnitude of the Spanish Inquisition’s crimes were tiny compared to those of the Salafists and Khomeinists of modern Islam, who have massacred tens of thousands of people through terrorism, war and oppression. While it is true that fascism can and has occurred under Christianity, it is also true that, with very few exceptions (thanks largely to the United States military, by the way) Islam and fascism are synonymous. You can count on one hand the number of truly republican forms of government in the Islamic world, out of the 57-odd nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Rauf cites the case of Cat Stephens being detained on an airline flight as an example of oppression of Muslims. What he fails to say is that Cat Stephens was placed on a “Do Not Fly” list because his charitable foundation was part of the Union of Good, an umbrella group of 53 Muslim charities overseen by the Jihadist Shariah law scholar, Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi has been banned from entering the US or Britain because of his ties to terrorism and the Union of Good has been designated a terrorist entity by the US Treasury Department because it has provided funding to Jihadist terrorist organizations. In other words, Cat Stephens’s charitable foundation is part of a kind of a Jihadist “united way” which funds our enemies. You’re damn right he shouldn’t be allowed to fly in America…

Speaking of charities, in the BeliefNet.com interview, Rauf was asked about the fact that some Muslim charities had been funding terrorism. His response is troubling:

“To say that you have connections with terrorism is a very gray area. It’s like the accusation that Saddam Hussein had links to Osama bin Laden. Well, America had links to Osama bin Laden–does that mean that America is a terrorist country or has ties to terrorism? It’s that type of logic.”

Well, there are very many Islamic charities which have been tied to terrorism, as explained on Shariah Finance Watch.

Rauf is also the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative. The Initiative claims to want to improve Muslim-West relations, but one of its major projects is to rate the Shariah (Islamic law) compliance of Islamic nations. There is simply NO WAY to reconcile Shariah with Western values of freedom of expression, self-determination, representative government and liberty. Shariah is the enemy threat doctrine. It calls for Jihad as a duty of Muslims and specifically does NOT call for tolerance and respect of other faiths. Shariah is a barbaric, medieval code which is inherently totalitarian, expansionist and oppressive. Any organization which seeks to increase Shariah compliance in the world is inherently dangerous and threatening. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at what the Jihadists have to say about Shariah, again brought to you from Shariah Finance Watch.

More on the subject can be found here.

Keep in mind Rauf’s thoughts on Shariah from the article at the Cordoba Initiative web site:

In classical Islamic jurisprudence the ruler must be someone who is “wise and upholds the Shariah”, he explained.”

“Early scholars debated a third point: whether the ruler must also be pious.”

“And the answer is no. As long as the ruler is committed to upholding the Shariah, piety should not be a hurdle to reigning over people.”

Then there is the question of the American Society for Muslim Advancement. The Militant Islam Monitor did an exhaustive analysis of the organization back in 2007 and discovered that there was much about its philosophy that is very troubling and completely opposed to Western civilization and values.

This is the organization that is building a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero. This is clearly a signal by the Islamists that they are here and they are growing. They will use our own freedoms and liberties to infiltrate their Shariah code into our society in what has been called a “Stealth Jihad.”