Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Ground Zero mosque development (NOTE: Rauf himself referred to the mosque as the “Ground Zero mosque” right from the start, so there is no need to post inane comments on that issue.) has been very secretive about his funding sources for the project, once known as the “Cordoba Initiative.”

We know that Rauf is conducting a whirlwind tour of the Islamic world, courtesy of US taxpayers, but we are told to believe that this is just a “goodwill tour” and has nothing to do with raising money for the $100 million mosque project.

Well, in the past two days, important information has begun to emerge about Rauf’s funding sources and, just as many suspected, they are overwhelmingly foreign and mostly tied to foreign governments.

Steve Emerson runs an organization called the Investigative Project on Terrorism. IPT does a fabulous job of gathering, interpreting and reporting on terrorism and Jihad. Yesterday, they published a report about the financial status of one of Rauf’s current non-profit organizations: the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA).

Interestingly, Imam Rauf’s ASMA received $1,382,000 in grants last year. Of that amount, $576,000—or 42% of all grants—came from the government of Qatar. Qatar is, of course, home to Al Jazeera, the news network of choice for Al Qaeda. Al Jazeera is in fact owned by the emir of Qatar, the monarch that rules the country. In other words, 42% of Imam Rauf’s non-profit organization’s funding came from the same foreign government that owns and controls Al Jazeera.

The IPT article contains a great deal of other sourced information as well…

Meanwhile, over at Investor’s Business Daily today, they have revealed their own research and found that Imam Rauf’s ASMA is also funded to the tune of $300,000 by the regime in Saudi Arabia.

Also included in the IBD article is further information tying Rauf to the Muslim Brotherhood, the political wing of the global Jihadist insurgency. (The Muslim Brotherhood is something that Americans need to familiarize themselves with. I will be submitting a report on the Muslim Brotherhood to The Hayride next week.)

In other words, without foreign government donations from Islamist regimes, Imam Rauf would probably have to find other work.

This raises two serious questions:

1. Why is the US State Department sending someone who is funded by foreign governments on a mission to those governments as a representative of the USA?
2. Imam Rauf’s prior and current funding comes overwhelmingly from foreign sources. Why are we not supposed to be concerned about where the funding for the Ground Zero mosque is coming from?