In the course of a Boston Globe story about a dispute over a Muslim school and mosque that Muslims are planning to expand in Morton Grove, Illinois, this exchange is reported:
Many residents expressed concerns regarding what they called the “side issue” of outside funding. “I read that most of the mosques in France are being built with money from Saudi Arabia, from the Saudi royal family, and is that the case with you?” one resident asked Kaiseruddin, who has said that funding for the mosque would not come from outside the United States. Students often pass around collection boxes at Friday services.
John Mauck, a lawyer for the Muslim Education Center, says the learning process for residents has been gradual. “That’s not the question that would be asked if the Vatican were sending money for a church,” Mauck said of the Saudi funding question. “To say that type of thing, I think people aren’t thinking through whether they’re being biased in their fears.”
“That’s not the question that would be asked if the Vatican were sending money for a church”?? You know, there’s a reason for that: there is no evidence that the Vatican is funding international terrorism, and doing it through churches. Can the same thing be said for Saudi Arabia and the mosques it has established in the United States and around the world?
One would think that after all the publicity that Wahhabis have received, Mauck would not have been able to get away with a howler like that. But of course this is consistent with the strategy being used Congressman Peter King: distract and divert. Rebut questions about terrorist activity by charging that the questioner is just a bigot.