Rauf made wild statements like “the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims,” as Pamela Geller revealed here. We drew attention to his support for the jihad flotilla against Israel, his refusal to denounce Hamas (yes, he did after a great deal of public pressure), his slums and the disappearance of the money he received from the state of New Jersey to repair them, his tax-dodge one-bedroom apartment that he misrepresented as a mosque regularly attended by 500 people, and more. And clearly the Islamic supremacist organizers of the Ground Zero mega-mosque felt the heat: now Rauf is gone.
But his replacement, Abdullah Adhami, looks to be just as problematic. Is there no one they could find who is absolutely clear of ties to jihad terrorists and/or stealth jihadists? As Pamela details here, Adhami has praised Islamic supremacist imam Siraj Wahhaj: “Siraj Wahhaj is the voice of the spirit of Islam in America and its pride.”
Siraj Wahhaj is a big star on the American Muslim speaker circuit. In 1991, he was the first Islamic cleric to give an invocation to the U.S. Congress. However, he has also warned that the United States will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has lamented that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”
In the early 1990s he sponsored talks by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in mosques in New York City and New Jersey; Rahman was later convicted for conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, and Wahhaj was designated a “potential unindicted co-conspirator.”
“Amid Rift, Imam’s Role in Islam Center Is Sharply Cut,” by Paul Vitello in the New York Times, January 14:
Long-simmering tensions between co-founders of the proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero led to a parting of the ways on Friday that sharply reduced the role of one: the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, long the project’s public face.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will remain on the board of a planned Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero, but his role in the project was reduced.
Imam Abdallah Adhami will preside at Friday services in a temporary mosque at 51 Park Place, site of a planned Islamic community center, in place of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
The break-up sent ripples of uncertainty through a community of religious and political leaders in New York who rallied last summer to the side of Mr. Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, when opponents assailed the plan to build near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Some worried aloud that the curtailed involvement of the couple could cost the project support. Others said the plan would continue to be endorsed by people committed to interfaith dialogue and freedom of religious expression.
The split was announced unilaterally by Mr. Abdul Rauf’s partner in the project, Sharif el-Gamal, the real estate investor who owns the former coat store at 51 Park Place where the 13-story center is planned.
In a statement that took Mr. Abdul Rauf by surprise, according to a spokesman for the imam, Mr. Gamal said the imam and his wife would no longer raise money for or speak on behalf of the project, known as Park51, though Mr. Abdul Rauf would remain on its board.
“While Imam Feisal’s vision has a global scope and his ideals for the Cordoba movement are truly exceptional, our community in Lower Manhattan is local,” said Mr. Gamal, referring to the imam’s longstanding work in promoting interfaith understanding. “Our focus is and must remain the residents of Lower Manhattan and the Muslim American community in the greater New York area.”…