The Mischief Mosque

Quite Time At the Mosque at Ground Zero


Everythings seems peaceful enough (Notice the ladies in the back). Except for some wacky white folk out front. However the great divider, Barry, has stayed true to form again, when speaking of the Mosque at Ground Zero (MGZ) he did not provide enlightenment and insight; he only provided opinion which has fueled controversy. So it is up to Sharky&Sharky to help America understand what is really going on. Initally, to be perfectly clear the US Constitution affirms that a Mosque can be built on Ground Zero. Thus Sharky&Sharky also concur: build the mosque.

However the founding fathers saw through all of this moral sentimental foolishness surrounding situations like the Mosque at Ground Zero, or as some would say Park51 Mosque (sounds like a boutique) when they constructed the Constitution. The Constitution as written has no space, not a jot, for any collective moral sentiment. Its focus is on individual liberty. As written the Consitution recognizes that the individual is the purpose, raison d'etre, for the state and society. Moslem governments in general have no respect for such liberty; they believe in the group, the collective which is really a guise to benefit the absolute ruling clique. Not to pick on the Muslims most people share the belief that purpose of the individual is to serve the society, the state. They share this belief until their group gets ground under then they want their rights. And in American so it shall be. The Constitution affirms without reservation that Mr. Sharif El-Gamal has every right to offer his $4.5M property to Imam Feisal Rauf to build a 36 story Mosque and Community Center within two blocks of the World Trade Center 2001 Islamic terrorist destruction. Further Mr. Rauf has every right to build the mosque. If there is a legal battle and it goes to the Supreme Court, the Court will decide in favor of the Mosque at Ground Zero (sounds like a night club).

First as Americans we need get over the feigned pain of easy affronts. We are as a nation getting like so many of our own silly people so easily enraged. Whipped into a foolish false rage by people who make money on keeping us all worked up. We are beginning to sound like a pack of whiners. Yes, a wheel of one of the 9/11 planes fell through the roof of the old Burlington Coat Factory on Park Place where Emam Rauf would like to build a mosque. Comparable destruction and rehabilitation has happened in many wars! There are plenty of American businesses in the places that we fire bombed in Germany and in Japan. General Lemay took out half of Tokyo. Up to 100,000 Tokyo residents died on March 9-10, 1945. There are American businesses in that space today. Emam Rauf points this out. He fails to point out that we were facing a nation in which the entire citizentry was willing to fight to their death to defend their homeland against Allied forces, when all we wanted the Japanese citizen to do was quit fighting. Perhaps if we were to use some of Lemay's techniques today, we would have finished in a week in Iraq and three days in Afghanistan, or better yet we would not have gone at all. Civilian attrocities are a documented part of war since the Trojan War, 1194-1184 BC.

With all that said. Let's take a look a the Mosque at Ground Zero players, the surrounding environment, and relevant backgrounds. Then let us see if Sharky&Sharky can assist in determining the right course of action for thinking Americans.

First there is the Operator, Sherif Mr. El-Gamal; he has done well; he started with nothing and has become a successful real estate investor in less than 5 years. Liberty has worked for him.There are some thuggish behaviors in his past; he beat up a rentor, (case settled for $15,000 in 2007), Arrested for disorderly conduct in 1990, 1994, 1998, 1999. There was a DWI and Petit Larceny charge thrown in. In 2005 he had an upscale apartment in NYC and no other apparent assets. He has been in the real estate business since 2000. However in 2008 he sprung for a $39M mortgage with an Egyptian partner. In July 2009 he bought the part of the property on Park Place for $4.5M. This is where the MGZ is to be built. (ref: Waiter turned Millionaire)

This video questions Mr El-Gamal about his money sources:


Where is Mr. El-Gamal getting his money? Well he might getting it from one of the owners of Fox News. This is a fellow that we all know from 9/11. Rudy gave him his money back. Well it seems his money has returned. His name is Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. Wow that is a mouthful!  Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal etc. now owns a 7 percent stake in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, making him the company's largest shareholder outside of Murdoch's own family.

Here is CBS Interview with Mr. El-Gamel


Before we discuss Imam Rauf, here is the location of the mosques in the region around Park Place including Emam Rauf's.

Here is a picture of the actual building currently.

(That is Sharky on the Right in the White; that is Sharky on the Left with the Red bag). Now the half of this property is owned by the electric utilility company called Con Edison, NYC electricity supplier. Con Edison has not set a price on their half, and they will have to go to the state commission to set a sale price. It is estimated that the price for the Con Edison part of the property will be $10 million to $20 million. Recently El-Gamel was only able to raise $10,000 after a prayer service from which the press was barred after being promised attendance. He current owes taxes that amount to $224, 270 on the building. Also, he still has a ways to go to raise the building fund capital of $100 million for the 36 story MGZ. There was hope by the anti-Mosque contingents that the building would be declared a landmark preservation building and thus it would be very difficult for it to be a new mosque; hard to change landmark buildings (Also a police order is required to move Sharky&Sharky pictures above; we got rights ).  This landmark designation was denied. This CNN reports has some inaccuracies; however El-Gamel's responses are interesting:


Second, there is Imam Adbul Feisal Rauf, the Imam, he has had a mosque in Tribeca since 1985; see above map. Here is a NYT picture of services at his old location. Note men and women worshiping next to one another:

Imam Rauf and his wife, Daisy Kahn have a peaceful website; they espouse Sufi. The site does show not any apparent Sufism. however the deep beliefs of Sufi are present. The following is a view of Sufism:

Sufism is to Islam what Fabian Socialism was to Bolshevik Communism. The Sufis believe that the Dar el-Islam, what they call the world once it has submitted to Islam, should be brought about through peaceful and gradual means as opposed to the fundamentalist Islamic approach, which is through war, or what Islam calls jihad. The Bolsheviks called this method of world conquest "revolution." The Fabians, holding the same goal as the Bolsheviks, sought to implement world socialism by means of gradually changing the laws of free nations and the governing philosophy of their societies in a manner that is similar to the Sufi approach with regard to the gradual implementation of Shariah law in the Dar es Harb, or the portion of the planet that has not yet submitted to Islamic rule. The portion of the world that has not yet submitted to Islam would still include the good old U.S. of A. (Ref: Imam's Rauf's gradaulist Islam)

The ASMA site shows that their last current event was in 2007. In general the Web has been purged of early negative remarks about America by Imam Rauf due to copyright ownership by Kelly(?). So if you dear reader have any thing that will give other views of the Imam please forward them to mailto:SharkandSharky@gmail.com.

Imam Rauf owns some apartment rental buildings and is viewed negatively by some of his tenants. "Why doesn't he help the tenants he has before he builds a new place, claiming he wants to help people?" said a disgusted Jamie Barillas, who lives in a Rauf-owned apartment at 2206 Central Ave. in Union City. "Nothing gets done. We have to go through City Hall to get things done. . . . He doesn't care about his tenants," she said.

Barillas said that bedbugs plague the building -- but that when she tried to get building managers to respond, they claimed they didn't have the money to hire an exterminator.

Tenant Vilma Then chided Rauf as greedy. "All he likes is money," she said. "Nothing ever gets fixed. I complain to the super, and all he says is that he has the same problem." Vilma Then said she lived at Rauf's building around the corner until a fire forced her to move to 2206 Central Ave. She said her current situation is similar to her old digs, where she had a stove that was more like "a roach den."

Here are two similar video's which indicates that the Imam espouses that US behavior  are in some way causal for the 9/11 tragedies:





The Imam was born in Kuwait to an iterant Muslim cleric. He spent some early years in Malaysia (like Barry). His father/family evenutally came to America where young Faisal matured and some of his best friends were Jews.

Yet it was not always certain that Rauf was destined to be an imam. He first taught remedial English in a school in Harlem; then he was a salesman, though he was always on a spiritual journey. He travelled and met Islamic scholars and eventually became a Sufi, a form of Islam that emphasises the mystic.
A Sufi scholar in Turkey asked him to create a Sufi mosque in New York and in 1983 Rauf left the working world to found the Masjid al-Farah in Manhattan. (ref: Guardian)

Imam Rauf is is currently on a US government sponsored trip to Bahrain; this is his fourth such trip two during the Obama administration and two under the Bush. The purpose of these trips is

"So we recognize that our heritage (Moslem) allows for re-expressing the internal principles of our religion in different cultural times and places."

Imam Rauf speaks on Americanizing Islam. He will also tour Qatar and the United Arab Emirates during this trip to talk about Muslim life in America "Americanizing Islam". This is a conundrum. There is no moderate Islam so moderate Muslims would be heretics.

Let us try a thought experiment. Now let us assume that EL-Gamel and Imam Rauf are lying; it does not matter whether it is intentional or the outcomes at MGZ are not to as they have had signaled. Further imagine that the well wishes of Imam Rauf are swept up in the Islamic wars of today and Jihad rules the new day. What are the net harms that will befall all of us and in particular new Yorkers if the Mosque is built and utilized for nefarious purposes? The first step is to look ahead and to determine the steps that we as Sons and Daughters Liberty should do to nullify and prevent actions that that would harm Liberty at MGZ.

Here is litany of things that are horrible if they happened:

1. The MGZ becomes the Muslim intellectual Mecca of the western world and gets taken over by Jihadist preaching Sharia
2. The MGZ becomes the Muslim intellectual center preaching Sharia
3. The preaching of the Quran makes Muslims Americans feel that they have a right to commit Jihad
4. The preaching of the Quran makes girls and women believe that they should be subservient
5. The building/mosque becomes an "embassy" for Arabic/Islamic expression against the west and Israel

All of these items may happen so let us assume they will. Secrecy and freedom of association is the Muslims' right in America. Therefore their prayers of Jihad (Sura 47.4, Sura 2.216 as examples) will continue to be said in a private space, in Arabic, along with their Sermons given in a space into which non-Muslims are not invited. (Note: When Mr El-Gamel raised $10,000 after a prayer service mentioned above, the press was not invited to either the prayers or the fund-raising). It is in the MGZ space that girls will be instructed in their subserviency and boys in their superiority and Jihad. Thus how does one counteract this. Remembering that Islam tolerates no religious puralism with the Children of the Book ( Jews and Christians), Buddhists, Hindus, or gays.

Sharky&Sharky suggest counteracting all of the above by continual engagement and debate with the Muslims at MGZ. New Yorkers should constantly request Islamic audiences and debates. Request attendance at the religious services. Offer to have non-Islamic services at the MZG. A good rousing black Baptist Choir should set the place a glow. Next, leave no anti-American assertion unchallenged. No one has countered Imam Rauf's lame nexus between America's behavior and the 9/11 terrorist actions. It still hangs stinking in the air. The overarching objective is not only to win the debate but to redefine the Islamic moral context, namely demonstrating that political and religious liberty is paramount over Islamic moral absolutism, Sharia law or Caliphate. All MGZ Islamic literature should be read and countered. In discussions, one should counter US caused Muslim civilian deaths with Moslem jihadist willingness to sacrifice citizens by hiding in urban areas. The countering non-Muslims should demand redress on 60 minutes and op-ed pieces in print. Leave no anti-American MGZ expression unchallenged. Leave no America generosity to a Muslim country unproclaimed. Everyone should know that the US gave more to help the 2010 Pakistani flood victims than all the Muslim countries combined as of Sept 1, 2010.

Repeating what is important to understand is that there is no separation of religion and state nor is there  religious or political pluralism in Islam, in practise. The Sunni and the Shia are not like Lutherans and Baptist going arm-in-arm together to the God of Glory. The Muslims of different sects are very often divided and combatants. The Tabilan and Al-Qaeda are Wahhabi; they of course are fighting the Shia and Sunni of Afghanistan. Each considers the other heretics. In Iraq the Shia, Sunni, and the Kurds (Mostly Sunni) could not form a consociational government; thus the Shia are in total and complete charge. With regard to non-Muslims, the overriding belief of Muslims is bring all peoples to Islam; Islam is the only one way. This is Islam's Weltanschauung, World View. Thus the "Americanization of Islam" is Islamic heresy since this implies changing the Islam's World View. Unfortunately Islam's Law, Sharia, indicates that all of those who do not accept Islam are to be killed or must pay a tax. There are some foolish judges in Europe and lately in America who are saying that within America's sovereign boundary two sources of justice can coexist, Constitutional and Sharia. This of course will lead to civil war. As it did in the US in 1861. Thus Sharia law must be exposed, confronted, and expunged at all times. Sharia law should not be respected as a cultural get out jail free card.

Now there are two more points that need to be addressed: first, Muslim mischief and second, the five young men from Alexandria, VA currently on trial in Pakistan.

Fitna, Mischief Making, The MGZ is Fitna. In the modern sense Fitna is used to describe
forces that cause controversy, fragmentation, scandal, chaos, or discord within the Muslim community, disturbing social peace and order. If we extend "the Muslim community" to all who remember the 9/11 Islamic terriorist attacks or to those who were and remained influenced bythe attacks, the MGZ sews discord. MGZ will be cynically viewed by non-Muslims not as a place of peace, as Imam Rauf proclaims, but as an expression of the triumphalism, territory, and supremacism of Islam. This jagged jolt to the memory and the social discord that results is fitna. Nevertheless, there is no Constitutional prohibition against fitna.

In the extreme Fitna could be used to describe the severe frustration that Muslims (or any group) feels as the result of societal and moral conflicts leading Muslims (or any group) to perform extreme acts (sew discord) to correct the conflict in accordance with the Quran, ie acting out a death sentence. One might imagine that the 9/11 Islamic terrorist had been continually frustrated as they witnessed the US invade Muslim countries, defeat Muslim armies, eat better, employ far superior western technology, enjoy far better citizen economic conditions, take peasure in hedonistic individualism etc. Next they perceived their frustrations as insults to Islam; finally Al Qaeda determines that Jihad against the US is essential to address this Fitna. In summary lets review how Fitna is processed and addressed in the extreme (1) perceived insults to Islam, (2) frustrated Muslims desiring to make the insulter pay ( death is the price)  (3) mediating/intervening coachs/Imams/Al Qaeda providing the education and funding on effective ways to demonstrate Islamic supremacy (4) the enactment of the planned response to the insults to Islam.

Given that these four elements are causal let us review the case of five young American Muslim men and see the four elements/causal components redound on the outcome. The five young men are Ahmed Abdullah Minni, Umar Chaudhry, Waqar Khan, Aman Hassan Yemer, and Ramy Zamzam, all attended a mosque in Northern Virginia, Alexandria, VA. They disappeared from their mosque, Isalmic Circle of North America Mosque in November of 2009 and went to Pakistan to perform Jihad.  This they announced to the Pakistani officials. Their mosque and families were all shocked at their actions. In December of 2009 they were arrested in Pakistan. In June of this year each was sentenced to 10 years for terror offences. (Ref VOA). There is going to an appeal.

If we look at the four causal components we can investigate if all four are active. The one we cannot easily see is (3); who coached and organized the young men? Was it their Mosque Imam, or another source within the mosque or did they self-organize and their mosque was but a meeting place? It appears that the Internet was utilized to contact terrorist organizations outside of the US. It is this type of mischief that we all must be on the lookout for; to truly Americanize Islam it is required that American Muslims embrace the spirit and laws of the US and eschew and remove the tenets of Jihad, sexism, and Sharia. Sharky&Sharky implore the Imam Rauf and his followers to move in that direction.

Sharky&Sharky©

EPILOGUE 09/07/2010

This post was corrected for misspellings, syntax, and clarity on 09/07/2010. Also some additional items were added based on news or relevant points not considered. 

Fitna, this word will be adopted by Sharky&Sharky; that is the concept of Mischief Making, sewing in the community discord and chaos. The word will be extended to any community. If fitna is a vice (Islamic or western) then prudence, circumspection, judgment are the virtue. Rather then doing or causing fitna, a virtuous person will exercise judgment, prudence, or circumspection and consider the outcomes/consequences of fitna beforehand. 

The latest proclamation is that the MGZ is not a mosque but a community center. Is this intended to make it more acceptable to the current opponents of the MGZ? It will not be (1) There are people that do not want any Muslim significant entity around ground zero. Imam Rauf cannot barter with those folks. (2) If it is like any other Muslim entity, it will not be a true community center. Only the Muslim community will be able to use all the facitilites. There will be no open knitting circle or basketball court time. Sharky&Sharky doubt that any New Yorker can join in the aeorbics class. How will the ladies have to dress for aeorbics? Will the sexes be separated for aeorbics and swimming or volley ball? If there is a swim team how will it compete? A sect trapped in the eighth century cannot skip 1200 years. Thus the MGZ will be a segregated community center serving only one community in all probability. Secrecy is essential.

The problem with fitna is that it spreads like  a disease, and now there is fitna going on in Murfeesboro, TN, (The Muslims are not the cause; they are exercising their right of conscience). Once started fitna is unpredictable, unmangeable. Judgment and prudence and circumspection leave the scene. In Murfeesboro Imam Osama (with this name this cleric is already in behind the eight ball) Baloul is trying to build a mosque. An ugly town meeting was held  according to the Examiner:

Dozens spoke for an allotted 3 minutes each during the two hour public portion of the meeting.

None spoke in favor of the mosque.
"We have a duty to investigate anyone under the banner of Islam," Allen Jackson, the pastor of World Outreach Church, said at the meeting.
"I found out when the sign came up," said Murfreesboro resident Mark Walker, whose home is near the site of the proposed mosque. "We are fighting these people, for crying out loud, we should not be promoting this."
"They seem to be against everything I believe in, and so I don't want them necessarily in my neighborhood," said local resident Stan Whiteway.
Tracey Steven, who also attended, said, "Our country was founded through the founding fathers -- through the true God, the Father and Jesus Christ."
Kevin Fisher, an attendee whose tie bore the words from John 3:16: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, told the commissioners, "You are beholden to these people here tonight. These people have a right. Notice must be posted in order to give citizens a chance to speak."
"These people didn't want this mosque built in this area."

Recently as mosque construction has gone ahead the equipment has been vandalized, the Tennessean records.

Lastly the Reverend Terry Jones in Florida has been bitten by fitna (Thus it has spread up and down the East Coast). He has decided to burn Qurans by having an International Burn a Quran Day on 9/11. General Petraeus has asked Rev. Jones not to do this in that the action will cause wide spread endangerment of our troops. Christian Science Monitor reports that riots have stated already; fitna, like the time and tides, waits for nothing.



Joseph Campbell affirmed that way out of a conflict was not the continued waging of the conflict but to find a morally higher point. Martin Luther found it when he issued 96 thesis against the Catholic Church. (Sharky&Sharky are not suggesting that Luther's behavior in any other aspect should act as a model). Sharky&Sharky see the higher moral ground to be an Islamic reformation in the US to eliminate Jihad, sexism, and Sharia law and the associated secrecy, otherwise fitna will remain.     

Sharky&Sharky©