The Theft of Ground Zero

The most egregious aspect of the Ground Zero 
mosque controversy is something that
people don't think or talk about: the
incalculable theft involved in this second
wave of the 9/11 attacks. These Islamic
supremacists are grifting the system big time.
And yet the biggest theft of all is one that
everyone has overlooked.
The biggest theft of all is that they have 
stolen Ground Zero itself from America like
thieves in the night. They have ripped it from
our collective soul and national psyche.
Now, whenever anyone mentions Ground Zero, it has nothing to do with the largest attack ever on American soil.  Whenever anyone speaks about Ground Zero now, it is never about the thousands of lives lost that day.  It is never about the hundreds who jumped to their deaths because the alternative was worse.  It is never about the horrified, terrified people on the planes who watched in indescribable horror as they crashed into these buildings to the wail of Allahu akbar.
Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan have stolen Ground Zero.  They have kidnapped it.  Hijacked 
it. Before these heartless Islamic supremacists declared their stealth jihad, Ground Zero
was like Pearl Harbor or Antietam or Gettysburg: the site of a catastrophic loss of life
through an unprecedented act of war. Ground Zero was the site of the largest attack on
American soil in our history. Ground Zero was where we would mourn our dead.
Ground Zero was where moms, dads, aunts, uncles, kids, construction workers,
stockbrokers, waiters, postmen, and other ordinary Americans became the infantry --
soldiers without uniforms. Ground Zero was hallowed ground.
But no more.  Not since these raiders came in the dark of night with their fifteen-story mega-
mosque. They have succeeded in stealing our memory, our cherished remembrance of
that horrible day. They stole Ground Zero. Before the advent of Daisy Khan and Feisal
Abdul Rauf, Ground Zero was just that: it was September 11. But now Ground Zero is
all about a mosque. It has morphed (like the Ground Zero mosque controversy itself)
into an angst-ridden conflict about insensitivity toward Muslims, "backlash" against
Muslims, and American attitudes toward Islam.
Now, Ground Zero is all about the earnest, unctuous, smug, and deceitful faces of Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan, and about their concern over imaginary "Islamophobia."
Remember also that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been unmasked as a New Jersey slumlord.  
He just had his
slum buildings placed in receivership despite getting taxpayer dollars to make
repairs.
Rauf snagged more than $2 million in public financing to renovate low-income
apartments; he kept the money and never made the repairs. He took the money and forced
good people to live with vermin and in dilapidated conditions.
Yet not once did any American media outlet ask him where all that money went.
There is more.  Rauf and his wife Daisy listed their one-bedroom apartment as 
a mosque
in order to conduct what appears to amount to tax fraud. Rauf sought "church
status" -- to avoid paying taxes. He got the wildly valuable tax-exempt status for his
Muslim organization after deceiving the IRS by claiming that as many as five hundred of its
members prayed in that tiny one-bedroom apartment (which was also listed as Daisy's
residence).
Meanwhile, we, the American people, fund Rauf's State Department junkets to terror states 
-- and now the Ground Zero mosque organizers want even more tax money. Yet
Daisy
Khan said
recently on ABC News that "we don't want use taxpayer money." This was yet
another outrageous lie. In fact, Daisy Khan and Imam Rauf may
float public debt to
raise the money for the Ground Zero mega-mosque
. And outrageously, they have
applied for a $5-million grant from the 9/11 fund to rebuild lower Manhattan.
The language of morality is in such grave disorder today that it is Daisy Khan and 
Feisal Abdul Rauf who are lauded and venerated, revered, and respected, despite their
long record of dishonesty and deceit. Rauf is even a nominee for Time Magazine's
Person of the Year, while those few who dare speak about the real meaning of Ground
Zero and why it disrespectful and dishonorable to build a giant mosque there are kicked
to the curb like so much rubble -- to paraphrase Rauf's description of the human remains
at the World Trade Center.
How dare they?

How dare they steal our children and our parents and our loved ones, those we lost on 9/11, from us?

And why haven't our political elites and our media shamed them into crawling back under the rock from which they emerged?

This is why we have to keep the heat on.  On Tuesday, my colleague Robert Spencer and other patriots will be with me in front the New York City Council, which is holding a hearing to ban Walmart from New York on their self-declared Hate Walmart day -- all the while doing nothing to stand against the Islamic supremacist Ground Zero mega-mosque, or to take away the roadblocks preventing reconstruction of St. Nicholas Church, which destroyed in the 9/11 attack.  No to a church and Wal-Mart, but yes to a mega-mosque at Ground Zero? The hypocrisy and inconsistency are stunning.

The Islamic jihadists have not surrendered.  They have not apologized.  They have not made recompense.  They're still waging war on us.  And now the Islamic supremacist deceivers Rauf and Khan have stolen Ground Zero, and we want it back.

It's not theirs to take.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and former associate publisher of the New York Observer.  She is the author of The Post-American Presidency.
If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com