In part two I want to talk about the preacher who is trying to build the church for a little bit.

I use the word Preacher because I feel the one who gets up in church and preaches, is the preacher but he is actually an Imam. I have spent time in many different churches, some call the one who preaches a Priest, some call the one who preaches Minister and others call them Pastosr – to me it matters little and by definition there is really no difference. Whether we are talking about a person whose occupation and function is to preach the gospel OR a minister of any religion OR person authorized to conduct religious worship OR the officiating priest or a minister OR priest in charge of a church they are the same thing. Those definitions are from dictionary.com and I defy you to tell me which one is the definition of an Imam. Just so we are clear, this man, Feisal Abdul Rauf is a preacher, a peaceful man of god.

He is a Kuwaiti Sufi Imam who has been living in the United States since the 1960’s. By the way, scholars have defined Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God”, in case you were wondering what that word meant. It does not mean anything other than that, it does not mean he is the boogey man who is going to come and do harm to anyone, it does not mean he is trying to kill all Christians and it does not mean he is a terrorist. He studied at Columbia University, where he received a bachelor's degree in physics. In 1983 he opened the al-Farah Mosque at 245 West Broadway in lower Manhattan, a couple of blocks away from where he is trying to build a newer Mosque. He is a permanent trustee of the Islamic Cultural center, which his father founded. He is by no means a new comer to the lower Manhattan scene, as we are lead to believe.

One of the repots I have heard defies any logic I can apply to it. He has been chastised for not condemning the Palestinian terror group Hamas, saying that “Terrorism is a very complex question.” We are told by the media that this is the stock answer of anyone excusing terrorism - which in my opinion is pure bull shit. His explanation for this lack of condemnation is that he is a peace builder, hummmm. Another holy man immediately comes to mind when I think out that comment. He also preaches non-violence and refrains from using words that would incite any member of any arguing parties. That would be His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. He and went into exile in 1959 when the Chinese invaded Tibet, and he has not harbored any ill will towards them, hoping that one day they can reconcile.

After 9/11 the Dalai Lama even sent a letter to then President Bush urging him to use a nonviolent response, because that would be more effective (paraphrased). I do not remember any outrage or righteous indignation at the Dalia Lama’s comments. We have all witnessed the results when folks use words to incite and escalate the differences in an argument instead of focusing on the common ground and obviously that is when things can get out of hand fast, as evidenced by where we are today. There are many, many examples of peacemaking folks who use the same approach, folks like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, the Pope and Martin Luther King come to mind right away but there are many, many others. My point is, SO WHAT that the Imam would not condemn the acts of a terrorist group, he is not alone and in my opinion he is in fine company.

When Imam Rauf was interviewed on 60 minutes, he said that the 9/11 attacks were part of a larger Islamic “reaction against the U.S. government politically, where we [the U.S.] espouse principles of democracy and human rights, and [yet] where we ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries.” I almost hate to admit it but I agree with him. When Charlie Wilson started supporting the afghan people in the 1980’s with their fight against the Russians we started down the road of deception with the Taliban and their good friends Al-Qaeda. What the Afghan’s thought was well intentioned support was actually a calculated strategy by our government to defeat the Russians, still called the USSR then. It could have been anyone that we could manipulate into believing we were helping them, it just happened to be the Taliban. Sadly it was never about helping them and eventually they figured that out.

In our ignorance of Muslim culture we then occupied land in Saudi Arabia, before the first gulf war, and launched an invasion of another Muslim land. That is when the leaders of Al-Qaeda stepped up their game. Then we have to look at the more recent invasion of Iraq, we did the same thing with Saddam Hussein that we did with the folks in Afghanistan, feed them money and war fighting supplies while they were fighting the Iranians, someone we did not like at the time. So in both cases we provided assistance when it was convenient for us and when it helped OUR cause but then when it became inconvenient for us we turned on them, our monsters got pissed and the rest is what they call, history. The context and subtlety of the Imam’s comments were lost on the media and therefore did not make it to their apparently automatonic audiences.

So, Imam Rauf is also a published author, even writing a children’s version of the Quran. He also wrote What's Right with Islam is what is right with America. I am currently waiting for my copy from Amazon.com and will probably review it when I finish reading it. I also found that he was invited to speak at Daniel Pearl’s funeral, which was held in a Jewish Synagogue. He said many things but the ones that stand out for me are the following excerpts. “We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.” “If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl.” “And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.” “It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.”

Now some might say - so what, well let me tell you what. Any Imam who stands before a Jewish congregation and says, "I am a Jew," is placing his life in danger. Remember, the radial extremists (terrorists) hate the people they consider apostates even more than they hate Christians and Jews. Remember Salman Rushdie, the writer of “The Satanic verses”, the radials are still hunting him because they consider him an apostate as well – Dictionary.com defines that as a person who forsakes his religion, cause, party, etc. In other words, the man many commentators assert is a terrorist-sympathizer placed himself in mortal peril in order to identify himself with Christians and Jews, and specifically with the most famous Jewish victim of Islamism radicalism, Daniel Pearl.

I guess my point in looking at this simple preacher is to find out if I could really find any nefariousness or if it was all created by taking bit of what he said at different points in his life out of context. Then all those bits of out of context information were woven into a story about a guy. A guy who if you believe the propaganda, who might as well been the planner of the attacks. I found no such links and find the whole affair and the demonizing of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, ungrounded nonsense and to me, is an embarrassment of the largest magnitude.

For some reason I am not done yet, there will be at least one more installment, I hope you will stick with me for the whole ride