The latest politician to take an opposing stance regarding the Park51 Mosque at Ground Zero is Newt Gingrich. Which in itself isn’t very surprising. What is the most surprising revelation from his statement is that he’s bidding for the White House in 2012.
Gingrich’s statement on the mosque released last night reads as follows:
“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.
The proposed “Cordoba House” overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks – is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites.  For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House†is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.
Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to “symbolize interfaith cooperation” when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest.  It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way.
Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for “religious toleration” are arrogantly dishonest. They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City. Meanwhile, there are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia. In fact no Christian or Jew can even enterMecca.
And they lecture us about tolerance.
If the people behind the Cordoba House were serious about religious toleration, they would be imploring the Saudis, as fellow Muslims, to immediately open up Mecca to all and immediately announce their intention to allow non-Muslim houses of worship in the Kingdom. Â Â They should be asked by the news media if they would be willing to lead such a campaign.
We have not been able to rebuild the World Trade Center in nine years. Now we are being told a 13 story, $100 million megamosque will be built within a year overlooking the site of the most devastating surprise attack in American history.
Finally where is the money coming from? The people behind the Cordoba House refuse to reveal all their funding sources.
America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could.
No mosque.
No self deception.
No surrender.
The time to take a stand is now – at this site on this issue.”
Park51 Architecture may be influenced by Cooper Union and 7 World Trade Center
The developer of the Park 51 mosque and community center, formerly known as the Cordoba Initiative — has put his ambitions on the record with the Wall Street Journal for the impending World Trade Center mosque to be a significant architectural structure in New York City.
“I want to build something that when people come to New York…that Park51 is on that red tour bus as something that they have to see because it’s one of the most significant buildings in New York City,” says El-Gamal in the Wall Street Journal.
El-Gamal’s architectural team could be a great indication of his potential success, but has not named a team just yet. However, he has noted that two buildings he considers great examples of the architectural direction of the mosque include the steely Cooper Union building in Astor place and the glass behemoth 7 World Trade Center building.
According to the same article it was noted that the design would evoke modernity and would not necessarily adopt a traditional mosque style, “It’s definitely going to be an expression of New York and of America,” Mr. El-Gamal said in an interview Friday, a few days after his project, now dubbed Park51, came under fire at a raucous Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing.”
The slated location for the Park51 mosque has already been converted into a makeshift mosque with nearly 400 Muslims who journey to the location at 45-51 Park Place for Friday prayer service.
Network brass at CBS and NBC have declined airing ads from the National Republican Trust PAC calling for the opposition of the Ground Zero mosque, or Park51 during commercial breaks.
The ad which has been streamed on YouTube, posted almost 2 weeks ago — uses uneasy images from the attacks on 9/11 edited with the sounds of Muslim prayers and negative imagery of Muslim extremists. Comments have been suspended on this video, but have streamed almost 102K by the publishing of this article.
The video includes the following narration,
“On September 11, they declared war agains us… and to celebrate that murder of 3,000 Americans, they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at Ground Zero.”
According to Ben Smith at Politico, NBC Universal Ad Standards manager Jennifer Riley released the following statement,
“An ad questioning the wisdom of building a mosque at ground zero would meet our issues of public controversy advertising criteria. However, this ad which ambiguously defines ‘they’ as referenced in the spot makes it unclear as to whether the reference is to terrorists or to the Islamic religious organization that is sponsoring the building of the mosque. Consequently, the ad is not acceptable under our guidelines for broadcast.”
A similar statement was released by a counterpart at CBS.
Of course one might wonder what about ABC, Fox, CW and other major networks? We’ll have to literally stay tuned to see if these videos will make it into our living rooms.
Park 51 is the new name for the Cordoba House Mosque
In a swift marketing move, the Cordoba Initiative Mosque has a new name — Park51.
The name changed is seen as an effort to quell the controversy from the development of the mosque and Muslim community center by giving it an almost innocuous, generic name, sounding more like a new condominium construction than a mosque.
According to a report in the New York Daily News, “Spokesman Oz Sultan said the new name puts emphasis on the community center aspect of the project rather than religion.”
The address of the planned center is slated to take the entire block region 41-51 Park Place, which one could assume inspired the World Trade Center mosques new name.
It’s a sharp move considering that the part of the block that has been in contention is the portion of 45-47 Park Place. This may be a preemptive branding move and a statement by developers to say that regardless of the ruling, the community center will at the very least reside at 51 Park Place.
The Commission will determine the Landmark fate of 45-47 later in the summer. A ruling which is seen to determine the development of the mosque in our neighborhood.
