Rauf threatens violence

In an interview with Soledad O'Brien, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who will head the Middle Finger Moaque in Manhattan if it is built, says:

“If we move from that location, the story will be the radicals have taken over the discourse. The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack… Our national security now hinges on how we negotiate this, how we speak about it.. . .

The imam told O’Brien “had I known [the controversy] would happen we certainly would never have done this.” Asked if he meant he would not have picked the location, Rauf said, “we would not have done something that would create more divisiveness.”

Jim Treacher responds:

But you did, Imam Rauf. You’ve failed spectacularly at your professed goal of tolerance and healing and all the other buzzwords. Now you’re telling us that if we don’t all applaud your mistake, it will be seen as an attack on Islam? If we don’t do what the terrorists want, the terrorists win?

By all means, let’s have more emotional blackmail, and more condescending lectures about how anyone who dares to oppose this thing is a dupe and a bigot. That’s really turning the tide of public opinion

Was he really this insensitive, or did he expect to push this through on the strength of playing the "tolerance" card and then let Muslim societies proceed on the assumption that it really is that easy to insult Americans? He certainly has made a conquest of Mayor Bloomberg.

The message we need to be sending Islam is not to push its luck, and if it wants to co-exist with us, it needs to consider shelving its Sharia law system in non-Muslim countries. In Muslim countries, the medieval brutality of beheadings, stonings and mayhem continues to give Islam an image of cruelty rather than piety and forgiveness. If they don't like the image of the Prophet they have created in the minds of Westerners, they should examine themselves first and ask why he is seen that way. It's not because we just hate foreigners. We don't admire Torquemada too much these days either.