Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was interviewed about the proposed Ground Zero mosque by Matt Lauer on this morning's NBC Today show. Rudy cane out firmly against building the mosque on that site and questioned the purported intent of the mosque to heal wounds and bridge the divide between faiths. Here is what he said about that:
__The question here is a question of sensitivity, people's feelings. And, are you really what you pretend to be? As I understand this, this Cordoba House, the idea of it is to healing. To show that Muslims care about the same things as Christians and Jews do. That we're one people. That we should be one. Well, if you're going to, if you're going to so horribly offend the people that were most directly offended by this, most directly affected by this, the families of the September 11 victims -- who I happen to know and have gotten to know, you know, really well -- then how are you healing? I mean all this is doing is creating more division, more anger, more hatred.
Giuliani also questioned where the funding was going to come from. Here is what he said about that:
__He's [Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf] got $180,000 in the bank, he wants to raise $100 million. Ask me how he's going to do it. ….. I question whether they can raise the money. Every indication from the attorney general's reports of their charities are they have about $180,000. $100 million project. And then where is the money coming from?
I think I know where most of the $100 million is going to come from. It’s going to come from the Saudis and they are going to make sure the mosque will be staffed with puritanical Wahhabi imams and not with the 'moderate' types our politicians and Muslim apologists keep yacking about.
And when Lauer asked the former mayor if he thought union workers - plumbers, electricians, carpenters - will build the mosque on that site, Rudy replied:
__A couple of construction workers told me, in their typical New York accent, "We ain't working on that project. Let 'em see if they can go find somebody to work on that project."
Not all Muslims support the building of a mosque near the World Trade Center site. Neda Bolourchi, a Muslim from Los Angeles whose mother was on one of the planes that flew into the Twin Towers, wrote this in a Washington Post op-ed:
__I fear that over time, it [the mosque] will cultivate a fundamentalist version of the Muslim faith, embracing those who share such beliefs and hating those who do not. To the supporters of this new Islamic cultural center, I must say: Build your ideological monument somewhere else, far from my mother's grave, and let her rest.
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