9/11 Victory Mosque? A fact check
What is hard to look at has appeared on the cover page of August issue of Time Magazine. It is a portrait of Aisha, described as a shy 18- year old Afghan woman who was sentenced by Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. She and her story will become a symbol of price women pay for freedom in the Islamic world. We have in our last issue published the story of Professor T.J. Joseph whose hand was cut off by an Islamic outfit "Popular front" in India's most literate state -Kerala. The recent report of two Pastors murdered outside of a courtroom in Pakistan reveals the manipulation of the blasphemy law by extremists to target Christians and the government failure to provide adequate protection to religious minorities under threat despite forewarning of the event. These images are a window into reality of what is happening and what can happen.
In a related development a New York community board voted in favour of plans to build a mosque and Islam centre near the 9/11 site in the US.
A proposal to build a mosque just two blocks from ground zero is “indecent,” said a former Muslim and bestselling author.

"I couldn’t believe that this is really true," wrote Sabatina James to The Christian Post in an e-mail. “Building the mosque where thousands of people died because of Islamic terror is just indecent.”

James, whose book My Fight for Faith and Freedom is a bestseller in Germany, is currently living under police protection in Germany because of death threats against her for converting to Christianity. She said her German friends were shocked when they heard that a mosque might be built near the site of the 9/11 terror attacks. Opponents of the mosque say it is an “insult,” “demeaning” and will be the “birthplace of the next terrorist event,” according to a report on ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer. Many family members of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have voiced opposition to the mosque. Although not all Muslims can be blamed for the 9/11 attacks, he said, “why on earth rub salt in the wounds of the 9/11 dead by allowing a mosque to go in just two blocks from where jihadists incinerated or crushed over 2,700 innocent victims, in service of their faith?”

“I mean no disrespect to Muslims, but this is an unspeakably bad idea,” wrote Rod Dreher, director of publications at the John Templeton Foundation, in a Belief net blog on Thursday. “The 9/11 hijackers brought down those towers, and killed thousands, in the name of Islam.”
In the Islamic world what is offensive to Muslims is the only thing that matters. Everyone else's sensitivities are barely considered if at all. The aim of places like the Cordoba House is to help make America Muslims ~ where only Muslim feelings will be considered and all others groups will live as second class citizens to this. And if you look at the Islamic world there is no Muslim country where Christians and others are given equal rights. That would be un-Islamic.
Not only that, Muslims carry their banners publicly in Rome and on the banners are the boldly written Arabic words, “Allah is the only God and Mohammed is his prophet.” The freedom that Muslim migrants enjoy in Christendom is never accorded to Christians in the Muslim world. Synagogues, Mosques and Shrines are built in the Christian world and there have been no persecution of converts from Christianity to other religions, but what converts from other religions, paticularly Islam, to Christianity get in return are series of persecutions, hatred and death.

“The inescapable fact is that those killings were carried out by Islamic religious fanatics who believed they were serving Islam through mass murder,” wrote Dreher. “I see the desire to erect such a building on the site not as a gesture of interreligious peace and reconciliation – which we need – but rather as an outrageous act of nerve and arrogance.”
John A. Oyewole in his report dwells in about era of Pope John Paul 11 extended the arms of oneness, friendship, dialogue and ecumenism by praying at the Wailing Wall as well as in the Mosque in Jerusalem while respecting the decorum of each religion; and it was during his era that a mighty Mosque was built in Rome.
Because of these and more, Pope John Paul 11 won the admiration of many including non-Christians. Besides, John Paul 11 made series of apologies to those concerned, and stressed the importance of the right of peaceful co-existence of all groups of people. The fact that Muslims and Jews see him as a great man is indeed an indication of a man of God who strove to make peace between opposing people who indeed should have been friends.
Unfortunately, the good gesture of John Paul 11 towards non-Christians has hardly been reciprocated. No apology has ever been made for the evil committed against Christians, and there is still continuous havoc being committed each day against the minority Christians in the Middle East and other Islamic countries where Christians are the minority. John Paul lI’s era saw a big erection of a mighty mosque in Rome (even with the initial plan by Muslims to make the dome of the mosque taller than that of Saint Peter’s Basilica). More so, Muslims have representatives in the various parliaments in America and Europe. On the other hand, history makes it clear that the last Catholic Priest in Saudi Arabia was expelled in 1985 and ever since Christians have been denied the right to practise their faith publicly and those who go contrary face continual persecutions. For instance, in February 2003, a foreign Christian of unknown nationality was expelled for giving a Bible in Arabic language to a Saudi citizen; in fact owning a Bible in Arabic language is tantamount to proselytising which is punishable with a jail sentence. Likewise, in early 2003, four Pakistani Christians were arrested for unknown reasons, while two were later released and expelled; nothing is known of the other two till today. Similarly, in October 2003, the Saudi Religious police called the Muttawah arrested two Egyptian Christians, but were later released a month later. On 20 November 2004, a Saudi citizen who converted to Christianity was arrested and jailed, and further investigation revealed that many other Saudi citizens who converted to Christianity are also languishing in Saudi prisons for no other reason than just for being Christians. Furthermore, on 5th April 2006, Father George Joshua from Kerala, India, was arrested while saying Mass privately with Catholics in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Father Joshua was imprisoned for four days because he had gone to Saudi Arabia (with the permission of his bishop) to provide pastoral care in the run up to 2006 Easter celebrations, as part of a mission to support Catholics in the Saudi Kingdom.
The exact nature of the treatment of Fr. Joshua at the hands of the Saudi police is unknown. However, Fr. Joshua was released on Saturday 8th April 2006 with the order to leave Saudi Arabia immediately. In addition, on 29th January 2009, Perpetual of Cartage reported that a daughter of a member of Saudi Arabia’s religious police was killed for writing about her faith in Christ. Much later, the Saudi authority equally arrested a 28-year old Christian man, Hamoud Bin Saleh for describing his conversion and criticising the Saudi’s judiciary on his website. Bin Saleh was not only arrested, his website was equally blocked and no one is sure if Bin Saleh has ever been released since his arrest. However, one could say that some foreign Christians with diplomatic status who worship in their homes are partially lucky in the sense that they do not go into jail but are immediately deported if they are caught.
For Christians in Saudi Arabian prisons to obtain their freedom, the prison guards constantly ask them to get converted to Islam; even their Muslim counterparts who are Shiites are equally asked to become Sunni Muslims which is the Islamic sect of the majority of Saudis. More astonishing is that even Muslim migrants in Christendom wield enormous power to the extent that in 2003, the Muslims in Abmuzzo, Italy, said that crucifixes should be removed from the public schools. The Muslims’ argument is that their children are frightened by the crucifixes on the walls of their classrooms which remind them of ghosts or walking skeletons.
The Muslims did go to court and the verdict was ruled in their favour. Even some Italian priests were tolerant enough to say that the Muslims can as well put their religious signs in public schools if they want. Well, the verdict was later reverted in the second week of December, 2004, by the higher court in Italy, saying that the crucifixes should remain as they are part of Italian culture. On 20 November 2003 the Ex Imam of Carmagnola, Italy (a migrant from Senegal), at Secolo Abdul Qadir Fall Mamour, openly said that Italy must become an Islamic state. Some years later in 2007, some Muslims in Italy demonstrated that Christian religious signs be removed from cemeteries.
The collective conscience of the world is silenced either by threat or by 'Petrol Dollars'. We do run these facts to illuminate what is actually happening on the ground so the law makers and citizens begins to tackle what is unfair and un just on planet earth.

Dr. Sajan K George
National President
Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC)
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