Unbelievable. You're not going to guess what our tax dollars are subsidizing. Actually, in this ObamaNation, maybe you will guess it. It turns out that you and I are funding the State Department to purchase and distribute copies of Feisal Abdul Rauf's book, What's Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West.
Rauf is the imam behind the Ground Zero mosque and is the same imam who won't condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization; the same imam who said on “60 Minutes” that America was an "accessory" to September 11; and, as we reported at HUMAN EVENTS, the same imam who told a college audience overseas that the United States is worse than al Qaeda.
Yep, that dude. And not only has the State Department anointed him as our ad hoc ambassador to the Muslim world, but now they are acting as his personal Barnes & Noble to boot. Good grief! Buried in a recent New York Times article on Imam Rauf's global hopscotch, the paper casually referenced that our government buys and hands out his tome in an effort "to lecture about tolerance" and pursue "interfaith dialogue" with Islamic nations.
Only in the left's strange world does it make sense to support Imam Rauf as a goodwill spokesman for the United States while he's busy trashing the United States. But that aside, did the bureaucrats at the State Department ever take the time to read Rauf's What's Right with Islam? If so, they'll have to justify why they're promoting a book that faults America for stirring up conflict with Muslims, brags that America is "Sharia compliant," and makes excuses for suicide bombings.
Researchers at the American Center for Law and Justice combed through Rauf's 2004 book and found alarming passages. In the Orwellian-named chapter “What's Right with America,” Rauf goes on to—you guessed it—blame America. He writes: "If there is any quarrel Muslims have with America, it is that the United States does not always live up to its own ideal of ethics and values." In the same chapter, Rauf has a section called “America: A Sharia-Compliant State” wherein he contends that the "American political structure is Sharia compliant," especially if it begins to allow "religious communities more leeway to judge among themselves according to their own laws."
As if that weren't bad enough, our bud Rauf goes on to rationalize suicide bombings by blaming societal roots and not the warped Islamic fanatics themselves. Quoth the imam: "The most widely accepted view today in psychoanalysis is that suicide is most often a form of 'displacement.'… the individual inflicts upon himself the result of the frustration and anger caused by the perceived unraveling of the social fabric of his world."
Sounds exactly like the kind of guy best to represent American interests abroad, no? If you disagree, you're probably an Islamophobic racist!
