US poll reveals majority opposition to ‘Ground Zero mosque’, widespread animosity towards Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Opponents of the planned Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan have public opinion firmly in their corner. According to a new TIME poll, 61% of respondents oppose the construction of the Park51/Cordoba House project, compared to 26% who support it. More than 70% concur with the premise that proceeding with the plan would be an insult to the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The survey also revealed that many Americans harbor lingering animosity toward Muslims. Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President – slightly higher than the 24% who mistakenly believe that the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim.

And while more Americans are open to the idea of having a mosque built in their neighborhoods than near Ground Zero, it’s still not an overwhelming majority; 55% of respondents say they would favor the construction of an Islamic community center and mosque two blocks from their own homes, and an equal number say they believe most Muslims are “Patriotic Americans.

While the poll revealed that prejudice toward Muslims is widespread, respect for other religions traditions remains sturdy. Respondents held the Jewish faith in the highest regard, with 75% professing to hold a favorable impression – just slightly higher than attitudes toward Protestants and Catholics. Fifty-seven percent say they have a favorable view of the Mormon faith, compared to 44% for Muslims. Despite (or perhaps because of) this widespread antipathy, 62% of respondents say they don’t personally know a Muslim American.

Time, 19 August 2010

See also the Financial Times, which reports on another poll, conducted by the Siena Research Institute. This poll (it can be consulted here) found that New Yorkers opposed the contruction of the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” by a margin of 63 to 27 per cent, but it also found that 64 per cent agreed that the developers of the Cordoba House have a constitutional right to build it, as against 28 percent who disagreed.

Gallup has posted the results of a 17 August poll which found that 37% of Americans disapproved of Obama’s comments on the “Ground Zero mosque”, while 20% approved and 43% expressed no view on the matter. Of those who disapproved, 32% held that view “strongly”.

Posted in USA

Disney restaurant worker files complaint over hijab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Imane Boudlal3

A Muslim woman who works as a hostess at a Disney-owned restaurant filed a discrimination complaint against the entertainment giant Wednesday, saying they have repeatedly sent her home without pay for refusing to remove her headscarf at work.

Imane Boudlal said she has worked as a hostess at Storyteller’s Café in Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa for two years and began wearing her hijab Sunday but was told she would have to remove it or take a job working out of public view.

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Initiator of World Trade Center national memorial backs ‘Ground Zero mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

As the person who initiated designation of the World Trade Center site as a US national memorial under the US National Park Service, and who has long fought for the respectful treatment of the September 11 victims and the site, I support the “Ground Zero mosque”. As e-mail petitions against the proposed Islamic centre flooded my inbox, out of respect to the victims’ families I did not state my opinion until the recent surge of politicisation against Park 51….

For 30 years, the Tribeca mosque has been a good citizen in the World Trade Center neighbourhood, and has the support of the local community board. In envisioning the mosque’s new metamorphosis as a house of prayer and cultural centre, American-born developer Sharif El-Gamal and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a naturalised American, have a grand vision for intercultural and interfaith relations. Their vision has also sparked a fire storm of Islamophobia, fuelled by unending grief and outrage on the one hand, and political grandstanding that smacks of racism and discrimination on the other….

The World Trade Center was first attacked in 1993 and again in 2001 by fundamentalist minority fanatics who murdered more than 3,000 victims of many faiths and nationalities. Among them was Muslim first responder paramedic and New York Police Department cadet Salman Hamdani, who voluntarily entered the smoking towers to save lives. He was posthumously honoured as a hero….

Recently, I shared a glass of wine with two World Trade Center construction workers, who also participated in the Ground Zero clean-up. They were confident that the Cordoba Initiative would be unable to find construction workers to build the Park 51 centre. Au contraire, I believe that in these troubled times, scores of card-carrying union workers of all races, colours and creeds will welcome the opportunity to work together to build a centre of prayer and cultural understanding in the wake of September 11. That’s New York – and that’s America.

Louise Lo Presti,
New York, NY, US
WTC Section 106 – Consulting Party, US National Historic Preservation Act

Letter in Financial Times, 18 August 2010

Leo McKinstry on the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ controversy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The proposal is a deliberate act of provocation against America and Judaeo-Christian civilisation.

The reason that the hijackers were determined to destroy the Twin Towers was because they were seen as a graphic symbol of American enterprise. Once the mosque is erected, it will become a symbol of Islamic triumphalism, an assertion of Muslim power over the West….

Tolerance is a one-way street when it comes to Islam. Muslims constantly demand that our society respects their sensitivities; only last week it was revealed that all meat served in Harrow secondary schools now has to be halal. Yet, as the Ground Zero controversy shows, there is no reciprocal concern shown by Muslims for indigenous cultures.

For all President Obama’s blather about bridge-building, the fact is Islam is an ideology that spells misery, oppression and misogyny wherever it gains power….

The Ground Zero mosque is indicative of a climate of appeasement and self-loathing that has gripped the political class in the West. It is grotesque that, in the name of freedom, our leaders refuse to challenge a doctrine that would destroy our freedoms. Here in Britain, the supine state has allowed domestic terrorism, forced marriages, child sex trafficking, immigration abuses and honour killings to flourish for fear of being labelled “racist”.

In America, the results have been just as deadly, as shown by the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Despite his declared support for Islamic terrorism, US army top brass refused to act against him. Then, in November last year, he shot dead 13 of colleagues.

None of those men would have died if the destructive creed of multi-culturalism had not been so strong. Tolerance in the face of extremism is killing our society. The  9/11 attacks should have galvanised the west. Instead, 10 years later, it is looking like our death knell.

Daily Express, 16 August 2010

‘Don’t let the Muslims force their barbaric ways on us’ – anti-Halal leaflet in Harrow

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Harrow anti-halal leaflet

This is a leaflet that has been distributed by an unnamed group outside a school in Harrow, protesting against the provision of Halal meat. It reads (spelling and grammar as in original):

To Parents

Did you know that your school is going to supply Muslim Halal meat for school dinners not just for Muslims but for all children. You don’t know this because your Head Teacher Katrina Mildner the Chair of Governors Ted Sturdy and Harrow Council choose not to tell you because you are of no importance. They are putting the Muslims beliefs before yours, the reason is they have no respect for you or your children or your beliefs.

English meat is slaughtered humanely so the animal doesn’t not suffer unlike the Halal method. The Bird or Animal have verses read from the Karan as part of the preparation before they slit it’s throat and let it bleed to death. This can take up to 370 seconds for a Calf to die. All the blood then has to be drained out. It is cruel and inhumane by our Western standards. Don’t let the Muslims force their barbaric ways on us, let’s stick to our principles and our way of life or we will lose them forever. This is our England.

You can tell the school you don’t want your child eating Halal. You can complain to the council. Or you can get other mothers and fathers to sign a petition and send this in.

Posted in UK

How Phil Woolas fought the general election

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Phil Woolas leaflet

Over at Indigo Jo Blogs, Yusuf Smith draws our attention to this disgraceful leaflet distributed by Labour MP Phil Woolas during his recent election campaign in the Oldham East and Saddleworth constituency.

Two days before polling day the Lib Dem leader of Oldham Council lodged a complaint with the Equality and Human Rights Commission about Woolas’s election material. “I believe that this type of inflammatory literature is incredibly detrimental to community relations and promoting equality”, he wrote. And who could disagree?

The defeated Lib Dem candidate Elwyn Watkins, who lost to Woolas by only 103 votes, has challenged the election result on the basis that false claims about him were made in Woolas’s leaflets, including the allegation that he appealed for support from “Muslim extremists”. A court hearing will be held on 13 September to decide whether the election should be re-run.

Newt Gingrich compares ‘Ground Zero mosque’ organisers to Nazis

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The folks who want to build this mosque – who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists – those folks don’t have any interest in reaching out to the community. They’re trying to make a case about supremacy. That’s why they won’t go anywhere else, that’s why they won’t accept any other offer.”

“And I think we ought to be honest about the fact that we have a right – and this happens all the time in America. You know, Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaking on Fox & Friends, quoted in the Huffington Post, 16 August 2010

Gingrich is billed as a speaker alongside Dutch far-right Islamophobe Geert Wilders at Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s 11 September rally in New York, which gives you an indication of the sort of company the Republican right is keeping these days.

For a useful summary of the origins of the “Ground Zero mosque” hysteria, see Salon.com, 16 August 2010

Obama backs ‘Ground Zero mosque’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

US President Barack Obama has staunchly defended controversial plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York. Mr Obama acknowledged “sensitivities” surround the 9/11 site, but said Muslims have the same right to practice their religion “as anyone else”. “Our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable,” Mr Obama said.

In a speech at a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, Mr Obama waded into the row, saying:

“We must all recognise and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan, Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground. But let me be clear, as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”

He told the group of US Congressmen, government officials and foreign dignitaries that America’s tradition of religious tolerance distinguishes it from “our enemies”. “Al-Qaeda’s cause is not Islam,” he said, “it is a gross distortion of Islam”.

Until now Mr Obama had not commented on the mosque row, with the White House saying that the matter was a local issue. In voicing his support for the right to build the centre, Mr Obama joins New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had been the only prominent politician to endorse it.

BBC News, 14 August 2010

Pamela Geller comments: “Obama came out for the Islamic supremacist mosque at the hallowed ground of 911 attack. He has, in effect, sided with the Islamic jihadists and told the ummah (at an Iftar dinner on the third night of Ramadan, of course) that he believes in and supports a triumphal mosque on the cherished site of Islamic conquest. If you had any doubt who Obama stood with on 911, there can be no doubt in our minds now.”

Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer offers a similarly balanced view: “If the KKK announced plans to build a shrine at the site of the 16th Street Baptist Church, would Obama be talking about religious freedom?”

But what else did Pamela and Robert expect from Obama? After all, he is a Muslim and prays at a mosque in the White House.