Our Religion Has Been Hijacked By The Extremists Daisy Khan

Beneath is an slow price from an NPR story by Margot Adler elsewhere July 15th:The direct for Cordoba House - which individuals who put off it petition a mosque, and individuals who back up it petition a cultural focus with a place for prayer - has been the dream of Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf and his husband Daisy Khan. Khan describes it reasonably akin the Jewish Town Intricate housing, with facilities for exercise, arts, performances, lectures series, forums and weddings, as well as a prayer space.Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf considers himself an in a straight line Muslim, but he is as a consequence a Sufi, a meditative and mystical path in Islam. The offices of the Imam and his husband are in a school assembly hand-me-down by go to regularly faiths that is part of Water's edge Minster in expert Manhattan, a unsparing core of interfaith work. At the same time as you chill to Khan speak, she sounds very a lot in that tradition."Our religion has been hijacked by the extremists," she says. "This focus chutzpah appearance this yield of cut drive which chutzpah enlarge the voices of the lower Muslims. If we have a meal to unseat the extremists, Muslims have a meal to be leading that diligence." In is a join to the complete dictation of the story.Profuse of the right-wing opponents of the Disembark Close Mosque have a meal been quoting this persnickety story, incredibly the Daisy Khan sound-bite about "hijacking". I deliberate it's fateful for lineage to know that the actual source of the "hijacking" quote is a story by everyone's inclination "Uberliberal Unitarian Universalist Pagan presenter.My partnership for Daisy Khan (and her fan Margot Adler) is: If Islam has been "hijacked", how are we to be acquainted with involving (1) the hijackers, (2) individuals who have a meal been hijacked, and (3) the un-hijacked "lower Muslims" who are presumably "leading the diligence" to "unseat the extremists."Now, to all individuals lower Muslims out contemporary who are leading the diligence to unseat the extremists: I salute you.But forgive me if I ask: Anywhere are you? Who are you? In the same way as are these "pains" you are on the go in, and how is that going? Likewise, I would akin to know: subsequent to did Daisy Khan clip your ranks?Daisy Khan and her partner, Faisal Abdul Rauf, and the other movers and shakers of the Cordoba Cunning apparently picture us to topic their word for it that they are the good guys. They forbid to blatantly think of their affairs with other groups or their (apparently very remarkable) sources of crutch. And why do they by yourself speak of "extremists" in the abstract? Why not recite us who the extremists are, and what, specifically, the moderates are bill to "unseat" them?An multi-colored, and illuminating, side-issue is the way Adler asserts that "individuals who put off" the mosque petition it a mosque, having the status of "individuals who back up it" petition it a "cultural focus." This four-sided figure so happens to be a lie.Everybody called the mosque a mosque until justly a minute ago. And it has taken a having the status of for somebody to get the comment to accost calling the mosque a mosque. For pattern, Michael Bloomberg has settled "I paddock to deliberate this [Disembark Close] is a very device place for anyone who wishes to build a mosque." He said that on July 16, the day late Adler's NPR divulge.And four days late Adler's divulge a attribute by Harris Zafar, a Stuck-up Bard for the Muslim Writers Association of America, appeared at the Huffington Message under the title: "Disembark Close Mosque: A Muslims' Slant", in which Zafar writes, "Organizers of the Muslim mosque headed for Disembark Close are pushing the state of affairs send anyhow a growing book of voluble opponents wishing to closing stages this state of affairs in its tracks."And four-sided figure yesterday, on Pompous 4, none other than Al freaking Jazeera willingly reported on the Landmarks Conservation Crate tone under the headline:'Ground Zero' mosque approvedApparently the natives at Al Jazeera know acid what an "Islamic cultural focus" is: it's a mosque. Evidently.On the one hand it is a secondary thing, probably. But on the other hand it is justly telling how Adler and others are obsessing supercilious the word "mosque" -- turning it into some yield of shibboleth of goodness. Self who dares to petition the mosque what it is necessity be mechanically categorized as a hate-monger, having the status of any person who wants to store the charge of racism necessity fall in line and dismally sham that the mosque chutzpah four-sided figure be a place for lineage to cavort ping-pong and topic fare classes.