GOP lawmakers say paying for Feisal Abdul Rauf's Mideast visit is 'unacceptable'
WASHINGTON — The imam behind controversial plans for a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks is being sent by the State Department on a religious outreach trip to the Middle East, officials said Tuesday, in a move that drew criticism from conservative lawmakers.
The department is sponsoring Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's visit to Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, where he will discuss Muslim life in America and promote religious tolerance, spokesman P.J. Crowley said. He said the imam had been on two similar trips and that plans for the upcoming tour predated the mosque controversy.
Two Republican members of Congress, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Peter King, called government sponsorship of Rauf's trip "unacceptable" in a joint statement. They said he had suggested in at least one interview that the United States was to blame for the 2001 attacks and that taxpayer money should not be used to fund the tour.
"The State Department's selection of Feisal Abdul Rauf to represent the American people through this program further calls into question the administration's policy and funding priorities," Ros-Lehtinen and King, who are the ranking members of the Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees, said in their statement.
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W T F ???? HE'S going to promote religous TOLERANCE??? To who?? He's traveling to countries where the Bible is banned and WILL get you sent to jail. Countries that officially believe that killing nonbelievers is a GOOD idea (in the name of God, of course). And U.S. taxpayers get to contribute to his trip back home??? When he gets back, lets just appoint him to run the CIA or perhaps NASA...you know...so we can make Muslims feel good about themselves. Since their cultures and societies are frozen in the medieval times, they need a LOT of those "feel good about ourseleves' moments...in between killing other Muslims, that is.....
ReplyDeleteI hope Hugh Hefner builds the biggest PlayBoy bar ever built right next door. Richards Simmons and Rosie open a diner across the street. The KKK builds a new national head quarters on the other side. Welcome to America biotch.
ReplyDeleteI am a Democrat who voted for Obama. I want to join those who are outraged by the building of this Mosque near ground zero. Why not just put up a MacDonald's in the middle of Hiroshima. Why not a smiling picture of Hitler near one his human ovens' sites. I am not the one who will do it, but I feel certain that if they build this, it will be destroyed by AMERICANS. Perhaps a drone loaded with a bunker buster bomb. If this is not the most ignorant and inhumane twisting of the Constitution and American freedoms I don't know what is. The Mayor of New York is and idiot.
ReplyDeleteThe muslims have a history of build mosques near locations they have defeated, such as Cordova, Spain.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, the name of this project to build in lower Manhattan, is the Cordova Project.