Even Cordoba Institute's name telegraphs the organization's deceptiveness. Cordoba (also the name for Chautauqua's proposed new Muslim house) was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate that ruled most of Spain from Tariq ibn Zayid's 711 invasion through 1248, and controlled parts of Spain until its full liberation in 1492.
However, neither the Umayyads (who ruled monolithically until about 1031), nor the particularly vicious Almoravids (who swept over the Atlas mountains and, in 1080, into Spain) ruled non-Muslims kindly. While Islamic harshness varied, it remained unquestionably ever-present.
Rauf is not alone in his blatant whitewash of Islam's brutal history in Spain. Many others purvey the same historical falsehood. Yet Muslim rule in Spain never remotely approached the mythic level of beneficence that Rauf pretends (30).
The surviving victims of 9/11 and families of the deceased should not be alone in opposing Rauf's proposed 13-story mosque, 600 feet from the World Trade Center site.
Traditionally, Muslims have destroyed houses of worship built by virtually every other faith under the sun. Worldwide, Islam has plundered tens of thousands (if not more) of Christian churches, Jewish synagogues and holy archaeological sites, plus Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Sikh, and other temples and monasteries.
Then, in the interest of jihad, Islam has claimed all these religious places of others as their own "mosques," forever Muslim.
To allow a mosque at a place a Muslim gang destroyed on 9/11 would amount to formally blessing Islam's 1,400-year-old tradition of exclusivity and suppression of all persons of all other faiths.
It would be a 100% victory of Islam and sharia law over the U.S. Constitution and America's time-honored democracy and pluralism.