At the center of the recent overheated controversy that became – misleadingly – known as the “Ground Zero Mosque,” was Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
Newt Gingrich compared Rauf and other supporters of the Muslim community center and mosque to be built several blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, to “Nazis” who have no “right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington.” But New York mayor Michael Bloomberg defended Rauf. He quoted Rauf’s remarks at an interfaith memorial service for the martyred journalist Daniel Pearl: “If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind, and soul: Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ehad; Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one. If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one.”
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