Jon Stewart is the only pundit to take-on the question of the Ground Zero mosque's funding with anything like detail.
The mosque is being funded in-part, by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who is also a major shareholder in Fox News Corporation. Other benefactors of the poorly placed mosque project are unknown and will remain so, according to organizers.
This means the media outlet most critical of building the mosque on top of a site destroyed by parts of the hijacked plane, is also kind-of building it.
Fox and the mosque are shareheld by the same Saudi Arabian prince.
Who is Prince Alwaleed? and what is Wahhabism? What other Wahhabists are paying for the project? These questions are not asked on TV, and yet the answers are what will define the mosque on a site so much intimately associated with Ground Zero, that it is Ground Zero.
American news should hash this out. Who is Alwaleed? And what is his Wahhabi Islamic political ideology? To leave these questions hanging makes it possible for Wahhabi idealists to fund this mosque, and have a chance to claim a piece of Ground Zero.
If we can be critical of the Christian right on TV, New Yorkers can be critical of Wahhabi Islam building anything on Ground Zero. It's not racist, it's about the ideas and feeling and messages and symbols of 9/11 made possible by building the mosque on that site.
The media was supposed to get us to the Wahhabi discussion, but did not, preferring to couch the debate as people against all Muslims. It was left to Jon Stewart to bring up the Wahhabi connections. Before that, the mosque had nothing to do with Wahhabi-sympathetizers, at least in how it was presented. We now learn, it's probably going to be entirely funded by them. Is that wrong? We are not allowed to know.
Prince Alwaleed is no more a spawn of evil than any other hoarder of immense wealth. Wahhabism may really just be fundamentalism that was perverted even further by a worse sub-sect. I don't know, and it's not my place, I now realize, to explain those nuances. I'll leave that to Jon Stewart, who is alone on TV for even beginning to explain how Saudi Arabian Wahhabi billionaires will own and define what is their project.
The mosque is being funded in-part, by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who is also a major shareholder in Fox News Corporation. Other benefactors of the poorly placed mosque project are unknown and will remain so, according to organizers.
This means the media outlet most critical of building the mosque on top of a site destroyed by parts of the hijacked plane, is also kind-of building it.
Fox and the mosque are shareheld by the same Saudi Arabian prince.
Who is Prince Alwaleed? and what is Wahhabism? What other Wahhabists are paying for the project? These questions are not asked on TV, and yet the answers are what will define the mosque on a site so much intimately associated with Ground Zero, that it is Ground Zero.
American news should hash this out. Who is Alwaleed? And what is his Wahhabi Islamic political ideology? To leave these questions hanging makes it possible for Wahhabi idealists to fund this mosque, and have a chance to claim a piece of Ground Zero.
If we can be critical of the Christian right on TV, New Yorkers can be critical of Wahhabi Islam building anything on Ground Zero. It's not racist, it's about the ideas and feeling and messages and symbols of 9/11 made possible by building the mosque on that site.
The media was supposed to get us to the Wahhabi discussion, but did not, preferring to couch the debate as people against all Muslims. It was left to Jon Stewart to bring up the Wahhabi connections. Before that, the mosque had nothing to do with Wahhabi-sympathetizers, at least in how it was presented. We now learn, it's probably going to be entirely funded by them. Is that wrong? We are not allowed to know.
Prince Alwaleed is no more a spawn of evil than any other hoarder of immense wealth. Wahhabism may really just be fundamentalism that was perverted even further by a worse sub-sect. I don't know, and it's not my place, I now realize, to explain those nuances. I'll leave that to Jon Stewart, who is alone on TV for even beginning to explain how Saudi Arabian Wahhabi billionaires will own and define what is their project.
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