Return the Hagia Sofia and every other non-Muslim house of worship converted into a mosque, rebuild those you've destroyed, apologize for fourteen hundred years of enslaving, raping, and slaughtering non-Muslims, and then we can talk about a mosque at Ground Zero*

A mosque at Ground Zero? I’m against it.

Did the United States allow a shrine to the Emperor of Japan to be built at Pearl Harbor? Did the British allow the National Socialists to erect a führerhauptquartiere in London? How long was it after modern Israel’s creation that it allowed a Hitler memorial library in Jerusalem? If a non-Muslim nation were to erase the Ka'aba, would Saudi Arabia allow within a stone’s throw of its former location a cathedral, synagogue, fire temple, mandir, vihara, gurdwara, or spirit house? Will they do that now?  Why should we allow an altar to Islamic religiocide to be erected at the site of one of its bloodiest sacrifices, an outpost promoting the ideology directly responsible for 9/11?

Jihadist prime minister Erdogan of modern, moderate Turkey (elected after the law was changed to allow jihadists to run for office – now that’s progress! Let them into the EU!) on the true nature of a mosque:

"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers...”

Unfortunately for non-Muslims, that line of “poetry” is descriptive and not merely metaphorical. Throughout its fourteen hundred years of conquest, slaughter, rape, and slavery, Islam has used the mosque to train, motivate, and sustain generation after generation of jihad’s agents, propagating the “faith” Muhammad spread by the sword:

“the Messenger of Allah . . . would say: 'Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war. . . . When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. . . . Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. . . . If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them . . .'" (Muslim Book 19, Number 4294).

"fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) . . . " (Qur’an 9:5).

"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Qur'an 9:29).

"Allah’s Apostle said, 'I have been made victorious with terror'" (Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220).

"Allah's Apostle was asked, 'What is the best deed?' He replied, 'To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad).' The questioner then asked, 'What is the next (in goodness)?' He replied, 'To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah's Cause . . . .’” (Bukhari Volume 1, Book 2, Number 25).

"Say to the Unbelievers, if (now) they desist (from Unbelief), their past would be forgiven them; but if they persist, the punishment of those before them is already (a matter of warning for them). And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone (in the whole of the world) . . ." (Qur'an 8:38-39).

Not only would this mosque be another base of jihad recruitment and propaganda within our borders, but one at Ground Zero would be a tribute to jihad, a symbol of Islamic victory and non-Muslim subjugation. Islam has a long history of converting into mosques the non-Muslim religious buildings it doesn’t raze. A sick inside joke to Muslims, the proposed "Cordoba House" (part of the "Cordoba Initiative") recalls the conquering of the Iberian peninsula by Islam's armies in the eighth century, from whose rule it took Spain nearly eight hundred years to liberate itself.  Muslims built their famous mosque in Cordoba on the site of a Visigoth church.**

The most offensive example of the Cordoba Impulse is the taking of the greatest church in Christendom, the Hagia Sofia, desecrated and turned into a mosque when Constantinople fell to the Muslim horde laying siege to it in 1453:

". . . the great church of Hagia Sophia was filled to capacity. Thousands of people were moving towards the church. Inside, Orthodox and Catholic priests were holding liturgy, the last Christian service after almost 1,000 years. People were singing hymns, others were openly crying, others were asking each other for forgiveness . . . .

"Bands of Ottoman soldiers began now looting. Doors were broken, private homes were looted, their tenants were massacred. Shops in the city markets were looted. Monasteries and Convents were broken in. Their tenants were killed, nuns were raped; many, to avoid dishonor, killed themselves. Killing, raping, looting, burning, enslaving, went on and on . . . .

"The great doors of Hagia Sophia were forced open, and crowds of angry soldiers came in and fell upon the unfortunate worshippers. Pillaging and killing in the holy place went on for hours. Similar was the fate of worshippers in most churches in the city . . . .

"Thousands of civilians were enslaved, soldiers fought over young boys and young women . . . the invaders broke the heads of those women who resisted on the floor of the churches and they raped them dead. The famous icon of Apostole Loukas was totally destroyed.

"The sultan asked for the young sons of Duke Loukas Notaras. Their father refused and Mehmed was ready to take their heads. Notaras asked him to kill him after his sons so that he was sure that they were dead and not disgraced from the pervert sultan.

"And this is what happened."

-Black Tuesday, The Last Day of the World, the twenty-ninth of May, anno Domini MCDLIII

The suggestion of a mosque at Ground Zero, our toleration of that suggestion, and the support for it from our own politicians and media (yes, you read that link right; can you imagine our media in the early 1940s running pieces sympathetic to Nazis?) is an affront to and shameful betrayal of those who perished on 9/11, our military who’ve sacrificed and who sacrifice now in our War of Self-Defense Against Allah, every civilization which has fallen under Muhammad’s sword over the last one and one-half millennia, and Islam’s current and future victims.

Muhammad declared war against the non-Muslim world fourteen hundred years ago. His followers have renewed that call in our day. Acts like the atrocities carried out on 9/11 are a legitimate exercise of Islam.

When will we respond with something more forceful (and forthright) than a da'wah-practicing, allegedly-former Muslim hosting iftar dinners in the White House? Will we stand limp-wristed and helpless, braying stupidly about Muslims' right to the free exercise of “kill the pagans wherever you find them,” or will we tell the truth and defend ourselves?

No, no mosque at Ground Zero, or anywhere.

*Originally published in July, 2010; republished here with a few slight revisions.

**Is it an accident that the rise of Islam in Europe with Cordoba as the "Capital of Ummayid Caliphate, which makes Qurtuba [Cordoba] the leading economic, political and cultural center of Europe" coincided with the Dark Ages?