Threat over Ground Zero mosque
Published in The Toronto Sun, Tuesday, August 17, 2010
By Brian Lilley, Parliamentary Bureau
OTTAWA – She spoke out against the Ground Zero mosque, now a Canadian Muslim woman says she is being threatened. Raheel Raza, a founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress, calls the idea of a mosque within 300 metres of Ground Zero “a deliberate provocation.”
Last week Raza joined Maureen Basnicki a Canadian widow of 9-11 in attending a meeting about the mosque in New York City.
“They were very arrogant. They didn’t answer questions,” Raza told QMI Agency.
The meeting was hosted by Daisy Khan, the wife of the Imam promoting the mosque and Sharif El Gamal, the man whose property firm owns the land the mosque is to be built on.
Raza says she asked questions about who was financing the building, estimated to cost $100 million, and whether any of the money would come from countries other than the United States. There has been much speculation that the mosque is being funded through Saudi Arabian sources but at the Manhattan meeting Raza said there were no answers.
On Monday, back in Toronto, Raza says she received a call on her cellphone from a man who identified as Sharif El Gamal. “His tone was intimidating,” said Raza. “He accused me of ‘jumping into’ the meeting he called and then said ‘May Allah protect you.’ I was shocked and hung up.”
Raza says she took the phone call as a clear threat against her.
“Why would I need Allah’s protection?” asked Raza.
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Read the rest of the article of the Toronto Sun [HERE]
Also read : Muslim Canadian Congress urges New York’s Ground-Zero Mosque Imam to abandon project