John Esposito, director of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, having observed that a large majority of Americans oppose an Islamic center at Ground Zero, could not decide whether American society now more closely resembles that of Birmingham, Alabama circa 1963, or Nazi Germany on the eve of Kristallnacht:
.... Esposito seconded Zune's bizarre theme of America's exceptional intolerance in the eyes of the Islamic world, telling his American audience that opposition to the Ground Zero mosque "stunned ... the vast majority of Muslims."
Muslims living under the rule of Esposito's Saudi sponsors must be "stunned" by Americans' opposition to the construction of a thirteen-story Islamic center at Ground Zero, considering the erection of the most humble synagogue or church anywhere in Saudi Arabia is prohibited, and non-Muslims may not even enter the cities of Mecca or Medina. [American Thinker] Read more
John Esposito, Islamophobia, and the Ground Zero Mosque John L. Esposito .... is America's best-known apologist for Saudi Wahhabism, the Turkish fundamentalist Justice and Development Party (AKP), and Islamist ideologies in general. To many, he personifies all that's wrong with Middle East studies in America today.
.... Denunciation of crimes committed by Muslims, such as the 9/11 attacks, or the extremist affiliations of Muslims like Feisal Abdul Rauf, is not Islamophobia. Rather, such repudiation is urgently necessary for the health of American Islam as a faith community and should certainly come before any schemes for ambitious, overbearing mosques or Islamic cultural centers. Given his position in Middle East studies, Esposito should understand that. His apologetics guarantee that he won't. [American Thinker] Read more
