Search Results for: ration

>Ground Zero Mosque :American Muslim organization says President Obama is wrong
August 15, 2010
AIFD
American Islamic Forum for Democracy

STATEMENT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PHOENIX (August 15, 2010) – Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy issued the following statement regarding remarks from President Obama on the proposed mosque and Islamic Center at Ground Zero:

“As an American Muslim whose family fled persecution in Syria and as someone who has stood in the face of some resistance to the building of many of our houses of worship in the U.S., I fully understand the value of standing for religious freedom in America. But President Obama’s statement about the Ground Zero mosque at last night’s White House Iftar dinner is the latest example of political correctness gone awry.

The President commented that:

“Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America.”

Yes, Mr. President, this is America and you have fundamentally misunderstood the stakes in this discussion and the sentiments of the American people. Instead, you have focused on the very issue that the Islamist propagandists wish you to– the narrative that Americans somehow need lectures about Islam, Muslims, and religious freedom.

Your message to Americans will be spun on Al Jazeera and by Islamists across the world that President Obama reassured a friendly global Muslim audience at the White House Ramadan dinner that he was going to remind Americans about the principles of religious freedom for Muslims since they seem to be trampling over those principles in the local dispute at Ground Zero in New York.

Mr. President this is not about religious freedom. It is about the importance of the World Trade Center site to the psyche of the American People. It is about a blatant attack on our sovereignty by people whose ideology ultimately demands the elimination of our way of life. While Imam Faisal Rauf may not share their violent tendencies he does seem to share a belief that Islamic structures are a political statement and even Ground Zero should be looked upon through the lens of political Islam and not a solely American one.

As a Muslim desperate to reform his faith, your remarks take us backwards from the day that my faith will come into modernity. I do not stand to eliminate Imam Rauf’s religious freedom; I stand to make sure that my children’s religious freedom will be determined by the liberty guaranteed in the American Constitution and not by clerics or leaders who are apologists for shar’iah law and will tell me what religious freedom is.

‘Park 51’, ‘The Cordoba House’ or whatever they are calling it today should not be built, not because it is not their right to do it – but because it is not right to do it.” Mr. President, your involvement in this issue is divisive not uniting. Your follow-up stating that ‘you will not speak to the wisdom of the construction of that mosque and center’ indicates a passive-aggressive meddling on your part that only marginalizes those Muslim and non-Muslim voices against it while pretending to understand both sides of the debate.

Contact: 602-254-1840 (office), email: [email protected], web: www.aifdemocracy.org

About the American Islamic Foundation for Democracy

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD’s mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at https://www.aifdemocracy.org/.

>Congressman Scott Garrett:Another Taxpayer Funded Bailout!

In case you haven’t heard already, Speaker Pelosi called my colleagues and me back from the August recess on Tuesday to vote on more government spending. This one comes in the form of a bailout package to help states cover the costs for education and Medicaid to the tune of $26 billion. And here I thought the American public would finally get some reprieve from the voracious spending appetite of liberal Democrats in Washington, DC.

It should come as no surprise for you to know that I voted against this bill. Not only does it spend money that we don’t have, but it perpetuates the bailout culture that has become so popular with Democrats in Congress. Also, but the so-called spending “offsets” in the bill came in the form of a $10 billion tax increase on corporations.

Democrats would like you to believe that spending this additional $26 billion will somehow create jobs, spur economic growth and expand individual opportunity for Americans. The truth is that this latest bailout is really just a give-away to state bureaucrats at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. Another short-term federal bailout will only encourage states to rely on more taxpayer funded federal assistance rather than balancing their budgets and reducing unneeded spending.

The American small business community is starting to catch on to the parlor games of Democrats in Washington. They have seen first hand just how ineffective the Democrats’ solutions have been in turning around the economy and putting American back to work.

On Monday, Michael Fleischer, the president of a small business in the Fifth District, penned a very thoughtful Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “Why I’m not Hiring.”

In his piece, Mr. Fleischer writes, “As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company’s vulnerability to government decisions to raise taxes, to policies that make health insurance more expensive, and to the difficulties of this economic environment. A life in business is filled with uncertainties, but I can be quite sure that every time I hire someone my obligations to the government go up. From where I sit, the government’s message is unmistakable: Creating a new job carries a punishing price.”

All Members of Congress would be well served to read Mr. Fleischer’s piece. Rather than looking for ways to make it harder to conduct business in the U.S., Congress should be working on ways to make it easier to grow businesses and hire new workers. We shouldn’t be coming back to Washington to vote on measures that spend money we don’t have. Instead, my colleagues and me should be coming back to Washington to vote for legislation that puts Americans back to work, reduces our ballooning national debt and gets the American economy on a course towards prosperity once again.

Congressman Scott Garrett