Germany and the Real 9/11 Mosque
Mosques are riling the soul of the West. In Hamburg, the story is not about turf but terror. The Taiba Mosque was previously known as the Al-Quds Mosque.
This is where Mohamed Atta, the mastermind of 9/11, hung out with other co-conspirators. This is where Imam Muhammad al-Fazazi used to preach venom and murder throughout the 1990s, opining that "Christians and Jews should have their throats cut." In 2003, a Spanish court gave this pious cleric 30 years for planning attacks on Jewish institutions in Morocco.
Fanaticism itself is no crime, nor is discoursing on Allah's will. As in the U.S., a hateful ideology is no ticket to prison. Authoritarians have no qualms about equating ideology and intention. But Western liberal democracy obeys due process and the concept of "innocent until proven guilty." Words, as Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote for the Supreme Court in 1919, have to "create a clear and present danger" to be criminal.
In that respect, the Germans may have become more American than the Americans.
So watch for the next installment of this drama, when the mosque's board might take the city to court. The bet is that we'll hear a dialogue like this. Judge: "Show me the evidence." Government witness: "Sorry, sir, we can't compromise our sources." Shades of Guantanamo. Case dismissed.
It would have been smarter to keep the mosque open precisely because it has been such a convenient source of information, with those terror tourists coming, talking and going. As the spokesman said: "Intelligence work takes time." Actually, it never stops, and good intelligence has proven the West's best weapon in the war against terror.
To boot, these folks know their rights. When the police demanded entry, the caretaker literally showed them the finger. Instead of breaking down the door and cuffing the brute, the police called a locksmith. Hamburg's police nabbed the computers. It would have been more efficient to hack them.
