I have been stewing about the issue of the Ground Zero mosque for a few weeks now, wrestling with a diary on the subject. Today I was made aware of a statement by Newt Gingrich on the issue, and when I read it I realized he said everything that I wanted to say. So here it is, copied from Newt’s website:

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

The proposed “Cordoba House” overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks – is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.

Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to “symbolize interfaith cooperation” when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way.

Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for “religious toleration” are arrogantly dishonest. They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City. Meanwhile, there are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia. In fact no Christian or Jew can even enter Mecca.

And they lecture us about tolerance.

If the people behind the Cordoba House were serious about religious toleration, they would be imploring the Saudis, as fellow Muslims, to immediately open up Mecca to all and immediately announce their intention to allow non-Muslim houses of worship in the Kingdom. They should be asked by the news media if they would be willing to lead such a campaign.

We have not been able to rebuild the World Trade Center in nine years. Now we are being told a 13 story, $100 million megamosque will be built within a year overlooking the site of the most devastating surprise attack in American history.

Finally where is the money coming from? The people behind the Cordoba House refuse to reveal all their funding sources.

America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could.

No mosque.

No self deception.

No surrender.

The time to take a stand is now – at this site on this issue.

The very thought of this mosque is, and remains, an outrage. It is a slap in the face to every American who watched in horror as the planes hit, the innocent men and women jumped to their deaths and the buildings collapsed. That is, every American who watched and remembers. Any benefit of the doubt that any Muslim on earth used to get from me is gone. The death and destruction wrought by these Islamists litters the world, and their little crusade needs to come to a stone cold stop. It has nothing to do with freedom of religion and everything to do with what they consider their triumph.

Instead of the scene of the worst sneak attack on innocent civilians in our history, let Ground Zero forever more represent the beginning of the West’s rejection of Islamists and the immediate halt to these seeds of subjugation disguised as places of worship.