Darwish pushed back by citing Sharia death threats against apostates, putting in context what Mosques are used for in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim ummah; i.e., indoctrination, preaching hate against infidels, storing arms and issuing commands for Jihad and sectarian warfare against fellow Muslims.

The Iconoclast, August 10, 2010

Yesterday, Nonie Darwish, human rights advocate, author and President of Former Muslims United debated Zead Ramadan of the NYC CAIR Chapter on MSNBC.

During this debate, Ramadan put up a smokescreen of ad hominen attacks against Darwish calling her a fabricator of lies about Islam and citing her listing on Loonwatch. Totally irrelevant. Darwish pushed back by citing Sharia death threats against apostates, putting in context what Mosques are used for in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim ummah; i.e., indoctrination, preaching hate against infidels, storing arms and issuing commands for Jihad and sectarian warfare against fellow Muslims. She also cited the FMU Freedom Pledge campaign with requests to abjure death threats against apostates sent to American Muslim leaders, including the promoter of the ground zero Mosque, Imam Faisal Abdel Rauf. FMU sent out over 163 letters containing the Freedom Pledge with only two responses to honor civil and human rights of those who have left Islam.

Ramadan struck back at ADL national director Abe Foxman, who came out against the ground zero mosque project because of its insensitivity to the surviving 9/11 families. Ramadan implied in his sinuous remarks that Foxman has been rejected by his own Jewish community and that the Cordorba house initiative has the support of interfaith groups and Mayor Bloomberg of New York City. As the Coalition to honor 9/11 noted in this blog post on the Darwish Ramadan MSNBC debate:

The MSNBC moderator must not have seen the Siena poll released last week that found 61 percent of New York residents oppose this center planned for Ground Zero.

Mayor Bloomberg is in denial about how New Yorkers and virtually all Americans venerate the former World Trade Center site as hallowed ground. He forgot that Islamic terrorism took the lives of 2700 innocents that I and many others witnessed first hand on that brilliant late summer day nine years ago in Manhattan. How quickly he and other New York Democratic politicians have forgotten the carnage and wanton destruction that day wrought by Egyptian, Saudi and Yemeni Jihadis. Bloomberg and other Democratic politicians preach about putting this behind us and advocating for the mosque in lower Manhattan as demonstrative of a healing process. They fail to recognize that Jihadis throughout the ummah continue absurdly to justify the 9/11 attack because infidels had desecrated the holy lands of Saudi Arabia by sending coalition forces to defend it during and following the First Gulf War.

Our comment is that the MSNBC producers and moderator in this segment continue to frame this debate in terms of granting to Islam religious liberties under the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. They fail consistently to recognize the extremist Jihad doctrine of Political Islam aimed at world domination. The Darwish Ramadan debate served a useful purpose in jarring the viewer audience to raise the question of whether Islam is in reality a totalitarian ideology with a thin veneer of religious practices.

Here is the Coalition to Honor 9/11 blog post

Former Muslim debates NY CAIR over Ground Zero mosque

by admin on August 9, 2010

Nonie Darwish is a founding member of Former Muslims United. She recently debated Zead Ramadan over the proposed mosque, aka the Cordoba House, Islamic cultural center, fun center, 51 Park Place, Park51, and 15-story mosque planned to overlook Ground Zero. Zead Ramadan heads the New York chapter of CAIR. Apparently, Ramadan was offended by Darwish pointing out the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is an un-indicted conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation’s (HLF) illegal transfer of more than $12 million dollars to U.S.-designated terror organization Hamas. The MSNBC moderator must not have seen the Siena poll released last week that found 61 percent of New York residents oppose this center planned for Ground Zero.

Watch this You Tube video of the MSNBC debate between Darwish of FMU and Ramadan of NY CAIR.