The virality of information in this galloping technological age was brought home to me the other day, when I received an e-mail about an article by Bill Kelly in the Washington Times Communities that contained some photographs I shot back in June.

I thought it might be a good idea to elaborate on that story and share more of what I saw and heard on that day.

Above: Pamela Geller, organizer of June 6 rally, holds photo of plane parts from 9/11.

"Sometimes a subject is so serious that even we need to take a step back and let the story tell itself. This is one of those times,"  Kelly, a political satirist, wrote in his column. 

He continued: "Despite public opinion, the mainstream media has virtually ignored the protests against the WTC mosque. According to internet reports, not one major TV network or camera crew covered this recent protest. Uncredited photos of the New York protests have surfaced, bypassing the mainstream media's unbalanced reporting, and have since caused a stir on the internet. Few words are necessary. The photos of the mystery photographer speak louder than any words ever could."

Kelly wrote those words Aug. 12, more than two months after the "feminist AynRandian" blogger and human-rights activist Pamela Geller led a massive rally at ground zero to draw attention to grassroots opposition aimed at the proposed mosque headed by controversial imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

Above: Opponents rally against the Cordoba Initiative, which plans to build the Islamic community-center complex and mosque 560 feet from where World Trade Center towers once stood.

In response to the plans, Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress, wrote in the Ottawa Citizen an article titled  "Mischief in Manhattan -- We Muslims know the Ground Zero mosque is meant as a deliberate provocation," offering a glimpse into the minds of truly moderate Muslims. 

In part, they wrote: "Let's not forget that a mosque is an exclusive place of worship for Muslims and not an inviting community centre. Most Americans are wary of mosques due to the hard core rhetoric that is used in pulpits. And rightly so. As Muslims we are dismayed that our co-religionists have such little consideration for their fellow citizens and wish to rub salt in their wounds and pretend they are applying a balm to sooth the pain. 

"As for those teary-eyed, bleeding-heart liberals such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and much of the media, who are blind to the Islamist agenda in North America, we understand their goodwill. Unfortunately for us, their stand is based on ignorance and guilt, and they will never in their lives have to face the tyranny of Islamism that targets, kills and maims Muslims worldwide, and is using liberalism itself to destroy liberal secular democratic societies from within."

What Raza and Fatah show us is that the Quran can be interpreted in a mild, nonpolitical way. The bad news is that the most powerful trend in Islam is the Muslim Brotherhood's political strain, which controls every aspect of adherents' lives with Sharia law. They aim to dominate the West and are said to be active in 90 countries, where they promote a doctrine of both violent jihad and stealth jihad. Violent jihad is the terrorism we see throughout the world today. Stealth jihad is, in part, the manipulation of the press and the government to topple a target society or a nation from within.

Above: Some of the signage displayed at the protest June 6 in New York. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been said to have defended Wahhabism, calling for Sharia law in America and the elimination of the state of Israel (resulting in a one-state solution). Abdul Rauf is also on record as defending Osama Bin Laden, claiming that America made him into the terrorist that he is. Rauf essentially justifies acts of violence by blaming the United States, and the West in general, yet never blaming terrorists for waging war against Westerners.

A 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document obtained by the FBI outlined the group's strategy:  "[Members] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

One of Abdul Rauf's partners in the Cordoba Initiative is Jamal Barzinji, a co-founder of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood in America. Barzinji founded the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., which is alleged to have incubated numerous terrorist plots, including the 9/11 attacks and the Fort Hood murders.

Above: Protesters note the significance of the Cordoba Initiative's name. The imam originally named the proposed Islamic center Cordoba House, which references Cordoba, Spain, a land occupied by Muslim invaders for three centuries. After 800 of years of war, Spanish armies forced the Muslims out in 1492. During their occupation of Cordoba, the Islamic conquerers built an architectural wonder of a mosque over that city's main Catholic church. Muslims have vowed ever since their expulsion to retake Spain, claiming that it is their rightful land.

In 1999, there was an attempt to build a huge mosque beside the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Adjacent land was purchased, and, with Israel's approval, a mosque whose minarets would tower over the Catholic church began to be constructed. This caused an uproar from Christians worldwide and led Israel to rescind construction permission in 2002. In the Nazareth case, most Islamic leaders also were against the project. 

In 2008, some in England were shocked to learn that land had been purchased to build Europe's largest mosque adjacent to the 2012 Olympic stadium in London. Public opposition against the proposed mosque was so great that planners ultimately abandoned the effort.

This brings us to the Burlington Coat Factory, site of the proposed New York mosque.

Above: The property on which the mosque is proposed was purchased by the Cordoba Initiative at a bargain price of less than $5 million. The property value had fallen from $19 million after it was rendered uninhabitable after the Sept. 11 attacks. 

Some may not know that Rauf's book, "What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America," was first released in Malaysia under the ghoulish title "A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble."

Abdul Rauf's building, even in ruins, is now an active mosque with 400 to 500 men attending worship services on Fridays. Rauf will not reveal where the funding will come from for the mosque renovation and has refused to rule out tapping Saudi or Iranian money.

Eighty percent of mosques in the U.S. are said to be controlled by Wahhabis, with the deeds to them being held by the Islamic Association of Islamic Trusts, which is a Saudi fund for mosque building. Two years ago this month, the New York police issued a report warning that Wahhabi mosques in America were incubators for "homegrown" Islamic radicals. 

Above: At last, redevelopment is under way at ground zero. The Cordoba site is on a street to the left of this location.

Above:  St. Paul’s chapel can be seen nestled amongst the trees to the right. Built in 1766, it is the oldest continuously occupied building in New York City. It remained undamaged as the twin towers collapsed just at the graveyard’s wrought-iron gate. A historically important building, in 1789, George Washington prayed there after his inauguration as the first U.S. president and attended services there on numerous occasions. The most distinguished French officer buried in the U.S, Lt. Col. Rochefontaine, lays at rest there. His tomb honors the aid rendered by France during the American Revolution. He is not the only Revolutionary soldier buried there.

Above: The Bell of Hope is a gift from London, and it was unveiled on Sept. 11, 2002. The bell is ceremoniously rung every Sept. 11. It also was rung March 11, 2004, when trains were bombed in Madrid and on July 7, 2005, after the London subway and bus attacks. Directly in front of the bell, on the far side of the pit, the Freedom Tower is rising. To offer perspective, this bell is almost exactly the same distance from the base of the new tower as the mosque site. To get to the property, you walk to the new tower and then right two very short blocks.

Above: A sign in the graveyard at this spot is titled: "Unwavering Spirit -- Hope and Healing at Ground Zero." It reads in part: "In the wake of September 11, an extraordinary volunteer ministry emerged at the chapel. It brought together thousands of people of every nationality, race, and religion to provide care and solace to the recovery workers at Ground Zero." In the aftermath of 9/11 the chapel was used as a service and staging area for rescue worker who found cots, meals and counseling, all of which were coordinated from St. Paul's.

Above: When I visited in November 2001, almost all of the dust was gone, but the area still smelled of death. In front of the church, the wrought-iron fence became a memorial of photos and notes, with people from all parts of the world writing messages on large canvases. The proposed mosque will dwarf St. Paul's chapel, becoming the tallest religious building in Lower Manhattan.

Above: Simon Deng, a human rights leader and south Sudanese Christian speaks at the June 6 rally of the crimes perpetrated on his people by the Islamic government in Khartoum. 

While some frame this worldwide debate as "Muslims as the victim of American religious intolerance," they turn a blind eye on religious minorities suffering every kind of violent horror in Muslim countries, including genocide.

The June 6 rally included Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Jews, all with firsthand knowledge of bigotry and brutality at the hands of Muslims. 

At the rally, Simon Deng, a human rights leader and south Sudanese Christian spoke of the crimes perpetrated on his people by the Islamic government in Khartoum. Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called it genocide, and former President George W. Bush brought full American pressure to bear on Khartoum, which in 2005 resulted in a three-point agreement to stop the slaughter. 

The third point was the right for southern Sudan to vote to secede by a referendum in 2011. Most observers believe the vote coming this January will lead to renewed genocide when Arab Khartoum cracks down on the Christian black south. 

President Obama's perceived weakness will make a bad outcome much more likely. Former President Clinton's failure to lift a finger to stop the Rwanda genocide casts a shadow over southern Sudan. An op-ed in the New York Times warned that the Sudan situation "is President Obama's Rwanda moment, and it is unfolding now, in slow motion." 

On June 6, at the corner of Liberty and Trinity, Deng spoke in the strongest terms against the proposed mosque.  

Knowledge of ongoing atrocities by Muslims against non-Muslims and Muslims worldwide illuminates the depth of hypocrisy that people like Abdul Rauf and his boosters engage in when they point fingers at the West.

Above: At the June 6 rally in New York, Simon Deng is overcome by emotion at the conclusion of his speech. I first photographed Deng and Geller in 2006 at the Sudan Freedom Walk commencement in front of the United Nations in New York. In September, Deng will be leading a second Sudan Freedom Walk from the U.N. to the U.S. Senate in Washington D.C.

Consider an interesting historical antecedent. In 1993, a controversy similar to the current one unfolded when residents of a Washington, D.C., suburb sought to use zoning laws to shut down the local mosque, ostensibly on grounds that it was a traffic nuisance.

"Worshipers of many faiths said closing the popular mosque . . . would amount to discrimination against one of the area's fastest growing religions," the Washington Times reported at the time. 

The mosque in question? None other than the Dar al-Hijra, later to be known as the "9/11 mosque." So, were the petitioners who sought to shut it down bigots? Or is it that they got a whiff of its extremism, and didn't like the smell? 

Here, of course, the argument will be made that Rauf really is a moderate. And that might well be so — by the standards of his native Kuwait.

But a man who claims to condemn all forms of terrorism yet refuses to call Hamas a terrorist group is not a moderate by American standards, which happen to be the relevant standards when trying to build a mosque two blocks from ground zero.

Abdul Rauf's supporters will have to choose between defending him on grounds of his alleged moderation (in which case his views are relevant) or on the principle of religious liberty (in which case they're not). They can't have it both ways.

Meanwhile, politicians of every stripe are staking out turf or digging foxholes to hide in. One politician who in my opinion rises above the rest, former NYC mayor Rudy Gulliani, strikes at the heart of the issue with these words directed as a challenge to Rauf and his gang: 

"This project is divisive. This project is creating tremendous pain for people who've already made the ultimate sacrifice. All you're doing is creating more division, more anger, more hatred...The question here is of sensitivity, of people's feelings, and are you really what you pretend to be. If you want to claim to be the healer, then you're not on the side of the person who's pushing those divisive issues.

"I was the first person on Sept. 11 to step forward in the heat of battle and say, 'No group blame, do not blame Arabs, it's a small group'. But the reality is that, right now, if you are a healer you do not go through with this project. If you're a warrior, you do." 

At 3 p.m. Sept. 11, Geller will lead a second rally in New York against the mosque proposal. 

Above: The Freedom Tower slowly rises in New York City. 

El Marco distills life and politics into art at Looking at the Left.com and Art and Politics Blog.com  Enjoy El Marco's photography at Looking at the World.com.