Richard Bartholomew knows his Moonies. He is particularly good at spotting minor public figures who have – in the main – been duped into participating in various of the “Church’s” “Global Peace” events. His Ambassadors for Moon spin-off blog is worth reading on the subject.
Readers of Harry’s Place may remember that senior Liberal Democrats have attended Moonie events. A Labour peer, Lord Tarsem King is closely involved with a Moonie front group, and has hosted them in the House of Lords. I would guess that he also hosted last month’s launch of Bob Lambert and Jonathan Githens Mazer’s book on 7/7, at which Canon Guy Wilkinson, the Secretary for Inter Religious Affairs to the Archbishop of Canterbury was also billed.
“Rev” Moon also founded the Washington Times, and his son Preston chairs both that newspaper and the Global Peace organisation.
Richard is surprised to discover that the Washington Times is hostile to Rauf and his plans for a mosque near Groun Zero. Because, at one time, the Moonies were very keen on Rauf:
Perhaps the Washington Times should give us a full account of Rauf’s questionable religious associations. For instance, the picture below shows Rauf speaking at a “Global Peace Festival” event in Malaysia in 2008 …
….
Speakers at the [GPF] International Leadership Conference called for a greater understanding between Islam and other Abrahamic faiths. “We share the same two commandments,” said Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative. “We are to love God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Today, everyone is my neighbor. But we are not actually living the commandments.” Rauf, a leader of US/Muslim dialogue, heads a mosque near Ground Zero in New York, and is author of the book What’s Right with Islam.
It’s not known whether Rauf has one of Rev Moon’s “Ambassador for Peace” awards, but he appeared on a video that was shown at the Seventh Annual Ambassadors for Peace Awards Banquet. Apparently, his heading “a mosque near Ground Zero” wasn’t particularly controversial at that time
Rauf, of course, is not a Moonie. And he won’t be the last person to have been fooled by the Moonie’s faux-interfaith initiatives, the purpose of which is to bolster the attempts of the ‘Church’ to disguise itself as a respectable organisation.