Pamela Geller goes after "lowlife" GZ mosque promoter

Look what's crawling out from under the Rauf. Without his Albright résumé and subdued dhimmedia running interference, it is plain as day that this hustler, the renowned "moderate" Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Park 51 Ground Zero mega-mosque initiative, is a lowlife. He has been exposed as a rat and vermin slumlord whose tenants live without basic services like hot water. He scammed New Jersey politicians and got taxpayer dollars for rehabilitation of his infested, dilapidated buildings in Union City and Palisades Park, but still his victimized tenants live in squalor. So where's the money?

The New Jersey Record reported that Rauf was sued for mortgage fraud in 2008 and settled the suit in June of that year. The suit reveals that Rauf owns two apartment buildings, one of which has been vacant since a fire broke out there -- a year after Rauf ignored citations for twelve different fire code violations.

That's not all. It has also recently come to light that Rauf and his wife, Daisy "the Con" Khan, listed their apartment as a mosque in order to conduct what amounts to tax fraud. Rauf was able to obtain tax-exempt status for his Muslim organization by deceiving the Internal Revenue Service: he told them that five hundred Muslims met regularly for worship at a "mosque" that was actually a tiny one-bedroom apartment (also listed as Daisy's residence). Rauf sought "church status" -- an official IRS term for a house of worship of any religion (though stealth Rauf, I am sure, is working the feds to change that term) -- for his organization, the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), and the clueless feds granted the request.

Gaining "church status" means much more than just that your organization doesn't have to pay taxes. It also means that you have very little accountability about how you spend your money.

Is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg still kissing the backside of this "bridge-builder"?

And that's not all that's unsavory about the money that's pouring into the building of the mega-mosque and the people connected with this scheme. Rauf's thug developer in the project to build an Islamic supremacist mega-mosque on Ground Zero, Sharif El-Gamal, has a rap sheet a mile long. He recently wrote that "when you beat up someone physically you get exercise & stress relief," and it seems clear that he spoke from experience. And his financier, Hisham Elzanaty, was a large funder of Hamas (exposed in the Holy Land Foundation jihad terror funding trial) while defrauding Medicare out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Tell me again: where is this thug getting 125 million dollars? El-Gamal is now being evicted for non-payment of rent for his SoHo office.

Financier of Ground Zero mosque supported a Hamas front

So now it transpires that a key money- man behind the proposed Ground Zero mosque is a one-time supporter of a group shut down by the feds because it was a front for Hamas.
No wonder the mosque's principal imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, refuses to discuss the project's finances.

Or, for that matter, refuses to speak harshly of Hamas -- an Iranian cat's-paw that's long been one of the deadliest Islamist terrorist organizations operating in the Mideast.

It was reported last night that Hisham Elzanaty -- an Egyptian-born businessman from Long Island -- provided a big chunk of the $4.8 million needed to buy the building that will be demolished to make way for the mosque.

Among other things, Elzanaty runs a Bronx-based medicial supply company that had to refund more than $300,000 in Medicaid payments in 2004-2005.

In 1999, he donated thousands to the Holy Land Foundation, later shuttered by the feds because of its Hamas ties.

All of this is, as they say, enough to give one pause.

But we doubt it will truly surprise any among the 71 percent of New Yorkers found this week by Quinnipiac University pollsters to oppose the mosque.

Mayor Mike and others think they are bigots, but most seem to have asked -- and answered to their own satisfaction -- a fair question:

How close to the scene of that deadly Islamist attack on America is too close to build a mosque?

Answer: The proposed site was close enough to have been hit by a landing-gear assembly from one of the crashed airliners on 9/11 -- and that's way too close.

They're also nervous about the project's backers -- even before Elzanaty popped up -- deciding that, with those folks involved, anywhere might be too close.

As The Post reported yesterday, Rauf has been catching iffy tax breaks since 1998 for an organization run from his wife's Upper West Side apartment.

How'd he do it? By telling the IRS the one-bedroom digs were actually a mosque where 500 people prayed daily.

These are only the latest revelations about the mosque's backers, who've run up a cumulative record of petty crime, slumlording and tax-scamming.

And that's being generous.

Rauf, who's due back in New York this weekend after a long trip abroad, has plenty of explaining to do to the people he's been thumbing in the eye for weeks.