Who Is Really Funding the Ground Zero Mosque?

For weeks, critics of the 13 story $100 million mega-mosque complex planned for the immediate Ground Zero vicinity have been asking where the funding will be coming from. Its sponsors refuse to provide any information and have even refused to rule out taking contributions from other countries including Iran and Saudi Arabia. When a reporter from the local Fox station in New York, Charles Leaf, caught up with the mosque complex developer Sharif el-Gamal and asked him to explain the funding, el-Gamal ducked the question. The reporter, interviewed last night on the “O’Reilly Factor” by Laura Ingraham (filling in for Bill O’Reilly), shared results of his own investigation.

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It turns out that Sharif el-Gamal was a waiter a few years ago, who has turned into a real estate powerhouse. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with making it big in America, as long as el-Gamal is playing by the rules. But is he? Charles Leaf found out that el-Gamal’s SOHO Properties real estate business, which owns the site on which the Ground Zero mosque is to be built, has been receiving financial support from an Egyptian-born owner of several medical companies named Hisham Elzanaty. Elzanaty, Mr. Leaf reports, is the guarantor on a $39 million loan that el-Gamal’s company assumed. More...