Who Is Funding The "Ground Zero Mosque?" - Fox News Is Linked To Islamic Center

If you watch conservative news you would have heard the constant attacks against the Cordoba Initiative Islamic center - a.k.a the "Ground Zero" mosque - but you may have heard one particular argument prevail - conservative pundits questioned the funding of the mosque and claimed it came from terrorist sources. The interesting thing is that a report by Yahoo! News' John Cook had uncovered the fact that Fox News can be linked to the funding of the Islamic center through it's second-largest shareholder Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.

The opponents of the proposed Cordoba Initiative Islamic center planned for lower Manhattan are fond of suggesting, by way of lengthy and often confusing chains of causation and association, that its principal planner Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is connected to terrorism. "The imam has been tied to some shady characters," Fox Business Channel's Eric Bolling recently said, "so should we worry that terror dollars could be funding the project?" Blogger Pamela Geller, who has become a regular talking head on cable news channels to denounce the mosque, has noted Rauf's involvement with a Malaysian peace group that funded the group that organized the Gaza flotilla under the headline, "Ground Zero Imam Rauf's 'Charity' Funded Genocide Mission."

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart skewered these antics as a "dangerous game of guilt by association you can play with almost anybody," and proceeded to tie Fox News to Al Qaeda by connecting Fox News parent News Corp's second-largest shareholder, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, to the Carlyle Group, which has done business with the bin Laden family, "one of whose sons--obviously I'm not going to say which one--may be anti-American." But Stewart didn't need to take all those steps to make the connection: Al-Waleed has directly funded Rauf's projects to the tune of more than $300,000. If Fox newscasters can darkly suggest "terror dollars" are sluicing into the Islamic Center's coffers via "shady characters," then are Al-Waleed, and News Corp. leader Rupert Murdoch, by the same logic, also terror stooges? (The "Daily Show" video appears after the jump.)

Indeed, as none other than Rupert Murdoch's New York Post reported last May, the Kingdom Foundation, al-Waleed's personal charity, has donated a total of $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a leadership and networking project sponsored jointly by two of Rauf's organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative. Al-Waleed owns a seven percent, $2.3 billion stake in News Corporation. Likewise, News Corporation owns a 9 percent, $70 million stake--purchased in February--in Rotana, Al-Waleed's Saudi media conglomerate. Put another way: Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are in business, to the tune of billions of dollars, with one of the "Terror Mosque Imam's" principal patrons.

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Fox News had no comment. An e-mail to Al-Waleed's Kingdom Holdings was not returned.

What do all the Fox News fear mongers have to say about that?

Here is one comment that I found interesting on Yahoo! News:

Isn't that funny?  When Glenn Beck makes his wild baseless associations, the right screams for more, but when something comes out that bursts their bubble, the right cries that is is all "lies."