Bloomberg's quiet investments in Sharia Finance: an ulterior motive in backing Ground Zero's Victory Mosque?

Lower Manhattan's St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church once sat across the street from the World Trade Center's Tower Two. It was leveled during the catastrophic attacks of 9/11.

For years, church officials have attempted to get permission to rebuild. Yet the New York Port Authority and other local bureaucrats have thrown every obstacle in the book at the rebuilding project. They said the proposed new church was too big and its dome too high -- even claiming that the structure could rise no higher than the WTC Memorial.

St. Nicholas Church’s difficulty in getting approvals to rebuild stands in stark contrast to the treatment that the developers of the proposed Cordoba mosque have received...

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, state Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo, and a raft of city officials have all come out publicly in favor of building the mosque, and the city’s Landmarks and Preservation Commission recently voted unanimously to deny protection to the building currently occupying the site where the mosque is to be built.

The mosque is proposed to rise 13 stories, far above the height of the World Trade Center memorial, with no height restrictions imposed...

...The contrast has not been lost on at least one candidate for Congress. George Demos is a Republican running in New York’s 1st Congressional District... Demos said it is the church that has been unjustly delayed. “One place of worship was destroyed in the attacks. That should be the first thing on that board’s agenda. That should be the first priority,” he said. “There were actually relics of St. Nicholas in that church that were lost in the attacks. Why is it that the same government officials who are so ferverently fighting for the mosque’s right to be built aren’t also fighting for the church to be rebuilt.”

Demos was critical of Mayor Bloomberg’s recent comments on the occasion of the Landmarks Commission vote. In a speech immediately following the vote, Bloomberg said, among other arguments, that allowing the mosque project to go forward would be a victory of sorts over the forces that attacked America on 9/11.

Why would the Ground Zero mosque receive such seemingly special treatment?

An observant tipster notes that Bloomberg's namesake news service has a significant financial interest in keeping those of Middle Eastern heritage happy.

Spurred by a recent boom in sales in the region, Bloomberg is expanding its Dubai office into a regional hub, a move that will as much as quadruple its local staff over the next year.

...The company has ... been developing an Islamic finance portal, which Mr Linnington said would be helped by having more people on the ground building relationships.

“Particularly since the meltdown of the western capitalist system, there has been an increasingly large focus on the virtues of Islamic finance,” he said. “Today, there is no one single provider of information that caters to the Islamic finance market. So by Bloomberg being here, we are in the process of building out an Islamic finance product. We are very confident that we can build a product that meets the needs of the market right now.”

"Islamic finance" refers to banking systems and investments that are consistent with Islamic law (Sharia). For instance, Sharia prohibits the payment or receipt of interest on money lent. The rules associated with Sharia finance present significant and profitable business opportunities for men like Mayor Bloomberg.

In short: Churches and Synagogues bad. Sharia Finance and Islamic Victory Mosques good.


Hat tips: Crane, Mark Levin and BNI.