Excerpt:
In recent days, critics of the proposal to build a mosque and Islamic center near ground zero have linked the plan to everyone from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Islamist organizations Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. But the plan's real fundraising effort, thus far, is much more innocuous: a PayPal account with less than $9,000 in it, mostly from New Yorkers, raised by a group of Muslim moms in Manhattan whose original aim was to host a peace march.
Just this week, the New York Post ran a piece questioning the fundraising ties of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, spiritual leader of the Cordoba House, now dubbed Park51. The piece speculated that the fundraising effort could extend to Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, Politico reported on a less-sophisticated operation—noting that the Cordoba Initiative's latest fundraising report shows just $18,255. The piece accurately concluded that the mosque remains a long shot, as fundraising for the $100 million project has hardly even begun.