Imam Rauf, Scam Artist?

That Imam Rauf sure is one persuasive fellow. The New York Post reports that he persuaded the government to give him a tax break when he didn't deserve it:

The leader of the Ground Zero mosque got hugely valuable tax-exempt status for a Muslim organization he founded after claiming as many as 500 of its members prayed daily in a small, one-bedroom Upper West Side apartment also listed as his wife's residence, The Post has learned.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf sought "church status" -- an official IRS term for a house of worship of any religion -- for the American Sufi Muslim Association, or ASMA, in 1998. The feds granted the request.

"Church status" is more than just an exemption -- it means never having to pay taxes, file returns or reveal the sources of a congregation's money or how it's spent, according to the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, which discovered the group's startling claims on the IRS form it filed seeking the special status.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was granted church-exempt status on a one-bedroom in this West 85th Street building.

On that form, the organization said it held services at 201 W. 85th St.

That's a 17-story apartment building with no public space big enough to accommodate the 450 to 500 worshippers the group claimed regularly showed up five times a day to pray.

There's no indication ASMA or any of its officers rented space in the building other than the apartment, which the Investigative Project says is only 800 square feet...

I could be wrong, but under the terms of infidel law that sort of misrepresentation is what we kafirs like to refer to as fraud.

Update: David Letterman, the quintessential useful idiot (i.e. full of high sentence but more than a bit obtuse), rushes to Rauf's defence.