From the Other Side of Ground Zero, Anti-Muslim Venom

Caleb Ferguson for The New York Times

Bill Keller, the Internet evangelist behind LivePrayer.com, preaching near ground zero. He called Islam a false faith.

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: September 5, 2010

The Internet evangelist Bill Keller moved toward the dais in tiny, quick steps on Sunday, exhibiting the anticipation of a man ready to address a crowd. Roughly 60 people stood before him in a hotel meeting room in Lower Manhattan, temporary quarters of his Christian center, his response to the mosque planned for an empty building nearby.

Caleb Ferguson for The New York Times

The Internet evangelist Bill Keller is using a room at the New York Marriott Downtown Hotel as his temporary “9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero.”

A program for the evangelical service, which was attended by about 60 people.

“If we’re going to do something in New York City, we’re going to do something that’s not just bold and visible, but something that has a lasting presence,” said Mr. Keller, who is from the Tampa Bay area of Florida.
Later, he told reporters that Muslims “can go to their mosque and preach the lies of Islam and I’ll come here to preach the truth of the Gospel.”
Since its organizers attended a community board meeting four months ago, the mosque — part of a Muslim community center that would offer a day care center, an auditorium and a pool — quickly became fodder for a national debate. Much of the opposition is over its location: two blocks north of ground zero.
Mr. Keller promoted his center, which he called the 9/11 Christian Center at Ground Zero, as a religious counterweight to the mosque, which he repeatedly called a “victory mosque” or a monument to “a great Muslim military accomplishment,” as he explained it at the inaugural service at the New York Marriott Downtown Hotel on West Street, two blocks south of ground zero.
His career arc makes him a somewhat unusual standard-bearer: Mr. Keller became a preacher after serving a sentence in federal prison for insider trading, as he says in a biography posted on his Web site.
He has also appeared on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show and once had a program on national television, which was canceled after he called Islam a “1,400-year-old lie from the pits of hell.” The program is now carried by a small station in Florida.
But it is on the Internet that Mr. Keller has assembled his largest following. He claims that 20,000 people visit his Web site daily and 2.5 million receive his daily sermon by e-mail.
His service at the Marriott brought together people who expressed admiration, disapproval and curiosity. A man yelled, “Muslims pray five times a day,” but Mr. Keller carried on undisturbed, denouncing Islam as a religion that preaches “hate, violence and death.” The man eventually left.
Mr. Keller also described the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck, who is a Mormon, and Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam who is behind the Muslim community center, as followers of false faiths. Later, he called the mosque’s potential worshipers guilty of terrorism by association, saying it was “their Muslim brothers” who “flew airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and killed 3,000 people.”
A woman who said she had driven in from Scranton, Pa., pulled Mr. Keller aside afterward and told him that his Christian center “needs to be here,” but she asked if he could tame his language so he would not come across as such a firebrand. He told her he had to talk exactly the way he did if he wanted people to follow him.
Prebem Andersen, 60, who lives in South Salem, N.Y., said Mr. Keller had “told the truth from a Christian perspective.” Richard Borkowski, who lives in Manhattan on the West Side, wore a black T-shirt with the words “Peace Through Understanding.”
Mr. Keller plans to be at the hotel every Sunday until the end of the year and then move the center on Jan. 1 to a permanent spot, although he said he would not disclose its location until Oct. 1.
“I have three locations in contract, but I won’t say where because I don’t want people picketing outside and ruining the deal,” he said.
He is relying on donations to cover the costs of his weekly services, which total $7,000. He said he would need $1 million to run the center for its first year from its permanent home, which would be open seven days a week. He did not seem concerned about finding the money.
“There are a lot more people than you’d imagine who believe in what I’m doing,” he said.

NY Times: Original Article

New York Times: American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?

Mark Lyons for The New York Times

Dr. Ferhan Asghar at a Muslim center in West Chester, Ohio, with his wife, Pakeeza, and daughters Zara, left, and Emaan.

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

• • Permal

For nine years after the attacks of Sept. 11, many American Muslims made concerted efforts to build relationships with non-Muslims, to make it clear they abhor terrorism, to educate people about Islam and to participate in interfaith service projects. They took satisfaction in the observations by many scholars that Muslims in America were more successful and assimilated than Muslims in Europe.

Eboo Patel, the director of an interfaith youth group, said some politicians were whipping up fear and hatred of Muslims.

Now, many of those same Muslims say that all of those years of work are being rapidly undone by the fierce opposition to a Muslim cultural center near ground zero that has unleashed a torrent of anti-Muslim sentiments and a spate of vandalism. The knifing of a Muslim cab driver in New York City has also alarmed many American Muslims.
“We worry: Will we ever be really completely accepted in American society?” said Dr. Ferhan Asghar, an orthopedic spine surgeon in Cincinnati and the father of two young girls. “In no other country could we have such freedoms — that’s why so many Muslims choose to make this country their own. But we do wonder whether it will get to the point where people don’t want Muslims here anymore.”
Eboo Patel, a founder and director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based community service program that tries to reduce religious conflict, said, “I am more scared than I’ve ever been — more scared than I was after Sept. 11.”
That was a refrain echoed by many American Muslims in interviews last week. They said they were scared not as much for their safety as to learn that the suspicion, ignorance and even hatred of Muslims is so widespread. This is not the trajectory toward integration and acceptance that Muslims thought they were on.
Some American Muslims said they were especially on edge as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches. The pastor of a small church in Florida has promised to burn a pile of Korans that day. Muslim leaders are telling their followers that the stunt has been widely condemned by Christian and other religious groups and should be ignored. But they said some young American Muslims were questioning how they could simply sit by and watch the promised desecration.
They liken their situation to that of other scapegoats in American history: Irish Roman Catholics before the nativist riots in the 1800s, the Japanese before they were put in internment camps during World War II.
Muslims sit in their living rooms, aghast as pundits assert over and over that Islam is not a religion at all but a political cult, that Muslims cannot be good Americans and that mosques are fronts for extremist jihadis. To address what it calls a “growing tide of fear and intolerance,” the Islamic Society of North America plans to convene a summit of Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders in Washington on Tuesday.
Young American Muslims who are trying to figure out their place and their goals in life are particularly troubled, said Imam Abdullah T. Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University.
“People are discussing what is the alternative if we don’t belong here,” he said. “There are jokes: When are we moving to Canada, when are we moving to Sydney? Nobody will go anywhere, but there is hopelessness, there is helplessness, there is real grief.”
Mr. Antepli just returned from a trip last month with a rabbi and other American Muslim leaders to Poland and Germany, where they studied the Holocaust and the events that led up to it (the group issued a denunciation of Holocaust denial on its return).
“Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,” he said. “It’s really scary.”
American Muslims were anticipating a particularly joyful Ramadan this year. For the first time in decades, the monthlong holiday fell mostly during summer vacation, allowing children to stay up late each night for the celebratory iftar dinner, breaking the fast, with family and friends.
But the season turned sour.
The great mosque debate seems to have unleashed a flurry of vandalism and harassment directed at mosques: construction equipment set afire at a mosque site in Murfreesboro, Tenn; a plastic pig with graffiti thrown into a mosque in Madera, Calif.; teenagers shooting outside a mosque in upstate New York during Ramadan prayers. It is too soon to tell whether hate crimes against Muslims are rising or are on pace with previous years, experts said. But it is possible that other episodes are going unreported right now.
“Victims are reluctant to go public with these kinds of hate incidents because they fear further harassment or attack,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “They’re hoping all this will just blow over.”
Some Muslims said their situation felt more precarious now — under a president who is perceived as not only friendly to Muslims but is wrongly believed by many Americans to be Muslim himself — than it was under President George W. Bush.
Mr. Patel explained, “After Sept. 11, we had a Republican president who had the confidence and trust of red America, who went to a mosque and said, ‘Islam means peace,’ and who said ‘Muslims are our neighbors and friends,’ and who distinguished between terrorism and Islam.”
Now, unlike Mr. Bush then, the politicians with sway in red state America are the ones whipping up fear and hatred of Muslims, Mr. Patel said.
“There is simply the desire to paint an entire religion as the enemy,” he said. Referring to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the founder of the proposed Muslim center near ground zero, “What they did to Imam Feisal was highly strategic. The signal was, we can Swift Boat your most moderate leaders.”
Several American Muslims said in interviews that they were stunned that what provoked the anti-Muslim backlash was not even another terrorist attack but a plan by an imam known for his work with leaders of other faiths to build a Muslim community center.
This year, Sept. 11 coincides with the celebration of Eid, the finale to Ramadan, which usually lasts three days (most Muslims will begin observing Eid this year on Sept. 10). But Muslim leaders, in this climate, said they wanted to avoid appearing to be celebrating on the anniversary of 9/11. Several major Muslim organizations have urged mosques to use the day to participate in commemoration events and community service.
Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America, said many American Muslims were still hoping to salvage the spirit of Ramadan.
“In Ramadan, you’re really not supposed to be focused on yourself,” she said. “It’s about looking out for the suffering of other people. Somehow it feels bad to be so worried about our own situation and our own security, when it should be about empathy towards others.”

NY Times: Original Article

AP Article Concerning Terms to be used in writing about NYC Mosque

08/19/2010


AP Advisory

Associated Press Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production Tom Kent sent the following note to the staff about covering the New York City mosque story and then discussed the guidance and reaction in a Facebook entry headlined "Behind the News: Describing the proposed NYC mosque."
Aug. 19, 2010

Colleagues,
Here is some guidance on covering the NYC mosque story, with assists from Chad Roedemeier in the NYC bureau and Terry Hunt in Washington:
1. We should continue to avoid the phrase "ground zero mosque" or "mosque at ground zero" on all platforms. (We’ve very rarely used this wording, except in slugs, though we sometimes see other news sources using the term.) The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at ground zero, but two blocks away in a busy commercial area. We should continue to say it’s “near” ground zero, or two blocks away.
WE WILL CHANGE OUR SLUG ON THIS STORY LATER TODAY from “BC-Ground Zero Mosque” to “BC-NYC Mosque.”

In short headlines, some ways to refer to the project include:
_ mosque 2 blocks from WTC site
_ Muslim (or Islamic) center near WTC site
_ mosque near ground zero
_ mosque near WTC site

We can refer to the project as a mosque, or as a proposed Islamic center that includes a mosque.

It may be useful in some stories to note that Muslim prayer services have been held since 2009 in the building that the new project will replace. The proposal is to create a new, larger Islamic community center that would include a mosque, a swimming pool, gym, auditorium and other facilities.
2. Here is a succinct summary of President Obama’s position:
Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center in New York as a matter of religious freedom, though he's also said he won't take a position on whether they should actually build it.
For additional background, you’ll find below a Fact Check on the project that moved yesterday.
Tom

---
Slug: BC-US--Mosque-Fact Check
Byline: CALVIN WOODWARD
Bytitle: Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — A New York imam and his proposed mosque near ground zero are being demonized by political candidates — mostly Republicans — despite the fact that Islam is already very much a part of the World Trade Center neighborhood. And that Muslims pray inside the Pentagon, too, less than 80 feet from where terrorists attacked.

And that the imam who's being branded an extremist has been valued by both Republican and Democratic administrations as a moderate face of the faith.

Even so, the project stirs complicated emotions, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a complex figure who defies easy categorization in the American Muslim world.

He's devoted much of his career to working closely with Christians, Jews and secular leaders to advance interfaith understanding. He's scolded his own religion for being in some ways in the "Dark Ages." Yet he's also accused the U.S. of spilling more innocent blood than al-Qaida, the terrorist network that turned the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon and four hijacked airplanes to apocalyptic rubble.

Many Republicans and some Democrats say the proposed $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque should be built elsewhere, where there is no possible association with New York's ground zero. Far more than a local zoning issue, the matter has seized congressional campaigns, put President Barack Obama and his party on the spot — he says Muslims have the right to build the mosque — divided families of the Sept. 11, 2001, victims, caught the attention of Muslims abroad and threatened to blur distinctions between mainstream Islam in the U.S. and its radical elements.

A look at some of the claims and how they compare with the known facts:
___

—"The folks who want to build this mosque — who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists — those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community. They're trying to make a case about supremacy." — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate.

—Some of the Muslim leaders associated with the mosque "are clearly terrorist sympathizers." — Kevin Calvey, a Republican running for Congress in Oklahoma.
—"This radical is a terrible choice to be one of the faces of our country overseas." — Statement by GOP Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter King of New York.

THE FACTS:
No one has established a link between the cleric and radicals. New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said, "We've identified no law enforcement issues related to the proposed mosque."

Ros-Lehtinen and King were referring to the State Department's plan, predating the mosque debate, to send Rauf on another religious outreach trip to the Middle East as part of his "long-term relationship" with U.S. officials in the Bush and Obama administrations. The State Department said Wednesday it will pay him $3,000 for a trip costing the government $16,000.

Rauf counts former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from the Clinton administration as a friend and appeared at events overseas or meetings in Washington with former President George W. Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush adviser Karen Hughes.
He has denounced the terrorist attacks and suicide bombing as anti-Islamic and has criticized Muslim nationalism. But he's made provocative statements about America, too, calling it an "accessory" to the 9/11 attacks and attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to the U.S.-led sanctions in the years before the invasion.

In a July 2005 speech at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center in Adelaide, Australia, Rauf said, according to the center's transcript:

"We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims."

While calling terrorism unjustified, he said the U.S. has supported authoritarian regimes with heinous human rights records and, faced with that, "how else do people get attention?"
In the same address, he spoke of prospects for peace between Palestinians and the Israelis — who he said "have moved beyond Zionism" — and of a love-your-neighbor ethic uniting all religions.
___

—"Mr. President, ground zero is the wrong place for a mosque." — Rick Scott, Republican candidate for Florida governor.

—"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center." — Gingrich.
—"Just a block or two away from 9/11." — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, another 2012 GOP presidential prospect.
THE FACTS:
No mosque is going up at ground zero. The center would be established at 45-51 Park Place, just over two blocks from the northern edge of the sprawling, 16-acre World Trade Center site. Its location is roughly half a dozen normal lower Manhattan blocks from the site of the North Tower, the nearer of the two destroyed in the attacks.

The center's location, in a former Burlington Coat Factory store, is already used by the cleric for worship, drawing a spillover from the imam's former main place for prayers, the al-Farah mosque. That mosque, at 245 West Broadway, is about a dozen blocks north of the World Trade Center grounds.

Another, the Manhattan Mosque, stands five blocks from the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site.

To be sure, the center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence. The building was damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks and the center's planners say they want the center to stand as a statement against terrorism.
___

—"There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. ... America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization." — Gingrich.

—"This religion's plan is to destroy our way of life. ... If we have to let them build it, make them build it nine stories underground, so we can walk above it as citizens and Christians."

— Ron McNeil, a House GOP candidate in the Florida Panhandle, in an exchange reported by The News Herald in Panama City.

THE FACTS:
Such opinions are shared by some Americans, while others are more reluctant to paint the religion with a broad brush and more welcoming of the faith in this country. Bush, himself, while criticized at the time for stirring suspicions about American Muslims, traveled to a Washington mosque less than a week after the attacks to declare that terrorism is "not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace."

In any event, the U.S. armed forces field Muslim troops and make accommodations for them. The Pentagon opened an interfaith chapel in November 2002 close to the area where hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, killing 184 people.

Muslims gather there for a daily prayer service Monday through Thursday and hold a weekly worship service on Fridays, drawing no complaints. Similar but separate services are provided for other faiths.
___
Associated Press writers Tom Hays in New York and Anne Flaherty in Washington contributed to this report.

AP: Original Article

Park51 and Patriotism

The Park51 Community Center, an Islamic center modeled after the Jewish Community Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the 92nd Street Y, is, in the words of Terry Rockefeller, “what makes America what we are.”
Terry lost a sister on 9/11.
At an annual Ramadan dinner hosted by the White House, President Obama defended the U.S. constitutional right to religious freedom, including the right of Muslims to build an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan.  Days later, Texas Senator John Cornyn described the President as “disconnected from mainstream America.” Senator Cornyn was correct. President Obama is out of touch with mass hysteria. The best leaders should be.
Last summer, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer exhorted the Park51 sponsors to construct the center “anywhere but there,” observing that “Disney’s 1993 proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition that feared vulgarization of the Civil War.”
But settlers did not arrive at our shores to escape the persecution of theme parks and the Park51 sponsors have not asked to build one. They do seek religious freedom, a practice our Founders ranked first among the rights of the citizen.
The Founders had the highest respect for religious pluralism.  George Washington said America welcomes “the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.” Thomas Jefferson hosted the first presidential iftar (the breaking of the fast during Ramadan). John Adams honored Prophet Muhammad as one of the greatest truth seekers of history. Benjamin Franklin called him a model of compassion.
Such tolerance has extended to other religious minorities in this country.  The oldest synagogue in America is the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. After the Revolutionary War, Washington reassured the congregation that the nation would become a religious haven to all.  “The Citizens of the United States,” he wrote, “have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation.” All Americans would enjoy “liberty of conscience,” the “immunities of citizenship” and “the goodwill of the other Inhabitants.” And “there shall be none to make [them] afraid.”
Today, Muslims in this country are afraid. Protests against Islamic centers have erupted from California to Florida to Staten Island. Some have ended in intimidation, others in violence.
Our Founders understood the human instinct to sacrifice religious freedom in times of crisis and fear. That is why they enshrined this freedom in the Bill of Rights — to protect it from the majority impulse. Today, the majority’s impulse appears to be to surrender the tolerance that distinguishes our nation from hundreds of others. Critics of Park51 call this patriotic.
But patriotism means honor and devotion to country. American Muslims have sons and daughters fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. American Muslims uphold the Constitution in U.S. courts and elect officials to U.S. government. And, when Muslims contribute an educational, cultural, and recreational center to the community, their equal participation is precisely what defines them as Americans. As President Obama aptly stated at the White House iftar, “[t]he principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.”
Nine years ago, terrorists desecrated a faith that has earned the devotion of one-fifth of the world’s population. These terrorists hijacked a faith to advance their self-serving, polluted views. They stole our loved ones. Let us not hand them our freedoms.

Seema Saifee is a human rights lawyer in New York City. Since 2006, she has represented ethnic Uighurs held in extrajudicial detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Dan Aaron Polster of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.  She is a graduate of Cornell University and Fordham Law School.


 Park51.org: Original Article

Building Hope, Building Community, Building Beauty: Park51 in 2011

Even though we New Yorkers shiver with the cold and complain if our streets remain unplowed, a New Year begins; offering at least a symbol of hope. And along with hope, many of us may perceive new opportunities; a time to build.
Work begins on the Park51 Community Project. For the moment, angry voices fade further into the background and we are able to focus more clearly on the emerging vision of this new community resource. I find I am especially interested that Park51 will offer food for body, mind, and soul. Recreational facilities will complement the spiritual space.
As a Muslim, I relate this holistic approach to the central Islamic concept of Tawheed— the sense of inner unity, and the integration of the human person into right relationship. We are not simply minds and bodies, consumers or voters but exist in many deeper dimensions. You and I can recognize our essential nature and our purpose in life. For Muslims, this means developing a relationship to God.
However you see it, many of us find that maintaining a sense of peace and unity within the self is challenged by the stress of modern life. To address such stress, spiritually-based healing traditions have long existed within Islamic culture. Some of these teachings even inspired some schools of psychology in the West. While these traditions are currently less common in the Muslim world, this is not irreversible. Together, Muslims and people of all backgrounds can work to build awareness. Human needs are individual, but we all share the deepest needs.
In the last 20 years, the New York City Muslim community has grown very quickly. But unlike the awe-inspiring mosques in historically Muslim countries, most of our local mosques show little regard for beauty. When I visit other houses of worship in interfaith programs, I am always impressed. Should I look down my nose at such beauty? We Muslims now need to consider how physical space speaks to the whole person through arts, architecture – even lighting. We need to include the dimension that speaks to the heart. Truly, most of us need exterior conditions to remind us to be in touch with something greater than ourselves. Otherwise, after prayers we quickly — almost instantly– forget that state of unity. Our cell phone rings!

In the latest (Jan 2011) issue of Tribeca Tribune, I see that a local beauty shop has included a quote from the Sufi Muslim poet, Jalaluddin Rumi, in their advertisement: “Let the beauty we love be what we do.” What a message for us all — we can all be in the beauty business.
Also in that issue, I see an article about the Jewish Community Project opening a new space at 105 Chambers street, with classes for adults and children. How wonderful that all these projects are developing at the same time, serving the needs of a growing downtown population!
Though perspectives on Middle East conflicts will vary, there is and will continue to be much common ground for us all as neighbors. Park51 will be part of that common ground. It can spread the good news of co-existence that fear mongerers would ignore. And we don’t need to wait. Until January 29, Soho Photo gallery is showing photos taken by Norman Gershman of Albanian Muslims who sheltered thousands of Jews during World War Two, inspired by Islamic teachings.
Some day, similar bridge building events will also take place at Park51! Let’s work together for that day.

Adem Carroll is a New York Irish Muslim with a background in human rights and community education in Istanbul, Marrakech and New York. After 9/11, he directed disaster relief and civil liberties projects with ICNA Relief USA. From its inception in late 2003, Adem Carroll helped guide Muslim Consultative Network, serving first as Board Chair and then Executive Director through summer 2010. In addition to having written numerous articles, he has co-produced a radio show on Immigration on WBAI radio since 2004.


 Park51.org: Original Article

NPR: Islamic Center Near Ground Zero Sparks Anger

By: Margot Alder

A proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center has become a flash point of controversy.
The plan for Cordoba House has been in the works for a number of years. It is to be built on the site of the old Burlington Coat Factory store on Park Place, just about two blocks from ground zero.
The Islamic center is supported by most politicians in Manhattan and by religious leaders of many faiths. It is opposed by some Sept. 11 families, by conservative politicians, bloggers and Tea Party activists.
In the last weeks, meetings have been raucous, tensions growing and emotions raw.

An Imam's Dream

The plan for Cordoba House — which those who oppose it call a mosque, and those who support it call a cultural center with a place for prayer — has been the dream of Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan. Khan describes it somewhat like the Jewish Community Center uptown, with facilities for athletics, arts, performances, lectures series, forums and weddings, as well as a prayer space.
Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf considers himself an orthodox Muslim, but he is also a Sufi, a contemplative and mystical path in Islam. The offices of the Imam and his wife are in a building used by many faiths that is part of Riverside Church in upper Manhattan, a liberal bastion of interfaith work. When you listen to Khan speak, she sounds very much in that tradition.

This center will create this kind of counter momentum which will amplify the voices of the moderate Muslims. If we have to defeat the extremists, Muslims have to be leading that effort.

- Daisy Khan

"Our religion has been hijacked by the extremists," she says. "This center will create this kind of counter momentum which will amplify the voices of the moderate Muslims. If we have to defeat the extremists, Muslims have to be leading that effort."

Community Opposition To A Mosque
 
But at a landmark's commission meeting on Tuesday, the atmosphere was very different. Those opposed — fully three-quarters of the speakers — asked that the building be "landmarked" because of Sept. 11. Landmark status would mean the building could not be torn down, creating roadblocks for the new Islamic cultural center.
"The landing gear from one of the planes of the Sept. 11 attack crashed into that building," said Barbara Paolucci. "It should be a museum."
Sam Nunberg of the Center for Law and Justice said: "It would be like removing the sunken ship in Pearl Harbor to erect a memorial to the Japanese kamikazes killed in the attack."
And Andrea Quinn said: "To deprive this building of landmark status is to allow a citadel of Islamic supremacy to be erected in its place."
Speaking in support of the project, one man held up his American passport to prove his citizenship. Zead Ramadan, a Muslim who said his wife and brother were first responders after Sept. 11, said a lot of the rhetoric was simply Islamophobia. He was shouted down.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg supports the center. The community board for lower Manhattan voted to support the project 29 to 1.

Funding For The Mosque

In the race for New York governor, Republican candidate Rick Lazio called on Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, his Democratic opponent, to investigate the project's funding, saying: "This is a time when we have to ask serious questions that will keep the people of New York and the people of downtown Manhattan feeling — and actually being — safe."

A 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center planned to replace the building in lower Manhattan that once housed a Burlington Coat Factory store has created tensions. The building was damaged by airplane debris on Sept. 11, 2001.

Mark Lennihan/AP

A 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center planned to replace the building in lower Manhattan that once housed a Burlington Coat Factory store has created tensions. The building was damaged by airplane debris on Sept. 11, 2001.

His opponent, Cuomo, said he understood that some people were upset, but that, "The flipside and what Mayor Bloomberg has said is that we also believe in the concept of freedom of religion and independence of religion where the government does not say what religions can be where."
Imam Rauf and Khan have not been totally forthcoming about funding, but Khan told NPR on Tuesday that they are forming a new non-profit, and that fundraising won't really start until after the landmarks commission rules.

'America Works Because Of Religious Freedom'

A recent poll on the question of the mosque showed that 52 percent of New York City residents opposed the center. In more liberal Manhattan, 46 percent of residents approved it and 36 percent were opposed.
Maurice Carroll of the Quinnipiac poll says the most noteworthy statistic is that while 55 percent of New Yorkers say Islam is a peaceful religion, "22 percent say that it encourages violence. They would not say that about Jews or Catholics, or Protestants and the explanation of that has to be that the terrorists have poisoned people's minds."
But the memories of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are being fueled by all kinds of bloggers and activists, many of whom don't live downtown. There's even a new TV ad against the mosque, put out by the National Republican Trust Pac.
Meanwhile, Khan finds herself somewhat shocked at everything that is going on.
Reacting to the charge that people say she is trying to bring Muslim extremist law to the U.S., Khan replied: "Muslims pray, they fast, they give charity. Most American Muslims don't want to do anything that violates American law. America works because of its religious freedom and because it doesn't allow one religion to dominate another and we are very happy as Muslims with that arrangement."
But clearly some others are not. The controversy doesn't show signs of letting up. But except for the landmarks question, the project has been approved, and even if Cordoba House stays within the existing building, it's hard to believe the project can be stopped.

NPR: Original Site

Ground Zero Mosque Applied for 9/11 Grants?

By: John Avlon

The so-called ground zero mosque recently applied for a $5 million federal grant from a fund designed to rebuild lower Manhattan after 9/11, reports The Daily Beast’s John Avlon.


Developers of the controversial Park51 Islamic community center and mosque located two blocks from ground zero earlier this month applied for roughly $5 million in federal grant money set aside for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
  The former Burlington Coat Factory building that will make way for the Cordoba House (the 'Ground Zero Mosque') is seen in lower Manhattan on Jul. 29, 2010 in New York. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary, AFP / Getty Images)
The audacious move stands to reignite the embers of a divisive debate that dominated headlines surrounding the ninth anniversary of the attacks this fall, say people vested in the issue.
The application was submitted under a “community and cultural enhancement” grant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation (LMDC), which oversaw the $20 billion in federal aid allocated in the wake of 9/11 and is currently doling out millions in remaining taxpayer funds for community development. The redevelopment board declined to comment on the application (as did officials from Park51), citing the continuing and confidential process of determining the grant winners.
While news of the application has not previously been made public, developer Sharif El-Gamal outlined it in closed-door meetings, according to two individuals he spoke with directly. The thirtysomething, Brooklyn-born El-Gamal is motivated more by real estate ambition—one of these sources describes him as aspiring to be the next Donald Trump—than Islamic theology or ideology.
Park51’s developers clearly have a legal right to apply for the grant. A list of Frequently Asked Questions that accompanied the application specifically states that religious organizations can make funding requests for capital projects “as long as the request is for a facility or portion of a facility that is dedicated to non-religious activities or uses.” According to an individual familiar with the Park51 application, it requests funds to cover a number of cultural, educational and community development aspects of the proposed 13-story building—but the prayer room is excluded from the grant application.

But the question on whether they could have is trumped by the question of whether they should have.

But the question on whether they could have is trumped by the question of whether they should have. The stated aim of the Park51 developers is to provide a community center for lower Manhattan’s 4,000 Muslim residents. Their own website explained that they understood the need to “appeal to the undecided, and change the conversation about Muslims in America.” It’s pretty clear that this play for federal dollars will generate none of that, starting with the lack of disclosure or community consultation before developers submitted their application, which was due November 5.
"If Imam Feisal and his retinue want know why they're not trusted, here's yet another reason,” says Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam and director of the Moral Courage Project at NYU, when I asked her about the grant proposal. “The New Yorkers I speak with have questions about Park51. Requesting money from public coffers without engaging the public shows a staggering lack of empathy—especially from a man who says he's all about dialogue."
As a witness to the 9/11 attacks and someone who currently lives in the revived neighborhood, I can tell you that anger over the Park51 project was more intense outside the community than within it.
After all, the local community board approved the Park51 development in two separate votes—and the right of the project to proceed was honorably affirmed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg against a torrent of criticism this fall. Politicians across the country tried to turn the development into a partisan political football, including notable ads from Florida’s Governor-elect Rick Scott (“Obama’s Mosque”) and the newly elected North Carolina Republican Congresswoman Renee Elmers.
But attempts to turn the mosque into a campaign issue in New York were strikingly unsuccessful (think Rick Lazio). And after a series of protests and counterprotests surrounding the building site on Park Place, the issue has receded. New Yorkers live with diversity every day—we understand how essential it is to embrace our fellow citizens who are Muslim while never forgetting the terrorists who attacked us. Reasonable people who recognize the Islamic community center's right to develop on private property, however, will object to their use of public funds to do so.
Part of the strangeness of the application is that it blows past the suggested range of $100,000 to $1 million that these grants are supposed to fall to within (I’m told the entire pool for this round of cultural funding will come in under $20 million). According to the two sources knowledgeable about the thinking behind the proposal, the strategy behind the $5 million ballpark was trying to yield a higher figure in the end.
But the project likely doesn’t qualify for a grant in the first place. Specifically, the grant criteria mandate a demonstration of a project’s financial feasibility, based on benchmarks set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The government will help complete development projects—but it does not provide seed capital. And in their last public financial statement, Park51 was found to have less than $20,000 in the bank for a project with a slated cost of $100 million.
"Any solicitation for LMDC funds would have to meet the HUD criteria for eligibility," explains Julie Menin, an LMDC board member and the chairperson of New York’s Community Board 1, which includes the World Trade Center site.
It will be interesting to see how the LMDC deals with the appropriateness of this application, especially given its stated commitment to “an open, inclusive, and transparent planning process in which the public has a central role in shaping the future of Lower Manhattan.” After all, among its advisory councils are representatives of the victim’s families, who are unlikely to be sympathetic to the subject.
President Obama came under fire this fall for alternately asserting the mosque's right to exist and then subsequently questioning the wisdom of the project. He was essentially right, and this new chapter in the Park51 saga shows that wisdom is the essential component missing from this development.
In the end, Park51’s application is likely to be unsuccessful financially while mobilizing a new round of opposition. It’s a lose-lose proposition put forward by a tone-deaf organization that seems determined to alienate allies and embolden opponents.

The Daily Beast: Original Article

Is It Too Late for the Pro-Mosque Movement?

Betwa Sharma 

(Aug 25) -- Groups supporting the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center, which most Americans say shouldn't be built as planned some 300 yards from ground zero, announced today an initiative to better make their case, but admitted they face an uphill battle to eclipse the mosque opponents who dominate the debate.

"Maybe we're too late, maybe we're slow and democratic, but we're definitely changing things around," said the Rev. Donna Schaper, senior minister at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. "People who are creating this mass hysteria and manipulating the American people have power and money, but I think we can change their minds because the American people are not mean."

According to a CBS poll released today, 71 percent of Americans think "building a mosque near ground zero" is not appropriate. A more recent survey by the Siena College Research Institute (SRI) found that 63 percent of New York voters oppose the Muslim community center and mosque, which was supposed to bear the name Cordoba House.

Even in New York, said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg, "the level of opposition to building Cordoba House remains very strong."

On Wednesday, a new coalition group called "New York Neighbors for American Values," which consists of more than 30 civil society organizations and groups from different faiths, asked people to join them in rallies and processions planned for the ninth anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Many prominent people have come out in favor of the construction of Park51, most notably New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. If it is not built at its intended site, he said Tuesday at the annual Ramadan celebration at Gracie Mansion, "we would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen.

"And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam," he continued.

But popular grassroots support for that position has been lacking. Last weekend's demonstrations in lower Manhattan drew only about 200 pro-mosque demonstrators, compared with an estimated 500 people who gathered to protest against it.

Supporters of the project say one reason for their late entry into the quarrel is that they never really expected that an organized movement would be needed.

"I think New Yorkers thought it wouldn't be necessary because the mayor had done the job and he has spoken for many of us," said Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "But now that it's clear that this issue seems to have many more legs than anyone thought it would have had or it should have ... so we have more work to do."

The pro-mosque groups say they plan to steal the show on 9/11 by organizing bigger events than those of their opponents, who plan anti-mosque rallies and, in the case of one church in Florida, an "International Burn a Koran Day."

"We will be talking, we will be sending out e-mails, we will be marching, we'll do whatever we need to do to turn the tide on this dangerous rhetoric," said Faiza Ali of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Unfortunately our voices have been drowned out by voices on the extreme. We are hoping to to create an impetus and provide an alternative voice."

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center, a Jewish peace advocacy center in Philadelphia, said supporters like him weren't alone in misjudging the reaction. "I think the Cordoba people themselves didn't make too much about it and thought this is normal America," he said.

"It was no big deal -- then Rupert Murdoch and his people began calling this the '9/11 mosque' and everything exploded," he said. "I don't think they were ready."

While suggesting that a well-oiled machine backed by money and Fox News will be difficult to beat, Waskow said that smart thinking can beat out funds.

"It didn't take a lot of money for us to organize this event; a lot of people chipped in and brought their expertise for free," he said. "I'm not worried about the money." 

 

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