Mosque to be Built Near Ground Zero

eptember 16, 2010

Two Men Behind Islamic Center Have Their Differences

By ANNE BARNARD

The two men behind the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero are from different generations and distinct backgrounds — the imam, 61, grew up in England and Malaysia and immigrated to New York as a teenager; the real estate developer, 37, spent his early childhood in Brooklyn, then attended American schools overseas.

The imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is cerebral, soft-spoken, sometimes otherworldly. The developer, Sharif el-Gamal, is businesslike, brash and sometimes pugnacious.

Each has his own public relations firm and behind-the-scenes advisers. They have individual — not always identical — visions for the project, which they occasionally call by different names: the imam still speaks of it as Cordoba House, a name laden with religious history, while the developer uses the less charged Park51. And amid the swirling controversy about their shared mission, they sometimes give different answers to thorny questions.

When asked why they resist moving the center to defuse critics who call its location near ground zero insensitive, for example, Mr. Abdul Rauf said that a move would anger Muslims overseas and endanger American troops. Mr. Gamal, though, has always based his adamant stance on a Constitutional right to build what he wants, where he wants, declaring: “I’m an American, I’m a New Yorker. I don’t hold my faith responsible for 9/11.”

While some differences are only natural — an imam focused on religious activities planned for the center and a developer more likely to talk up the swimming pool — and could be complementary, they have sometimes undermined efforts to build support. Their loose coordination has caused public misunderstandings — sometimes dramatic ones, as when it was briefly believed that the imam had agreed to move the center in return for a fringe Florida pastor’s promise not to burn the Koran. And even some supporters say the two men’s differing priorities are making it harder, or at least more time consuming, to quell the controversy.

“They’re very different individuals and they have different interests in the project,” said Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1, a largely advisory body that evaluates neighborhood projects and voted in favor of this one.

Sometimes, she said, “It seems that they’re on two separate pages.”

The two men met around 2006, when Mr. Gamal, who works downtown, began visiting Masjid al-Farah, the mosque in TriBeCa where Mr. Abdul Rauf has presided since the 1980s. Both came to Sufi Islam as adults, and they have a strong personal bond: Mr. Gamal said that hearing the imam’s Friday sermon for the first time was “a dose of spirituality I hadn’t had in the longest time.”

Soon after, he asked the imam to officiate at his wedding, and they began dreaming up the community center, out of a shared concern about overcrowding at two existing mosques in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Gamal describes himself as the man in charge of the planned center, 120,000 square feet in size, and the sole arbiter of its location; his real estate company owns and leases the properties where it is to be built, 45-51 Park Place.

Mr. Abdul Rauf describes himself as the center’s visionary; he tried to initiate a similar project in the 1990s but failed to raise the cash.

Both agree that the imam will run the mosque and its interfaith programs — though they are still working out what those programs should look like.

Further complicating the situation is the role of Daisy Khan, the imam’s wife, a chatty, sophisticated former interior designer with a public profile that complements but does not mirror her husband’s.

It was Ms. Khan who took a phone call last week from a Florida imam trying to dissuade the fringe pastor Terry Jones from burning the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11, agreeing that “we” — it was never clear who — would meet with the pastor, who promptly declared on television that the imam had agreed to move the center.

In the initial confusion, not even Mr. Gamal was sure it wasn’t true.

Ms. Khan, whose American Society for Muslim Advancement shares an office with her husband’s Cordoba Initiative near Columbia University, has often been involved in public relations about the project, particularly when Mr. Abdul Rauf was out of the country in August on a State Department trip to the Middle East. The couple shares a professional collaboration not unlike the one in the Clinton White House. But Mr. Gamal has recently let it be known that Ms. Khan has no official role in Park51.

The most recent disconnect has come over a compromise being suggested, in which the community center would add worship space for Christians, Jews and others. Mr. Gamal at first appeared cool to the idea, while Mr. Abdul Rauf was quick to publicly embrace it, according to Ms. Menin, a supporter of the project who has suggested that such a move could attract a wider base of donors and support.

Ms. Menin said that Mr. Gamal told her that existing plans for programs to bring together different religions were enough. The imam, who wrote in an Op-Ed essay in The New York Times on Sept. 7 that the center would include worship space for all faiths, seems more eager to compromise and “build more consensus,” Ms. Menin said.

On Wednesday, Mr. Gamal’s spokesman, Larry Kopp, said that Mr. Gamal had decided to include an ecumenical worship space, as long as it did not reduce the space available to Muslims, and that details would take time to work out.

On the larger question of the project’s proximity to the World Trade Center site, Kurt Tolksdorf, one of Mr. Abdul Rauf’s closest friends from college, said in a recent interview that he “would not be surprised” if the imam consented to changing the location, if only because the conflict was exhausting and saddening him. “He can oppose intolerance without building the mosque at that particular spot,” Mr. Tolksdorf said.

Mr. Gamal, meanwhile, has told supporters he feels more determined the shriller the opposition becomes.

Mr. Abdul Rauf, Mr. Gamal and others have insisted in interviews that they have no substantive disagreements about the project, just different roles and personalities.

“Sharif is a businessman and he owns the property; I’m an imam and a spiritual leader who has a vision,” Mr. Abdul Rauf said last week. “He is a very capable man, very deeply committed towards the goal, a contribution to our country, to our city, to our neighborhood.”

Mr. Kopp, Mr. Gamal’s spokesman, said simply, “They are on the same page.”

The imam, whose Cordoba Initiative has offices in a building packed with religious — mostly Christian — nonprofit groups and nicknamed the God Box, has spent much of his time since 9/11 networking with Jewish and Christian leaders, urging American Muslims to expand their civic roles at home while promoting moderation abroad. He has also been on something of a media campaign, appearing recently on “Larry King Live” and speaking on Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Gamal, who became a broker and property manager with Soho Properties after an abortive college career and several brushes with the law, has largely retreated behind the scenes since the imam’s return to New York.

To Mr. Abdul Rauf, who always emphasizes the center’s interfaith agenda, its location near ground zero is essential to its message of healing the wounds of 9/11 and promoting moderate Islam.

Mr. Gamal, who tends to stress plans for a “world-class” architectural design, swimming pool, cooking school, restaurant and performing arts center, said he had selected the site because it was near the crowded downtown mosques and inexpensive. Ground zero, he said, had “nothing to do with it.”

They initially agreed to call the center Cordoba House, for the Spanish city in which Muslims, Jews and Christians shared a scholarly golden age a thousand years ago, but Mr. Gamal changed the name to Park51 after some opponents said medieval Cordoba, which Muslims ruled until Christians conquered them in the 13th century, signified Muslim domination. The imam’s religious programs will still bear that name, and he seemed to use it to refer to the whole center in his essay in The Times.

The day after the essay appeared, Mr. Gamal issued a press release reminding people that the center’s name was Park51.

I love that word, in fact I have, on rare occasion, been called pugnacious myself.

Muslim summit planned over NYC Islamic center

By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer
Sat Sep 18, 3:01 am ET

NEW YORK – A proposed Islamic center near ground zero is slowly being embraced by some Muslims who initially were indifferent about the plan, partly in response to a sense that their faith is under attack.
A summit of U.S. Muslim organizations is planned for Saturday and Sunday in New York City to address both the project and a rise in anti-Muslim sentiments and rhetoric that has accompanied the nationwide debate over the project.
It has yet to be seen whether the groups will emerge with a firm stand on the proposed community center, dubbed Park51. The primary purpose of the meeting is to talk about ways to combat religious bigotry.
But Shaik Ubaid of the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York, one of the groups organizing the gathering, said he has a growing sense that some American Muslims who initially had trepidation are now throwing their support behind the plan.
"Once it became a rallying cry for extremists, we had no choice but to stand with Feisal Rauf," he said, referring to the New York City imam who has been leading the drive for the center.
Groups scheduled to participate in the summit include the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim Alliance of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Gauging support for the center among U.S. Muslims is difficult. As a group, they are diverse, ranging from blacks who found the faith during the civil rights movement to recent immigrants hailing from opposite ends of the globe. They rarely speak with one voice.
Yet after a pastor in Florida injected himself into the debate by threatening to burn copies of the Quran, U.S. Muslims stirred.
"I think most Muslims outside New York City are more concerned about the backlash than the actual center, which most of them will never directly benefit from," said Shahed Amanullah, the editor-in-chief of the website altmuslim.com and a group of other Islam-themed sites.
"Grass-roots support is indeed building," he said, "but that is probably more due to the pushback against the general hostile climate."
The center's proposed location two blocks from the World Trade Center site has upset some relatives of Sept. 11 victims and led to angry demands that it be moved. Critics say the site of mass murder by Islamic extremists is no place for an Islamic institution.
Rauf has called for the 13-story Islamic center to be open to people of all faiths, while his co-leader of the project, Manhattan real estate developer Sharif El-Gamal, has stressed its non-religious aspects, which include a health club and culinary school.
The summit comes as some supporters of the center have encouraged its organizers to include prayer space for Jews, Christians and other religious groups as a way of countering critics who say it will be a monument to Islamic supremacy.
Julie Menin, the chairwoman of the Manhattan community board that endorsed the project months ago, said she will meet with Rauf to discuss the interfaith possibility in the coming weeks.
"They had always talked about giving the center an interfaith concept," she said, "like having classes in Buddhism."
"It's one thing to have panel discussions, but if you really want to bring these factions together ... have a nondenominational interfaith space, like the chapel at the Pentagon, where local rabbis and priests could hold services on different days of the week."
There has always been some interfaith support for the center.
Its backers modeled their concept for the center after the city's two popular Jewish community centers and consulted at length with the managers to learn how to make their model work downtown, and reached out to some neighborhood politicians for support.
There was much less outreach to Muslims, Ubaid said.
Rauf, he said, may have been a regular talking head for the national news media on Muslim world affairs, but among New York City imams he was something of an outsider, Ubaid said.
"He was not that involved with the local Muslim community," Ubaid said. He said that included a general failure to round up support for the center before going public with his plans. "Had we consulted us, we probably would have told him, gently, no."
Even after the proposal became public, there was a hesitation by some Muslim groups to quickly endorse the idea, in part because of questions about its feasibility.
Questions about the project's finances have lingered. The investment partnership that owns the property, led by El-Gamal, quickly fell more than $224,000 behind on its property taxes this summer.
The city's finance department confirmed Friday that El-Gamal had begun resolving that debt Wednesday, turning over a check for a little more than $35,000 and signing on to an eight-installment payment plan to pay the rest.
El-Gamal said in a statement that the failure to pay was due to a dispute with the city over the assessed value of the property — an appeal that is still pending.

For them not to build now would almost be like an admission that they are all guilty by association of a religion of the events of 9/11. It would be a celebration of victory for those who have opposed the building of the Mosque only because they are Muslims. I can fully understand why there are now other Muslims supporting the building of the Mosque if only because of the horrible things that have been said about them.

Glad to see they are fighting for their ethical and constitutional rights. There are many "real" Americans who will continue to support them.

I wonder what woud happen about moving that mosque,
if the good guys mentioned the possibility of occasional PICKETING,
with hand drawn representations of Mohammed n his camel
romping around, but then again maybe NOT,
because of the exposure of American troops over there.
That might possibly be too close to burning Korans (not Koreans),
of which I have already disapproved.

Just a thought (thawt)





David

I wonder what the Moslem mosque builders
woud think of our mentioning the possibility
of occasional future letters to the editors
with comments about Mohammed and his camels. Hhmmmm. . . .





David

If would be nice instead of spending the efforts on building this Mosque that they might wish to help clean their own damn religion that is being used as an excuse to kill and main and treat hundreds of millions of women as slaves worldwide.

Maybe they could do that by building a community center in the United States so that moderate Muslims would have a place to congregate.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/18/muslim-summit-planned-over-nyc-islamic-center/

It will be interesting to see what they do...

Great idea but I would suggest that it is not a good start in locating it in a location where a large percent of their fellow citizens view as being in one hell of bad taste.

Not showing in fact one little bit of good intentions at all by so doing.

http://gothamist.com/2010/09/18/ground_zero_imam_and_developer_are.php

Incompetence

OSD wrote:

And christians should mention that the virgin Mary was about 13 years old when god raped her. And god knew she was a virgin.

Their faith is indeed under attack but not by people who view locating a mosque there as being in bad taste but by the nuts who are daily using their faith as an excused to kill in a whole scale manner others including members of their own faith that belong to the "wrong" branch of Islam.

I was not aware that the bible fairy tale concerning Mary gave her age at Jesus "birth".

That's the age given my theologians. They say between 12 and 14 years old.

How do they back that claim pull it out of thin air as in the manner of the Dec 25 birthday date of Christ?

If the nations religous leaders were smart they would all get together and make this property a true interfaith concept, with community center. There is no reason to let all of the publicity generated by Park51 go to waste. If the Muslims need a another true Mosque in the area they can build it somewhere else, though all we have is hearsay on the need currently.

BillRM, You'll have to ask them. I'm not an expert on the bible. Theologians probably studied and analyzed the bible to determine the virgin's approximate age. Asking me goes nowhere.

In the same manner as calculating that the earth is 10 thousands years old no doubt, in other words nonsense.