'Ground Zero Imam' Urges Tolerance
The American Muslim leader best-known for his efforts to build an Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York said Monday that the death of Osama bin Laden may signal the waning of terrorism.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said bin Laden’s death, coupled with the wave of pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East, may prove pivotal in the fight against terrorism.
“I see the demise of bin Laden and the Arab spring as a potential watershed moment,” he said. “Hopefully, the era of terrorism is behind us.”
Rauf tried to play down the controversy over the proposed mosque and community center, saying he believes it peaked with the midterm elections last fall. But he also said the outcry against the project “became a huge story internationally” and risked further damaging U.S. relations with the Muslim world.
He met with the Chronicle editorial board while in Houston for an event sponsored by the Rothko Chapel and Interfaith Ministries.
Although Rauf acknowledged that he has been “branded as the Ground Zero Imam,” he said his key work now is to advocate for ways to bridge the divide between Muslims and non-Muslims.
‘Muslim version’ of a Y
Born in Kuwait to Egyptian parents, he moved to the United States in the 1960s and enrolled at Columbia University. A physicist by training, he served as imam at a New York City mosque and has written several books on Islam.
He described the proposed center, to be built near where the World Trade Centers stood, as “the 21st century Muslim version of a YMCA,” offering fitness programs, arts programs and a food court as a way to draw people of differing faiths together.
“(It would be) a hangout place, to create a sense of community between Muslims and non-Muslims,” he said.
The plans were first made public by the New York Times in the fall of 2009, but Rauf said they did not raise an outcry until last spring, as the midterm election season reached a partisan pitch.
Moving the center to another location might appease critics but would risk inflaming anti-U.S. sentiment in the Muslim world, he said.
Rauf sidestepped reports of a split with the project’s developer, insisting he remains involved.
“Even in the best of families, there are differences of opinion,” he said.
But he also said fundraising has not yet begun, making it impossible to say when the project will be completed.
‘Unkind’ remarks
That wasn’t Rauf’s first brush with controversy. After Sept. 11, he was quoted as saying U.S. policies contributed to the attacks, a stance he later labeled “unkind.”
He said he has met with the families of some of those killed on Sept. 11 to gauge their concerns about the proposed Islamic center. “They urged me to go out and travel and speak,” he said.
As part of that campaign, he said he also urges Muslims in the United States to assimilate more quickly, to “speed up the process by which we become Americans.”
Jeannie Kever
Houston Chronicle