NEW YORK – Lower Manhattan, site of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World
Trade Center, has yet again become a battleground – this time ideological – as
plans to build a mosque in the area are prompting intensified debate on the
national stage.
The proposed Islamic cultural center would be located a
few blocks away from Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers stood. The $100 million
project, which would include a mosque, was originally called Cordoba House and
now goes by the name Park 51.
Park 51 is a creation of the American
Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, an organization that
seeks to improve relations between Islam and the West.
“This is a way for
me to give back, as a New Yorker, to my community,” Soho Properties developer
and project backer Sharif El-Gamal told
The Jerusalem Post. “I’m a New Yorker.
This is about giving back to a city that’s given us so much.”
Gamal
pointed out that the proposed center would not be “on Ground Zero,” but two city
blocks away, and would include a September 11 memorial.
According to the
Cordoba House NYC Web site, the 13- story project would include a 500-seat
auditorium, swimming pool, art exhibition spaces, bookstores and
restaurants.
“There will be a mosque component, which will be a separate
not-for-profit component of the project,” Gamal said. “It’s going to be a small
component in a community center, just like the 92nd Street Y has a
synagogue.”
Notwithstanding, the project has met with vociferous
detractors, who call it “the Ground Zero Mosque.” Many US politicians have
seized the proposed mosque component as a political
battleground.
Congressman Peter King, a Republican member of the House
Homeland Security Committee, and former New York congressman Rick Lazio, a
Republican running for governor, have called for an investigation of how the
project would be financed.
In response to the
Post’s query about whether
Saudi funds were being used to finance the center, Gamal said, “We are in the
process of establishing a not-for-profit entity, and we have not raised any
money from foreign governments.”
Former vice presidential candidate Sarah
Palin took to Twitter to voice her dismay with the project, urging New Yorkers
to “refudiate” (sic) its construction – though she retracted her unwitting
creativity with the English language soon thereafter.
“‘Refudiate,’
‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare
liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!” Palin wrote.
She later
opined, “Many Americans, myself included, feel it would be an intolerable and
tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go
forward on such hallowed ground. This is nothing close to ‘religious
intolerance.’ It’s just common decency.”
At a press conference in Lower
Manhattan on Monday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg reiterated his support for the
project and denounced Palin’s stance on the mosque.
“I think our young
men and women overseas are fighting for exactly this – for the right of people
to practice their religion and for government to not pick and choose which
religions they support, which religions they don’t,” Bloomberg
said.
“Sarah Palin has a right to her opinions, but I could not disagree
more,” Bloomberg said. “Everything the United States stands for and New
York
stands for is tolerance and openness, and I think it’s a great message
for the
world that unlike in other places where they might actually ban people
from
wearing a burqa or they might actually keep people from building a
building,
that’s not what America was founded on, nor is it what America should
become.”
Many others have come out on the national stage in support of
the project as a healing measure. Padraic O’Hare, director of the Center
for the
Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations at Merrimack College,
advocated the
cause in an opinion piece in
The Washington Post.
“Build a Muslim house
of prayer near Ground Zero?” he wrote. “Build a house which nurtures and
cultivates less wounded, less ego-driven and more just and peaceful
Muslims,
people of real and healthy prayerfulness? Hand me the shovel.”
Meanwhile,
opposition to the project has now moved to the city’s Landmark
Preservation
Commission, where detractors have suggested that the old building being
demolished to make room for the center should be designated historically
significant.
The Landmark Preservation Commission is expected to vote
later this summer on whether the building meets the standards for
preservation.
Such a designation would complicate plans to alter or tear
the building down, or to develop the former coat factory for a different
purpose.
When asked about the negative response to the project, Gamal
said, “Those aren’t my neighbors, my friends or my New Yorkers. A vocal
minority
have come out to amplify their own agendas of hate and bigotry that have
nothing
to do with my project.”
He added, “I see this project succeeding where
all New Yorkers are going to be involved and engaged in it. This is what
represents our city.”