Lower Manhattan Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will not back down from his
plans to open a mosque and an Islamic center in the heart of Ground
Zero, even as he was booed at a raucous community board meeting on the
issue Tuesday night.
“We are part of the community. We have been here — I
have been here for 27 years and it is our right. We don’t need
permission from anyone,” Rauf said before the meeting, in one of the
first interviews he has granted since the controversy erupted.
About 200 people attended the Community Board 1
meeting, where emotions ran high, and Rauf and others were the targets
of heckling.
The project is being spearheaded by the imam with
the support of elected officials and Jewish religious leaders. The
community board’s vote on the project, while not necessary for the
project to move forward, is viewed as important to getting residents’
backing.
spoke at the meeting, saying, “If you are against it, they’re calling
you a bigot. I’m not a bigot. I’m opposed to the mosque because it’s in
poor taste.”
firefighter who died on 9/11. “I’m not against a mosque. It’s the
location which has caused so much heartache. Why here?” Cain said.
But
many 9/11 families and is a pastor at St. Peter’s Church, across from
Ground Zero, said he supported the project. “I’m for it. It’s a
mainline Islam group. And this is about working together,” he said.
In the interview, Rauf said his own congregation was
affected by 9/11. “We had 200 people who bled and died on 9/11. We gave
water to firefighters; doctors from the community volunteered to be
medics. We are part of the 9/11 family,” said Rauf, reiterating his
plans to put a memorial inside the Islamic center with the names of
9/11 victims.
The imam’s congregation will have to raise
to open the 13-story Islamic center where it is expected that prayer
services would attract about 2,000 worshipers. The center will also
have a swimming pool, a 500-seat auditorium for cultural events, and
lecture forums for interfaith religious leaders. The center will be
open to everyone, Rauf said.
Rauf said the mosque would not open on the
anniversary of 9/11, and that it would take between 18 months to three
years before the money is raised to open the center at the old
Burlington Coat Factory building on
which was damaged on 9/11. Rauf said the building would either be
demolished or renovated depending on a pending landmark status
application.
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