Imam warns against retreat on NY Ground Zero mosque
Sept. 12: The Islamic cleric behind plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York warned on Sunday that retreating on the project would only strengthen the hand of Muslim extremists around the world.
Despite the warning, imam Feisal Abdul Rauf dodged the question when asked if he intended to keep the Islamic cultural centre at its current site, two blocks from where Al Qaeda crashed planes into the World Trade Centre.
“The decisions that I will make — that we will make — will be predicated on what is best for everybody,” he told ABC’s This Week programme. On Saturday’s ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, thousands marched in duelling protests over the row, which was stoked by a Florida pastor’s threat to burn the Quran to mark the occasion. Terry Jones used his threat, which triggered demonstrations across the Muslim world, as a bargaining chip to try and get the mosque moved and flew to New York to meet the imam. Abdul Rauf has so far refused to meet him and his initial response in a statement to CNN was: “We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter.”
The imam told ABC in the interview on Sunday that the “discourse has been, to a certain extent, hijacked by the radicals,” and said this made his decision on the mosque “very difficult and very challenging. “The radicals on both sides, the radicals in the United States and the radicals in the Muslim world, feed off each other. And to a certain extent, the attention that they’ve been able to get by the media has even aggravated the problem.” The mosque, to be built on the site of a derelict clothing store two blocks from Ground Zero — the name given to the site of the downed Twin Towers — was proposed by Rauf.
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