The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously in favor of an application to end the protected status of the 1850s Italian Renaissance palazzo-style building near the site of the former World Trade Center.
The commission voted 9-0 in favor of removing the building at 45-47 Park Place from the landmarks list, said the body's chairman Robert Tierney. The building now houses only an abandoned clothing store.
Many applauded the decision, but others shouted "shame" and one women held a placard saying: "don't glorify murders of 3,000, no 9/11 mosque" and "Islam builds mosques at the sites of their conquests."
Supporters say the project will help build bridges between the West and the Muslim world and transform both the drab lower Manhattan street and the way Americans have looked on Muslims since the deadly attacks in 20011.
Boasting a mosque with sports facilities, a theater and possibly day care, the multi-story Islamic center would be open to all visitors to demonstrate that Muslims are part of their community, not a separate element.
But the proposed mosque's location, just around the corner from the gaping Ground Zero hole, where nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, has angered many New Yorkers who see it as an affront.
The polemic has promoted two US television networks to refuse to air a slick, highly confrontational ad by a group protesting plans for the mosque. The video titled "Kill the Ground Zero Mosque" includes references to the September 11 attacks with a voice-over saying, "On 9/11 they declared war against us ... That mosque is a monument to their victory and an invitation to more."
But Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other prominent city officials have spoken in favor of the idea.
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New York - A private group on Tuesday won the right to build an Islamic centre, which includes a mosque, near the site of the destroyed original World Trade Center despite vocal opposition from victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The Cordoba Institute said it plans to spend 100 million dollars to rebuild the site at 45 Park Place in lower Manhattan after New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 9-0 against granting landmark status to the site.
The vote removed preservation status on the 152-year-old building, opening it to development. The Cordoba Institute said the Islamic centre will include a mosque, gym and also open the site to other facilities.
The Jewish Anti-Defamation League, local community leaders, some New York politicians and families of the more than 2,700 people killed on September 11, 2001 had strongly opposed a mosque near Ground Zero.
"This project raises serious, serious questions that must be answered," news reports quoted Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, as saying.
"Where does the funding come from for a 100-million-dollar mosque?" Lazio said. "The imam who's in charge of this has said America was responsible for the attacks on 9/11. In fact, his words were we were an accessory to the crime of 9/11. He has said Osama bin Laden was built in the US. These are not the words of a bridge builder."
But inter-faith groups defended the plan for a mosque, saying it would open the way to heal 9/11 wounds.
The American Society for Muslim Advancement's Daisy Khan said the new Islamic centre's board would include members of other religions. She does not rule out an interfaith chapel at the site.
"We want to repair the breach and be at the front and centre to start the healing," Khan said in The Wall Street Journal.
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By BOBBY GHOSH Bobby Ghosh – 1 hr 21 mins ago
The last legal hurdle to the proposed Islamic center near the site of the World Trade Center has been removed, but ignorance, bigotry and politics are more formidable obstacles. The unanimous vote Tuesday, Aug. 3, by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission means the building that currently occupies 45-47 Park Place can be torn down, clearing the way for Park51, a project known to its critics as the "Ground Zero Mosque." Criticism spans the gamut, from the ill-informed anguish of those who mistakenly view Islam as the malevolent(Having or exhibiting ill will) force that brought down the towers to the ill-considered opportunism of right-wing politicians who see Islam as an easy target.
(Ironically, Islam's roots in New York City are in the area around the site of the World Trade Center, and they predate the Twin Towers: in the late 19th century, a portion of lower Manhattan was known as Little Syria and was inhabited by Arab immigrants - Muslims and Christians - from the Ottoman Empire.) (Comment on this story.)
With city authorities now out of the way, it is the people spearheading the project who must bear the enormous pressure to give up their plans and scrap the building. They are being accused of sympathizing with the men who crashed the planes on 9/11 and of designing the project as, in Newt Gingrich's reckoning, "an act of triumphalism."
And yet Park51's main movers, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, are actually the kind of Muslim leaders right-wing commentators fantasize about: modernists and moderates who openly condemn the death cult of al-Qaeda and its adherents - ironically, just the kind of "peaceful Muslims" whom Sarah Palin, in her now infamous tweet, asked to "refudiate" the mosque. Rauf is a Sufi, which is Islam's most mystical and accommodating denomination. (See the very best #Shakespalin tweets.)
The Kuwaiti-born Rauf, 52, is the imam of a mosque in New York City's Tribeca district, has written extensively on Islam and its place in modern society and often argues that American democracy is the embodiment of Islam's ideal society. (One of his books is titled What's Right with Islam Is What's Right with America.) He is a contributor to the Washington Post's On Faith blog, and the stated aim of his organization, the Cordoba Initiative, is "to achieve a tipping point in Muslim-West relations within the next decade, steering the world back to the course of mutual recognition and respect and away from heightened tensions." His Indian-born wife is an architect and a recipient of the Interfaith Center Award for Promoting Peace and Interfaith Understanding. (Can Sufism defuse terrorism?)
Since 9/11, Western "experts" have said repeatedly that Muslim leaders who fit Rauf's description should be sought out and empowered to fight the rising tide of extremism. In truth, such figures abound in Muslim lands, even if their work goes unnoticed by armchair pundits elsewhere. Their cause is not helped when someone like Rauf finds himself being excoriated for some perceived reluctance to condemn Hamas and accused of being an extremist himself. If anything, this browbeating of a moderate Muslim empowers the narrative promoted by al-Qaeda: that the West loathes everything about Islam and will stop at nothing to destroy it. (See Daisy Khan explain the role of women leaders in Islam.)
Rauf and Khan have said Park51 - envisaged as a 15-story structure, including a mosque, cultural center and auditorium - will promote greater interfaith dialogue. The furor over the project only underlines how desperately it is needed.
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Key backer of NYC Islamic center takes lesser role Buzz up!174 votes Share
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EmailPrint.. AP – FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2010 file photo, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf,
By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press David B. Caruso, Associated Press – Sat Jan 15, 3:03 am ET
NEW YORK – The preacher who hoped to use his unsought fame as imam of the mosque near ground zero to start a dialogue about Muslims in America said he's taking a reduced role in the project so he can travel the country building "understanding among all people of faith."
Feisal Abdul Rauf, who co-led the effort to build an Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site, is set to begin a national speaking tour Saturday.
On the day before his first engagement in Michigan, the nonprofit group controlled by the developer of the Islamic center said it supported Rauf's work but needed someone who could spend more time on the nitty-gritty task of building a congregation.
The organization, Park51, said Friday that it had chosen Shaykh Abdallah Adhami, a 44-year-old scholar and architect, as a new senior adviser to lead religious programming in Rauf's absence.
It is unclear whether Rauf's reduced role in the center will help or hurt its chances of getting built.
An unknown in the U.S. before the controversy, he emerged as possibly the country's best-known Muslim cleric and found himself listed alongside world leaders and celebrities as one of 2010's most influential figures, even as he was vilified by critics of the project.
His reputation as a progressive and political connections won over influential supporters like the city's mayor.
Rauf, though, had also been criticized by some of the project's supporters for being absent at crucial moments.
Last summer, he left for a long State Department-funded trip to the Middle East just as the frenzy over the mosque was exploding at home. Then, he stayed silent for weeks, leaving mostly his wife, the community activist Daisy Khan, to respond.
And despite public perception, he was never the driving force behind the planned center. That role fell to the Manhattan real estate investor who controls the site, Sharif El-Gamal, who has spent recent months lining up financing and organizing the operation while Rauf served as the project's public face.
Rauf will remain on the Islamic center's board and involved in the project, but Park51 said in a statement that it needed someone who could be more involved in the day-to-day business of building a local congregation.
"Due to the fact that Imam Feisal is focusing most of his energies and passion on launching this new and separate initiative, it is important that the needs of Park51, the Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, take precedence," the statement said.
The group said that while Rauf's vision is "truly exceptional, our community in lower Manhattan is local."
Rauf's publicist released a statement saying that since he planned to spend the next few months traveling, a change made sense.
"Imam Feisal wants to meet the people of America where they are, to help build broader connection and understanding among all people of faith. To make that vision a reality, he is stepping back from the day to day details and operations of Cordoba House,"the statement said.
Cordoba House was an original name for the planned community center that was dropped months ago by El-Gamal.
Rauf's continued use of the name was one of the many quirks of the complicated relationship between the two men. El-Gamal, who is also president of Park51 and controls its board, is a member of Rauf's congregation and has credited the imam with helping him find direction in his life.
Current plans for the center call for replacing a defunct clothing store two blocks from ground zero with a 13- to 16-story building that would hold athletic facilities, a day care center, art galleries, an auditorium for cultural events, a 9/11 memorial and a prayer space with room for a congregation of about 1,000.
Critics have assailed the project as insensitive, saying it is improper for a Muslim institution to be located so close to the site of an attack by Islamic extremists.
Adhami has already performed guest lectures at the site of the planned center while Rauf has been away. One of his appearances there came in August, at the height of media coverage of the project.
At the time, Adhami seemed to take the crush of attention with nonchalance(Casual lack of concern). His representatives invited reporters to cover his speech, only to have El-Gamal, who was unaware of the invitation, toss them out after they arrived. Adhami shrugged it off afterward as a misunderstanding and calmly fielded questions.
In a statement released Friday by a Park51 publicist, Adhami said he was being given "an extraordinary opportunity to be a key adviser on a project going forward that has enormous creative and healing potential for the collective good in New York City and in our nation."
Everyone associated with the project has had to endure intense, sometimes savage scrutiny, and Adhami is likely to be no different.
Born in Washington, D.C., he began his religious education as a child in Syria and later earned an architecture degree from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He now lectures widely on issues of religious law, family and sexuality.
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