At 45 Park Place was a mid-nineteenth-century building left vacant after undercarriage debris from the doomed planes cratered several floors of what was then a Burlington Coat Factory. They planned to restore it as the thirteen-story Cordoba House, which would feature a community center, pool, restaurant, performance space, mosque and culinary school. She told New York Jewish Week that she was embarrassed not to have known who it was that attacked America, so she turned to authors and journalists who revealed that the culprit was Islam.
They called it the Ground Zero Mosque. The demonization of Rauf followed. The protests began that summer. At the end of August a cabbie named Ahmed Sharif, a Bangladeshi immigrant and a father of four children, picked up a blond film student named Michael Enright. Khan and Abdul Rauf brought along a PowerPoint outlining their vision.
When they got to the mosque portion of the PowerPoint, Khan remembers hearing loud whispers and the clicking of a camera. Her heart sank. The next day, Khan remembers the headlines plastered on every New York tabloid. The disinformation was out of control, she said, and right-wing figures capitalized on it. The community board scheduled a vote on a resolution about the plans for Cordoba House for May 25, Although the vote had no real influence on the plans, the organizers had hoped it would bolster support.
More than people testified at that meeting, with middle school students, religious leaders and residents delivering impassioned speeches for and against the center. No mosque!
The ferocity of the opposition spilled outside the board meetings and onto the streets. Notorious anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer stoked the opposition to Cordoba House, penning columns in newspapers, appearing on prime-time television and organizing protests at the proposed site.
She joined forces with other right-wing, Islamophobic extremists like Spencer and Daniel Pipes to lead rallies against Cordoba House and coordinate a false campaign suggesting the project was tied to terrorists abroad. By then, the outrage over Cordoba House was in full swing. Online petitions against it took over the internet. Abdul Rauf and Khan were flooded with phone calls, emails and letters. While many supported the center, there was also so much vitriol.
People sent burnt images of the Quran and pornographic caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as of Abdul Rauf and Khan themselves. Khan recruited gloved volunteers to help her sort through the mail.
Khan was home alone in the kitchen when she heard a crash in the living room. Worried for her safety, she started to use the back door of her house and bought new security cameras. Share this on:.
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The project has drawn criticism from opponents who say they don't want a mosque near the site of the Sept. He called opposition to the center — which prompted one of the most virulent national discussions about Islam and freedom of speech and religion since Sept.
Last year, street clashes in view of the trade center site pitted supporters against opponents of the center. When the center was first envisioned several years ago, activist Daisy Khan and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf , played a major, vocal role.
But they soon left the project because of differences with the developer. El-Gamal confirmed Wednesday that they parted ways because "we had a different vision.
But El-Gamal wishes victims' families had been involved earlier — before the center became a point of contention. At first, "we didn't understand that we had a responsibility to discuss our private project with family members that lost loved ones," he said, and they did not "really connect" with community leaders and activists. But today, "we're very committed to having them involved in our project. We're really listening," he said. Pointing to the inclusivity of a center that critics feared would be polarizing, El-Gamal noted that the featured photographer in the "NYChildren" exhibit is Danny Goldfield , who is Jewish.
The Brooklyn photographer was inspired to create the exhibit by the story of Rana Sodhi , a Sikh who emigrated from India and settled in Arizona. His brother Balbir was killed in a retaliatory hate crime four days after Sept. Sodhi made the trip to New York for the opening and wore a tie decorated with heart-shaped American flags. He still runs the gas station where his brother was killed.
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