The main organizer of the "Ground Zero mosque" was asked by the FBI to to conduct sensitivity training for agents and cops.
Posted by
mara
Aug 11 '10, 15:23
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Ah, the �Ground Zero mosque.� Well, for a start, it won�t be at Ground Zero. It�ll be on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site (from which it will not be visible), in a neighborhood ajumble with restaurants, shops (electronics, porn, you name it), churches, office cubes, and the rest of the New York mishmash. Park51, as it is to be called, will have a large Islamic �prayer room,� which presumably qualifies as a mosque. But the rest of the building will be devoted to classrooms, an auditorium, galleries, a restaurant, a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001, and a swimming pool and gym. Its sponsors envision something like the 92nd Street Y�a Y.M.I.A., you might say, open to all, including persons of the C. and H. persuasions.
Like many New Yorkers, the people in charge of Park51, a married couple, are from somewhere else�he from Kuwait, she from Kashmir. Feisal Abdul Rauf is a Columbia grad. He has been the imam of a mosque in Tribeca for close to thirty years. He is the author of a book called �What�s Right with Islam Is What�s Right with America.� He is a vice-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York. �My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists,� he wrote recently�in the Daily News, no less. He denounces terrorism in general and the 9/11 attacks in particular, often and at length. The F.B.I. tapped him to conduct �sensitivity training� for agents and cops. His wife, Daisy Khan, runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which she co-founded with him. It promotes �cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, youth and women�s empowerment, and arts and cultural exchange.�
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