Excerpt:
Plans for a $100 million high-rise Islamic Center next to New York's Ground Zero are generating lots of controversy, as well as great distress among families of some of the thousands murdered in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. So one might suppose that the Imam spearheading this project in the name of harmony and dialogue would be more than willing to help allay fears by disclosing down to the last penny where he's getting the money. Instead, Feisal Abdul Rauf--Imam Feisal, to his followers and friends--keeps stonewalling. The questions keep multiplying.
One of those questions right now is: Where in the world is Imam Feisal?
Simply locating him this week turned into an intriguing exercise. Feisal Abdul Rauf is chairman of a tax-exempt foundation called the Cordoba Initiative, which is spearheading the nine-figure project to replace a downtown Manhattan building, damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks, with the planned Islamic Center--to be called Cordoba House. Rauf's Cordoba Initiative has an office in upper Manhattan, from which Rauf and his wife, Daisy Kahn, together with a Manhattan real estate developer, made the Cordoba House pitch approved in May by a Manhattan community board.
But when I phoned the New York offices of the Cordoba Initiative on Thursday morning, seeking answers from Rauf about the money, a staffer told me that Rauf is in an undisclosed location somewhere overseas: "He's traveling; he's out of the country."