Comparing the planners of the Muslim community center and mosque to be built two blocks from ground zero to Rosa Parks, leaders of numerous American Muslim organizations declared their strong support for the project on Monday, and said it should not move.
The leaders, representing local as well as national groups, stressed that their primary concern was not this one project, called Park51, but other instances of anti-Muslim sentiment, driven by what they called fear, lack of information and political opportunism, that has led small, vocal groups of residents from Staten Island and Brooklyn to California and Tennessee to oppose the construction of mosques.
They said they had agreed to “facilitate” Park51 after meeting Sunday with its developer, Sharif el-Gamal, and receiving a written statement from the iman behind the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, who stayed away for security reasons. They said “facilitate” did not mean fund-raising help — money questions will take longer to resolve, they said — but instead helping straighten out misimpressions about the project, and standing up as religious leaders for the First Amendment.
“We stand for the constitutional right of Muslims and Americans of all faiths to build houses of worship anywhere in our nation as allowed by local laws and regulations,” said the statement read by Al-Amin Latif, president of the Majlis Ash-Shura of New York, also known as the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York, which represents 55 mosques and Muslim groups. “Also, we stand against the racism, hatred, religious intolerance and ethnic bigotry directed against Islam and American Muslims.”
The organizations, which met over the weekend to discuss Park51 and the broader issues, also announced plans for a nationwide week of dialogue in late October, during which Muslims will hold open houses in their mosques and attend other faiths’ places of worship to dispel tensions that come with unfamiliarity.
The coalition stressed that American Muslims were among the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
“Ground zero is all of ours,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Ground zero does not belong to a specific group of people or religion. Ground zero belongs to all Americans, and we all share the grief, we all share the healing.” He said it was unfair to associate the planned community center or all Muslims with 9/11.
Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Washington-based Muslim American Society Freedom, the civil rights branch of the Muslim American Society, compared those who want the project built elsewhere to those who he said told Rosa Parks: “We want you to move. You offend us being where you are. This is not the right place for you to be.”