http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/nyregion/09mosque.html
Muslim Prayers and Renewal Near Ground Zero
On that still-quiet Tuesday morning, the sales staff was in a basement room
eating breakfast, waiting to open the doors to the first shoppers at 10 a.m.
There was no immediate sign of the fiery cataclysm that erupted overhead
starting at 8:46. But out of a baby-blue sky suddenly stained with smoke, a
plane’s landing-gear assembly the size of a World War II torpedo crashed
through the roof and down through two empty selling floors of the Burlington
Coat Factory.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attack killed 2,752 people downtown and doomed the
five-story building at 45 Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade
Center, keeping it abandoned for eight years.
But for months now, out of the public eye, an iron gate rises every Friday
afternoon, and with the outside rumblings of construction at ground zero as a
backdrop, hundreds of Muslims crowd inside, facing Mecca in prayer and
listening to their imam read in Arabic from the Koran.
The building has no sign that hints at its use as a Muslim prayer space, but
these modest beginnings point to a far grander vision: an Islamic center near
the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s
more unexpected and striking neighbors.
The location was precisely a key selling point for the group of Muslims who
bought the building in July. A presence so close to the World Trade Center,
“where a piece of the wreckage fell,” said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric
leading the project, “sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.”
“We want to push back against the extremists,” added Imam Feisal, 61.
Although organizers have sought to avoid publicizing their project because they
say plans are too preliminary, it has drawn early encouragement from city
officials and the surrounding neighborhood.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said through a spokesman that Imam Feisal told him
of the project last September at a celebration to observe the end of Ramadan.
As for whether Mr. Bloomberg supported it, the spokesman, Andrew Brent, said,
“If it’s legal, the building owners have a right to do what they want.”
The mayor’s director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs, Fatima Shama, went
further. “We as New York Muslims have as much of a commitment to rebuilding New
York as anybody,” Ms. Shama said. Imam Feisal’s wife, Daisy Khan, serves on an
advisory team for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and Lynn
Rasic, a spokeswoman for the memorial, said, “The idea of a cultural center
that strengthens ties between Muslims and people of all faiths and backgrounds
is positive.”
Those who have worked with him say if anyone could pull off what many regard to
be a delicate project, it would be Imam Feisal, whom they described as having
built a career preaching tolerance and interfaith understanding.
“He subscribes to my credo: ‘Live and let live,’ ” said Rabbi Arthur Schneier,
spiritual leader of Park East Synagogue on East 67th Street.
As a Sufi, Imam Feisal follows a path of Islam focused more on spiritual wisdom
than on strict ritual, and as a bridge builder, he is sometimes focused more on
cultivating relations with those outside his faith than within it.
But though the imam is adamant about what his intentions for the site are,
there is anxiety among those involved or familiar with the project that it
could very well become a target for anti-Muslim attacks.
Joan Brown Campbell, director of the department of religion at the Chautauqua
Institution in upstate New York and former general secretary of the National
Council of Churches of Christ U.S.A., who is a supporter of Imam Feisal,
acknowledged the possibility of a backlash from those opposed to a Muslim
presence at ground zero.
But, she added: “Building so close is owning the tragedy. It’s a way of saying:
‘This is something done by people who call themselves Muslims. We want to be
here to repair the breach, as the Bible says.’ ”
The F.B.I. said Imam Feisal had helped agents reach out to the Muslim
population after Sept. 11. “We’ve had positive interactions with him in the
past,” said an agency spokesman, Richard Kolk. Alice Hoagland of Las Gatos,
Calif., whose son, Mark Bingham, was killed in the hijacked plane that crashed
in Pennsylvania, said, “It’s quite a bold step buying a piece of land adjacent
to ground zero,” but she said she considered plans for the site “a noble
effort.”
On a recent Friday, worshipers in the old Burlington Coat Factory heard Imam
Feisal’s call for spiritual purity during the time of the hajj, the annual
pilgrimage to Mecca.
“We like Imam Feisal, the way he presents the philosophy of the true Islam that
I call it,” said one of the congregants, Mohammed Abdullah, an investment
banker who traveled from Washington for the service.
The location is not designated a mosque, but rather an overflow prayer space
for another mosque, Al Farah at 245 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where Imam Feisal
is the spiritual leader.
Built in 1923, the building at 45 Park Place was bought by Sy Syms, the
discount retailer, and a partner, Irving Pomerantz, in 1968, and became one of
the early Syms stores. The store closed in 1990, the partners parted ways, and
the Pomerantz family then leased the building to the Burlington Coat Factory.
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On Sept. 11, the store, with 80 employees, was one of 250 Burlington outlets
nationwide owned by the Milstein family. That morning, recalled Stephen
Milstein, the company’s former general manager and vice president, the staff
was in the basement when a piece of a plane plunged through the roof, either
from American Airlines Flight 11 crashing into the north tower at 8:46 a.m., or
United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the south tower at 9:03.
Kukiko Mitani, whose husband, Stephen Pomerantz, owned the building at the
time, tried to sell it for years, at one time asking $18 million. But when the
recession hit, she sold it in July to a real estate investment firm, Soho
Properties, for $4.85 million in cash, records show. One of the investors was
the Cordoba Initiative, an interfaith group founded by Imam Feisal.
“It’s really to provide a place of peace, a place of services and solutions for
the community which is always looking for interfaith dialogue,” said Sharif
El-Gamal, chairman and chief executive of Soho Properties.
The patched-up roof was easily visible on a recent tour of the building, along
with evidence of its sudden evacuation: food bags still in a fifth-floor staff
refrigerator and, most eerily, a log sheet for the testing of the emergency
alarm system that shows a sign-in signature for 9/11 but no sign-out.
Records kept by the city’s Department of Buildings show anonymous complaints
for illegal construction and blocked exits at the site. Inspectors tried to
check but were unable to gain access, so the complaints, though still open,
were listed as “resolved” under city procedures, according to an agency
spokeswoman, Carly Sullivan.
But worshipers are legally occupying the building, where retail space is
offered for lease, once a week under temporary permits of assembly through
December, Ms. Sullivan said.
With 50,000 square feet of air rights, Imam Feisal said, the location, with
enough financing, could support an ambitious project of $150 million, akin to
the Chautauqua Institution, the 92 Street Y or the Jewish Community Center.
Joy Levitt, executive director of the Jewish Community Center, said the group
would be proud to be a model for Imam Feisal at ground zero. “For the J.C.C. to
have partners in the Muslim community that share our vision of pluralism and
tolerance would be great,” she said.
Mr. El-Gamal agreed. “What happened that day,” he said, “was not Islam.”
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