World | USA
Muslim groups decry religious intolerance
Debate over mosque at ground zero rages
- AP
- Published: 00:00 September 3, 2010
New York: It is "unethical, insensitive and inhumane" to oppose the planned mosque near ground zero, more than 50 leading Muslim organisations said on Wednesday as they cast the intense debate as a symptom of religious intolerance in America.
The imam behind the project, meanwhile, was preparing to return to the US after a taxpayer-funded goodwill tour to the Midlle East, where he said the debate is about much more than "a piece of real estate."
Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf sidestepped questions about whether he would consider moving the $100 million mosque and Islamic community centre farther from where Islamist terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center. Instead, he stressed the need to embrace religious and political freedoms in the US.
Leaders of the Majlis Ashura of Metropolitan New York, an Islamic leadership council that represents a broad spectrum of Muslims in the city, gathered on the steps of City Hall to issue a statement calling for a stop to religious intolerance and affirming the right of the centre's developers to build two blocks north of the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
"We support the right of our Muslim brothers who wish to build that centre there," said Imam Al Amin Abdul Latif, president of the Majlis Ashura. "However, the bigger issue and the broader issue is the issue of ethnic and religious hatred being spread by groups trying to stop the building of mosques and Islamic institutions across the country."
This is the first time that the council as a body has spoken out on the weeks-old debate over the proposed center.
"When the issue became hotter and hotter, and people made more statements against the mosques, then we decided to get involved in it," said Syed Sajid Husain, secretary general of the council. He said the process of bringing together the leaders to agree on a statement also took a handful of meetings.
Leaders of the council said they were calling attention to what they claimed was an anti-Islamic climate, and that the development of a centre near ground zero is simply one example.
They also cited a suspicious fire that damaged construction equipment at the site of a future mosque in Tennessee that is being investigated by the FBI, and the successful opposition to the proposed conversion of a property owned by a Catholic Church into a mosque on Staten Island.
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