NEW YORK (AP) — A city panel Tuesday cleared the way for the
construction near ground zero of a mosque that has caused a
political uproar over religious freedom and Sept. 11 even as
opponents vowed to press their case in court.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously to deny
landmark status to a building two blocks from the World Trade
Center site that developers want to tear down and convert into an
Islamic community center and mosque. The panel said the
152-year-old lower Manhattan building isn’t distinctive enough to
be considered a landmark.
The decision drew praise from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who
stepped before cameras on Governor’s Island with the Statue of
Liberty as a backdrop shortly after the panel voted and called the
mosque project a key test of Americans’ commitment to religious
freedom.
“The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place
in our city, in our hearts,” said Bloomberg, a Republican turned
independent. “But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves,
and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans, if we said no to a
mosque in lower Manhattan.”
The vote was a setback for opponents of the mosque, who say it
disrespects the memory of those killed at the hands of Islamic
terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. Jeers and shouts of “Shame on you”
could be heard after the panel’s vote.
The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative advocacy
group founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson, announced it would
challenge the panel’s decision in state court Wednesday.
ACLJ attorney Brett Joshpe said the group would file a petition
alleging that the landmarks panel “acted arbitrarily and abused its
discretion.”
The proposed mosque has emerged as a national political issue,
with prominent Republicans from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich lining up against it. The
Anti-Defamation League, the nation’s most prominent Jewish civil
rights group, known for advocating religious freedom, shocked many
groups when it spoke out against the mosque last week.
The League said building the Islamic center “in the shadow of
the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain —
unnecessarily — and that is not right.”
Bloomberg said Tuesday that denying religious freedom to Muslims
would play into terrorists’ hands. He said firefighters and other
first responders who died in the Sept. 11 attacks had done so to
protect the U.S. Constitution.
“In rushing into those burning buildings, not one asked, ‘What
god do you pray to? What beliefs do you hold?'” Bloomberg said of
the first responders. “We do not honor their lives by denying the
very constitutional rights they died protecting.”
Former Rep. Rick Lazio, a Republican running for governor of New
York, attended the commission meeting with a handful of opponents
to the mosque, which is being developed by a group called the
Cordoba Initiative.
“This is not about religion,” Lazio said. “It’s about this
particular mosque called the Cordoba Mosque, it’s about it being at
ground zero, it’s about it being spearheaded by an imam who has
associated himself with radical Islamic causes and has made
comments that should chill every single American, frankly.”
Lazio said the group’s imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, had refused to
call the Palestinian group Hamas a terrorist organization. Rauf
also said in a “60 Minutes” interview televised shortly after Sept.
11 that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that
happened.”
The Cordoba Initiative says on its website that its goal is to
foster a better relationship between the Muslim world and the West,
“steering the world back to the course of mutual recognition and
respect and away from heightened tensions.”
“We believe it will be a place where the counter-momentum
against extremism will begin,” the imam’s wife, Daisy Khan, told
The Associated Press Friday. “We are committed to peace.”
Khan told The Wall Street Journal that the center’s board will
include members of other religions and will explore including an
interfaith chapel at the center.
The commission’s decision not to designate the existing building
as a landmark means that the developers can tear it down and start
from scratch. If the building had been declared a landmark, they
could have created a smaller mosque and community center there.
A partner in the project, SoHo Properties, bought the property
for nearly $5 million. Early plans call for a 13-story, $100
million Islamic center.
Cordoba wants to transform the building into a glass tower with
a swimming pool, basketball court, auditorium and culinary school
besides the mosque. The center, called Park51, also would have a
library, art studios and meditation rooms.
Landmarks Commissioner Stephen Byrns said the building’s
proximity to ground zero and the fact it was struck by airplane
debris during the Sept. 11 attacks don’t qualify it as a
landmark.
“The debris field around ground zero was widespread, and one
cannot designate hundreds of buildings on that criterion alone,”
Byrns said.
SoHo Properties CEO Sharif El-Gamal said he was “deeply grateful
to the landmarks commission and to its staff.” He did not respond
to a question about the timing of demolition and construction.
While landmarks commission members went over the existing
building’s architectural features such as cornices and colonnades,
some in the audience of about 60 at Pace University in lower
Manhattan held signs telegraphing their opposition.
Linda Rivera’s sign read, “Don’t glorify murders of 3,000. No
9/11 victory mosque.” She cried after the board’s vote.
“I lost 3,000 American brothers and sisters, including
courageous policemen and firemen, and this is a betrayal,” she
said.
But Zead Ramadan, president of the board of the New York chapter
of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Islam is “a
religion of peace and justice.”
“The people here are trying to connect this vile attack on our
nation to the religion Islam,” he said, “though that exact act
stands against everything that Islam stands for.”
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Associated Press writer Cristian Salazar contributed to this
report.
