After 9/11
Following the September 11 attacks, Rauf conducted training and speeches for the F.B.I. and U.S. State Department.
However, some U.S. politicians have voiced concerns about his views, referring to comments Rauf made when interviewed by Ed Bradley on CBS
60 Minutes on September 30, 2001. Rauf's website says he was referring to the US CIA in the 1980s "financing Osama Bin Laden and strengthening the Taliban." Columnist Jonathan Rauch wrote that Rauf gave a "mixed, muddled, muttered" message after 9/11. Nineteen days after the attacks, he told CBS's
60 Minutes that fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. Rauch said that the message was mixed, however, because when then asked if the U.S. deserved the attacks, Rauf answered, "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime that happened." When the interviewer asked Rauf how he considered the U.S. to be an accessory, he replied, "because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA." Although this CIA-Osama bin Laden controversy has been brought up by many others, Rudy Giuliani, Peter T. King, Rick Lazio, and Sarah Palin expressed concern about these remarks when discussing Rauf as the driving force behind the Park51 project. As Daisy Khan, Rauf's wife, explained on August 15, 2010 on
This Week with Christiane Amanpour:
KHAN: It was a longer interview, and in the longer interview, he talked about the CIA support specifically to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. And...AMANPOUR: You mean that...KHAN: Yes, in the '80s.AMANPOUR: ... against the Soviet Union.KHAN: The Soviet Union. And how this was, you know, in CIA terms, a blowback of that. That's what he meant.
At
National Review, Dan Foster wrote:
When you say that the United States was "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11, as he did, it tends to blunt my ability to pick up the subtleties of what comes after. That interview was equivocal at every turn, and when moral equivalences are trotted out re: 9/11, the tie goes to "you're either with us, or with the terrorists." In other words, we are perfectly entitled to suspect that the "accessories to the crime" bit represents the investment, while the "condemning terrorism" bit is merely the hedge.
The editors of the magazine wrote "While he cannot quite bring himself to blame the terrorists for being terrorists, he finds it easy to blame the United States for being a victim of terrorism."
In 2004, he said the U.S. and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end. Speaking at his New York mosque, Rauf said:
The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.
He also said that there could be little progress in Western-Islamic relations until the U.S. acknowledged backing Middle East dictators, and the U.S. President gave an "American Culpa" speech to the Muslim world, because there are "an endless supply of angry young Muslim rebels prepared to die for their cause and there [is] no sign of the attacks ending unless there [is] a fundamental change in the world".
Hamas
During an interview on New York WABC radio in June 2010, Rauf declined to say whether he agreed with the U.S. State Department's designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. Responding to the question, Rauf said, "Look, I'm not a politician. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question... I am a peace builder. I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy." Sarah Palin and Lazio criticized his refusal to agree with the assessment of the United States that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani alleged that Rauf had supported radical causes that sympathized with Islamic terrorism.
New York's Mayor Bloomberg was asked to comment on whether Rauf is a man of peace, given his background "where he's supposedly supported Hamas, [and] blamed the U.S. for 9/11 attacks". Bloomberg responded:
My job is not to vet clergy in this city.... Everybody has a right to their opinions. You don't have to worship there.... this country is not built around ... only those ... clergy people that we agree with. It's built around freedom. That's the wonderful thing about the First Amendment...you can say anything you want.
However, when interviewed on CNN September 8, 2010, Imam had this to say about Hamas:
I condemn everyone and anyone who commits acts of terrorism, and Hamas has committed acts of terrorism.
Proposed Islamic cultural center and Mosque
In 2009,
The New York Times reported on the plans for an Islamic center to be established at 45 Park Place, two blocks from Ground Zero:
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..."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."
It was considered to be akin to the Chautauqua Institution, the 92 Street YMCA 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.”
Sharif El-Gamal, chairman and chief executive of Soho Properties, bought 45 Park Place in July, 2009. "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."
Later, the interfaith community center was named
Cordoba House, after the Great Mosque of Córdoba, a mosque built in Spain during the Islamic occupation after being converted by the Umayyad Moors from the Visigothic Christian church.According to the September 8, 2010 statement by Park51:
“Park51 is the name of the planned Muslim community center being built in lower Manhattan. Park51 is also the name of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity that has already been established, which will fund and oversee this initiative. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will be the spiritual leader of the Cordoba House which will be the interfaith and religious component of the center and will reside within Park51.”About Park51: Park51 is a nonsectarian community, cultural and interfaith spiritual center along with a Muslim prayer area and a monument to honor all those we lost on 9/11.
Plans for the project include a mosque which would accommodate 1,000—2,000 Muslims in prayer. Rauf won support from the local Community Board, and received both support and opposition from some 9/11 families, politicians, organizations, academics, and others. The initiative was supported by some Muslim American leaders and organizations, including CAIR, and criticized by some other Muslims such as Sufi mystic Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington. Supporters of the project point out that two mosques already have firm roots in Lower Manhattan and that one of them was founded in 1970, pre-dating the World Trade Center.
Controversy over the location ensued, and in an interview with Larry King on September 8, 2010 Rauf was asked "...given what you know now, would you have said, listen, let's not do it there? Because it sounds like you're saying in retrospect wouldn't have done it." Rauf answered:
If I knew this would happen, this would cause this kind of pain, I wouldn't have done it. My life has been devoted to peacemaking.
On September 12, 2010 on
This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Abdul Rauf repeated that if complaints had been raised in December 2009 when the project was front page news in
The New York Times, he would have moved it, but at that time there was broad support for it, which did not change until May. He furthermore expressed concern that a move would be used by radicals internationally to claim that "Islam is under attack in the Western world".
Opinions
Some have referred to Imam Feisal's statements about Sharia Law and the role of other religions in the Islamic communities as "radical", "worrying", "equivocal" and "deceptive". Ibn Warraq wrote in the
National Review:
Imam Rauf's opinions about the Sharia Law have been also a matter of discussion. Before President Barack Obama's planned visit to Turkey, Imam Feisal wrote in the Jordanian newspaper
Al Ghad on March 31, 2009:
Rental properties
Rauf owns several apartment buildings in Hudson County, New Jersey, including four in Union City, and the one in North Bergen in which he lives. By 2010, numerous residents of Rauf's properties in Union City had alleged that those properties have fallen into disrepair over the course of the prior several years, with some of the residents attributing this to time Rauf spends on his activities in Lower Manhattan. One resident in particular described Rauf's Central Avenue property as "horrible" and a "mess", describing a two-week period during the winter of 2009 in which the residents lacked hot water following the malfunction of the building's boiler. Residents have also cited rat and bed bug infestations, and have complained that such issues can take up to six months to be resolved. Union City spokesperson Mark Albiez confirmed that multiple health violations have been leveled against Rauf's properties. These allegations have added to the controversy over Park51. On September 8, 2010, Union City Mayor Brian P. Stack, who criticized Rauf as a "slumlord", announced court actions to have a custodial receiver take over management of these properties, and the creation of a Quality of Life Task Force to identify 15 apartment buildings in need of renovations, including Rauf's. A September 15, 2010 hearing revealed that following a September 7 inspection that determined imminent hazards, police began monitoring two of Rauf's buildings, due to inoperable fire alarms and sprinklers, and failure on Rauf's part to hire a private fire patrol. Judge Thomas Olivieri gave Rauf's lawyers until September 23 to produce plans and evidence of efforts to address these violations, lest Rauf face loss of control over the buildings. Some Union City residents questioned why the timing of these actions against Rauf's properties did not become an issue in New York City and national media, and why the long-standing problems faced by these properties were not addressed until the larger controversy over Park51 came to light, particularly given that Stack became mayor in 2000.
According to 2010 reports by the
Bergen Record, Rauf met with U.S. Senator Robert Menendez around 1991 when Menendez was Mayor of Union City, to request state funds to renovate three of his properties. As a result, Rauf received $80,000 in city funds, $384,000 from the Union City Community Development Agency, $1.3 million in construction loans from Hudson County's Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and $630,900 from the state. Rauf was also sued for fraud in 2008 by his one-time business partner, James Cockinos, over a $250,000 mortgage that Cockinos gave Rauf for his Central Avenue property, ownership of which Rauf then transferred to Sage Developments for a second $650,000 mortgage. Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, made payments to Cockinos for 11 years, but ceased after a fire damaged the property. The two parties settled out of court.
The Record also reported that records beginning thirty years previous indicated that Rauf owned an apartment in North Bergen and in Palisades Park. Though records indicate Rauf owns a home on 78th Street in North Bergen, a neighbor indicated that Khan is there more often than the frequently-traveling Rauf, and it is unclear if he still owns the Palisades Park property.
