‘Ground Zero mosque controversy may turn violent’

Imam says US national security is now at stake. Warns that changing the Mosque location would fuel violent extremism.

NEW YORK: The cleric behind a proposed Islamic center in New York said he would not have planned it so close to the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks had he foreseen the level of "pain" triggered by the controversial project.

But imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said America's national security was now at stake in how it handles the 100-million-dollar center which has stirred raw emotions in the United States, and that changing the location would fuel violent extremism.

He warned that Muslims worldwide could react more violently than they had done to the bloody riots that followed the publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005, strengthen extremists' ability to recruit followers and increase violence against Americans.

"If we move from that location, the story will be the radicals have taken over the discourse," said Abdul Rauf, who has been an imam in New York for more than 25 years.

“The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack… if you don't do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world. If this is not handled correctly, this crisis could become much bigger than the Danish cartoon crisis.”

Regret and compromise

"If I knew this would happen, this would cause this kind of pain, I wouldn't have done it," the imam told CNN late Wednesday in his first televised interview since returning from a two-week State Department-sponsored cooperation tour of the Middle East.

He opened the door to compromise, however, saying that "nothing is off the table" when it comes to moving the site of the planned center.

A late August poll by Quinnipiac University showed New York voters, by a 71-21 percent margin, overwhelmingly do not want a new mosque built near the Ground Zero site.

Abdul Rauf portrayed his group's fight to set up the center as a battle between the "moderates" and "radicals" on both sides of the debate, and noted that there was no controversy over the mosque plans when The New York Times ran a front-page story on it late last year.

Quran burning issue

Abdul Rauf also urged a small Florida church to reconsider its plans to go ahead with a Quran burning ceremony to mark Saturday's ninth anniversary of 9/11, a move that has fueled growing fears it will ignite a fresh wave of anti-Muslim sentiment and extremist violence that could endanger US troops.

"It is something that is not the right thing to do," the imam said.