July 1, 2011

‘Ground Zero Imam’: My Regrets

Even Feisal Abdul Rauf, America’s most famous imam since his plan for a so-called Ground Zero Mosque captured the dark imagination of the mediapolitical complex last summer, knows that his optimism sometimes gets the better of him.

Especially when he predicts the inevitable success of his campaign—one hesitates to say crusade—to bridge the yawning chasm between Islam and the West.

“I realize some people think that I’m tilting at windmills,” Rauf tells me in the midst of explicating his rosy scenario of how the breach between the two competing cultures, which frequently has resulted in horrific violence, will ultimately be repaired much like solving a thorny problem in physics or engineering.

“I remember coming here in 2003 and meeting the former head of the CIA, Jim Woolsey, who told me this Muslim problem is going to take 100 years to fix,” Rauf says. “And I said it can be fixed in 10 years.”

Author

Lloyd Grove

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