The folks who were betting on the Park51 project not being built in its planned location may have been right. In an interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien last night, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the project, said he was open to it being moved to other locations and expressed regret about the controversy the choice of location had caused:
Rauf said that "nothing is off the table" when asked whether he would consider moving the site."We are consulting, talking to various people about how to do this so that we negotiate the best and safest option."
The imam told O'Brien "had I known [the controversy] would happen we certainly would never have done this." Asked if he meant he would not have picked the location, Rauf said, "we would not have done something that would create more divisiveness."
I'm not personally invested in where this group builds its community center, but I do think moving it would set a terrible precedent by rewarding the efforts of Islamophobes and demagogues who have been exploiting anti-Muslim sentiment for political or personal gain. This isn't really about "sensitivity"; the two pre-existing religious spaces for Muslims in the neighborhood were not a subject of national controversy. It's about politics.
