NY mosque imam: Extremism is global threat

Speaking after leading Friday prayers at a neighborhood mosque outside Bahrain’s capital Manama, he said radical religious views pose a security threat in both the West and the Muslim world.

“This issue of extremism is something that has been a national security issue — not only for the United States but also for many countries and nations in the Muslim world,” Rauf said. “This is why this particular trip has a great importance because all countries in the Muslim world — as well as the Western world — are facing this … major security challenge.”

In New York, Rauf’s wife and a co-leader of the proposed Islamic center and mosque project known as Park51 said organizers are sticking with the project despite protests.

“Dropping the plan is definitely not an option at all,” Daisy Khan, head of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, told The Associated Press in a brief phone interview Friday.

She said organizers were not considering scaling back the project or changing locations, but are consulting more closely with American Muslim leaders because they realize the uproar surrounding the center is affecting Muslims nationwide.

“We know that we have the right to do this, but what is right for the larger community, or the larger good of the larger Muslim community?” she said.

In Bahrain, Rauf also said he has been working on a way to “Americanize Islam.” While he did not elaborate on what an American version of Islam might look like, he did note that different interpretations of the faith have emerged over the religion’s 1,400-year existence.

“The same principles and rituals were everywhere, but what happened in different regions was there were different interpretations,” he said. “So we recognize that our heritage allows for re-expressing the internal principles of our religion in different cultural times and places.”