The Op-Ed Everyone Is Talking About

Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam behind the NYC “Community Center” that has provoked all the controversy, wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times yesterday.

Love the Imam or loathe him, it was undeniably a beautifully written piece. To what extent it was ghostwritten or edited we will probably never know, but you can absolutely see why the State Department has brought the Imam on board.

On reading the article, these words struck me in particular: “I know there will be interest in our financing, and so we will clearly identify all of our financial backers”. At last count, I believe the project had $18,000 in the bank – and it is supposed to cost $100 Million.

After all of this controversy, is the Community Center actually going to find the number of backers willing to be identified as donors that it needs?

$100 million is a lot of money. Realistically will the Community Center ever be built at all?