GROUND ZERO FOR DEBATE

Shakib Zarook believes Muslims should be able to build an Islamic center and mosque two blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan, but he also understands why it might bother some Americans.

“I wouldn’t do it myself,” said Zarook, an Algerian-born Eugene resident and member of the Abu-Bakr As-Siddig Islamic Center in west Eugene.

“I know it’s touchy feelings,” the 43-year-old Zarook said Monday after praying with fellow mosque members during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. “It will bring bad feelings, I do understand that.”

One of the principles of Islam is: “If you do something that’s going to bring friction, you shouldn’t do it,” Zarook said.

The proposed 13-story center in New York City has ignited an intense national debate about the limits of religious freedom and exposed still-open wounds from one of the nation’s most painful tragedies.

A CNN poll last week found that 68 percent of Americans are against the building of the $100 million Islamic center. About 60 percent of respondents to The Register-­Guard’s unscientific online poll also said they’re opposed.

“I feel they should be able to build (it), but I don’t feel it’s the proper place,” said Bill Young of Eugene, chairman of the Lane County Republicans. “It’s just a slap in the face.”

It would be like the Japanese building a memorial at Pearl Harbor just a few years after the attack of Dec. 7, 1941, Young said.

“I just think they’re trying to create chaos, personally,” Young said of the proposed center’s developers, known as Park51.

But others in Lane County disagree.

“I’m very much in agreement with (New York City) Mayor Michael Bloomberg,” said Rabbi Maurice Harris of Eugene’s Temple Beth Israel. Bloomberg, who is Jewish, has endorsed the project and defended it on grounds of religious freedom.

Some of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists at ground zero were Muslim-Americans, Harris noted. “I’ll be frank,” he said. “I think certain people on the political right are cynically trying to use this issue to squeeze out a few votes.”

Those who have spoken out against the building of the Islamic enter and mosque include former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the Jewish-led Anti-Defamation League and some family members of 9/11 victims.

No reason to disallow

But the pain it could bring to some of the victims’ families is not a reason to disallow the project, said Eugene restaurateur Ibrahim Hamide, who is a member of both the city’s Human Rights Commission and the west Eugene mosque.

If “hurt feelings” is the gauge, then where do you draw the line, Hamide asked. The argument that the Islamic center’s Muslim developers are doing it to rub it in Americans’ faces also makes no sense, Hamide said, given that the founders of Park51 have proposed a board of directors that includes Christians and Jews.

Hamide is baffled by opposition to the center in what is supposed to be “the most diverse city in the world.”

“Here’s somebody who’s trying to show the true face of Islam and, no, we want to remember it as the bad guys who blew up the World Trade Center,” Hamide said. “Intolerance is a form of extremism, too.”

The Rev. Dan Bryant of Eugene’s First Christian Church said he finds the controversy “frustrating.”

“I think (President Obama) was absolutely right, it’s freedom of religion,” he said. “I think we have to have religious freedom for everybody, or it just doesn’t mean anything.”

Bryant is disturbed by the connection between the proposed Islamic center and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. “We’re falling into that trap of equating Islam with terrorism,” he said.

Eugene mosque mem-ber Kenn Phillips said “it wouldn’t be a story if it was a cathedral” instead of a mosque being proposed. “It’s really a nonissue,” he said. “I’m sick and tired of people bringing up hate. That’s all it is.”

Phillips works as a bookkeeper at Crescent Automotive, a used car dealership owned by another mosque member, Moe al-Hemyare.

“Slap in the face”

Al-Hemyare, who came to America from Oman, believes the location of the proposed Islamic center should be decided by New Yorkers. If residents of the nation’s largest city do not want it, Muslims should not be stubborn about it, said al-Hemyare, 29.

Shaylor Scalf, a retired Church of God minister in Junction City and a tea party activist, said it has nothing to do with stubbornness — it’s just plain wrong to allow a mosque to be built anywhere near ground zero.

“I do not feel good about it. I do not feel it is proper,” Scalf said. “This is a Christian nation. I’m sure our founding fathers would have been totally against that mosque.”

Supporters of the Islamic center “don’t understand the consequences of it being built there,” he added. “It’s a slap in the face to those who have died.”

But while the proposed mosque has already proven to be provocative, it could also become a symbol of tolerance and pluralism, said Rabbi Jonathan Seidel of Eugene’s Or haGan synagogue.

“But they need to be very sure that it’s not Saudi money” that is financing the Islamic center’s construction, Seidel said. “Saudi money can pollute and taint because it promotes an intolerant version of Islam,” said Seidel, who was raised in New Jersey and whose parents live in Manhattan.

“But I’m not offended by it,” Seidel said of the proposed center. “Because this is an opportunity to teach and educate about Islam and tolerance and democracy.”