Faisal Abdul Rauf, the controversial imam behind the ground zero mosque – the Islamic center being planned just two blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center attacks by radical Islamists, said he never would have picked that location if he knew what he does now,
Politico reported. Rauf told Christiane Amanpour that he simply didn’t think the location would stir up any anger at all.
“I would never have done it,” he told ABC’s Amanpour on an interview filmed for Sunday’s “This Week” TV news show. “I'm a man of peace. I mean the whole objective of peace work is not to do something that would provoke controversy.”
There is still an ongoing debate, Rauf said, among developers over whether the mosque can be located. He fears now that moving it could produce a backlash in the Islamic world.
"My major concern with moving it is that the headline in the Muslim world will be Islam is under attack in America, this will strengthen the radicals in the Muslim world, help their recruitment, this will put our people — our soldiers, our troops, our embassies, our citizens — under attack in the Muslim world and we have expanded and given and fueled terrorism," he said.
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