Earlier this month, it was announced that the public face of the Park 51 project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, was being replaced by Imam Abdallah Adhami as senior adviser of the project. It seems this move has only generated more controversy for the troubled project:
The Post reports that Adhami has written online that he believes being gay is a "painful trial" caused by childhood abuse, and that people who leave Islam and preach a new religion should be jailed. On homosexuality, he wrote: “An enormously overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life...A small, tiny percentage of people are born with a natural inclination that they cannot explain. You find this in the animal kingdom at some level as well.” Park 51 officials responded that Adhami is only an "adviser" and that his views do not reflect those of the project.
And after months of fighting to keep the "Ground Zero Mosque" in lower Manhattan, Rauf admited he and real estate investor Sharif el-Gamal have different opinions on the future of the project: "If someone is willing to offer another site...I would move," he told a crowd in western NY, while addressing concerns about the project. He added: "9/11 family members themselves have said they need to move the discussion in America to one of a mutual healing. And one of the things that's very clear is that we cannot have that discussion without Muslims at the table."
