{"id":2544,"date":"2011-03-02T11:14:54","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T11:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu.php"},"modified":"2011-03-02T11:14:54","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T11:14:54","slug":"ground-zero-imam-champions-chu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu","title":{"rendered":"Ground Zero Imam Champions Church-State Separation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) The imam who has faced resistance for plans to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero said Tuesday (March 1) that pro-democracy movements across the Arab world need to be open to all faiths.<br \/>\n&#8220;Government&#8217;s coercive powers should not be used against one religion,&#8221; Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a panel on &#8220;Religion in American Politics and Society&#8221; hosted by Georgetown University.<br \/>\nRauf spoke alongside Asma Uddin, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Islamic gender issues website altmuslimah.com, and Ed Husain, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.<br \/>\nThe panel addressed whether or not the American model of faith and politics should be a template for emerging democracies &#8212; even as Rauf has faced pressure not to build an Islamic center near a site that a majority of Americans consider &#8220;sacred ground.&#8221;<br \/>\nBuilding a society around a &#8220;homogenous&#8221; set of ideas is dangerous and is not what the United States was founded on, said Rauf.<br \/>\nAt the same time, the artwork or symbols of other faiths should never be insulted or mocked, added Rauf. &#8220;We must respect others&#8217; traditions.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe imam only briefly mentioned the controversial Park51 center, saying he wanted to show sensitivity to victims and families of the 9\/11 attacks and saying his dream for the center is still alive.<br \/>\n<strong>&#8211; RICHARD YEAKLEY<\/strong>, <em>Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) The imam who has faced resistance for plans to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero said Tuesday (March 1) that pro-democracy movements across the Arab world need to be open to all faiths. &#8220;Government&#8217;s coercive powers should not be used against one religion,&#8221; Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a panel&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-news","category-rns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ground Zero Imam Champions Church-State Separation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ground Zero Imam Champions Church-State Separation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) The imam who has faced resistance for plans to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero said Tuesday (March 1) that pro-democracy movements across the Arab world need to be open to all faiths. &#8220;Government&#8217;s coercive powers should not be used against one religion,&#8221; 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Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a panel&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-03-02T11:14:54+00:00","author":"editor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu","name":"Ground Zero Imam Champions Church-State Separation","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-03-02T11:14:54+00:00","dateModified":"2011-03-02T11:14:54+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/ground-zero-imam-champions-chu#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Ground Zero Imam Champions Church-State Separation"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249","name":"editor","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","caption":"editor"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/editor"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/264"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}