The Cordoba House proposal came from a state-co-opted ‘moderate’ Muslim establishment insider

Evidence

In 2009, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who had served as a cleric in downtown Manhattan for more than a quarter century, proposed the construction of a center modeled on the 92nd Street Y and the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. The goal of the proposed center was to promote greater understanding of the Muslim community, he argued. Its name, Cordoba House, refers to the city of Córdoba, Spain, a leading cultural center during the high point of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. Córdoba represented not only a pinnacle of intellectual development, but also a period of relatively peaceful coexistence among Muslims, Christians, and Jews. … Rauf, who positions himself as a “moderate Muslim,” envisioned a community center with recreation facilities like a swimming pool, basketball court, gym, culinary school, art studios, a childcare center, and badly needed prayer space for the neighborhood Muslim community. His plan was to enable people of all faiths to interact. Rauf is an establishment figure who has conducted training speeches for the FBI and the State Department after 9/11; he was also associated with the 2007 policy group’s advice on improving US relations with the “Muslim world” (discussed in Chapter 5). The Obama era, it was believed, would be a time when “good Muslims” could reshape the political agenda. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 655

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Portrait of the ‘good Muslim’ co-optation economy the reader flagged in ch10-11 through Rauf’s FBI/State training and 2007 policy-group ties.

Related

• Cordoba House initially won broad bipartisan elite and media support. (similarity 0.80)