Healing process

NEW YORK — A large streamer tacked to a fence at Ground Zero declares that work on the 104-story One World Trade Center is halfway finished.

The building, its glass panels gleaming in the sunny afternoon last Wednesday, is six stories short of the Twin Towers.

About three weeks after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, I was at Ground Zero, inspecting what was left of those two towers, holding my breath as ash from collapsed concrete swirled around me, taking in the rare sight of America in stunned and profound grief.

Today two recessed pools fill the original footprints of the Twin Towers. When the 9/11 Memorial is unveiled on the 10th anniversary of the attacks next month, people will see water falling 30 feet down to pools into smaller voids. The pools, called “Reflecting Absence” by designer Michael Arad, a London-born architect and former member of the Israeli army, will be surrounded by 400 swamp white oaks and sweet gum trees, whose leaves turn into the melancholy colors of autumn in September.

In a recent interview, Arad recalled rushing to Ground Zero on 9/11 and being haunted by the horrific images months after the attacks. He said an image began popping up in his head of two square voids opening up in the Hudson River. The water rushed into the voids but they wouldn’t fill up. In 2004, his detailed rendering of the image was chosen in a competition for the Ground Zero Memorial.

In a brief video presentation at the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, relatives of some of those who died reflect on their loss. The Preview Site holds memorabilia of 9/11, and pays tribute to rescuers, including the dogs deployed in the search for survivors and fatalities.

Near the Preview Site, the fire station closest to Ground Zero, which accounted for the most number of firefighters killed, has also been turned into a memorial with paid tours.

Mitchell Fink, a public relations executive working with Intersections, an advocacy group for inter-faith harmony, described Ground Zero as something that “New Yorkers will tell you 10 out of 10 is hallowed ground.”

When it was reported last year that Muslims planned to set up a mosque near that hallowed ground, it set off a firestorm that opened up old wounds and revived American fears of Islam.

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Scott Keeter, survey research director for the Pew Research Center, told us earlier this week in Washington that while 9/11 raised the profile of Islam in the United States, a lot of misunderstanding remained and “Americans definitely don’t know much” about the religion.

American ignorance and fear of Muslims are fed by certain segments of the US media, particularly television, several leaders of the Islamic community and advocates of interreligious cooperation told our group of visiting journalists.

A video put together by the Prepare New York Coalition for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 reports that there was an increase of 1,700 percent in cases of violence and hate crimes against Muslims in the US in the months after 9/11. In a tragic highlight of the ignorance and hysteria of that period, the first victim of the violence was a turbaned Sikh.

Daisy Khan, the Pakistani-born executive director of the Manhattan-based American Society for Muslim Advancement, said April to September last year was “grueling” for her group. They were warned, she said, that if the firestorm did not subside, they might not be able to live in America.

Khan settled in the United States when she was 15. After 9/11, she told us in this city, Muslims “were so devastated because we were being blamed.”

Her husband, Kuwaiti-born Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, wanted to build a 13-story Islamic community center with a prayer space at an old structure that used to house the Burlington Coat Factory before it was damaged by aircraft debris from the 9/11 attacks. Called Cordoba House, it was to be located two blocks away from Ground Zero.

Plans for the community center were approved by the local community board in May last year. Khan said there was no press conference about the approval, but the next day the Daily News ran a banner story on the “Ground Zero mosque.”

Proponents said the community center was meant to foster interfaith dialogue. Opponents said the plan was insensitive. The imam was asked to disclose the financiers of the project, as Americans fretted that among the funding sources could be sponsors of terrorism. So far the nephew of the secretary general of the Arab League has been identified.

The project is on hold, but Khan indicated it has not been dropped.

Numerous polls since the controversy erupted show that a majority of Americans are against the project, although they recognize the legal right of the imam and his group to set up Cordoba House, renamed Park51 because of its street address at 45-47 Park Place.

Aisha H.L. al-Adawiya, president of KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, lamented that US media’s biases in the coverage of Muslim issues have become acceptable in America. “The media has been complicit... in demonizing Islam,” she told us. “We’ve lost the airwaves.”

“We’ve taken a huge step backward,” she said, adding that the Cordoba controversy was just part of it.

Still, Khan remains hopeful for the future. After 9/11, she abandoned her work as an architectural designer to work full time in outreach programs. The post-9/11 generation of Americans, she said, gave her hope for better ties between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in the US.

Non-Muslim Americans are also reaching out to foster understanding among different faiths. Sara Reef, director of cross-cultural initiatives at Intersections, says the Prepare New York Coalition is coordinating 500 “coffee hour and public education conversations” to dispel American misconceptions and stereotypes about Muslims.

A 9/11 Ribbons of Hope Ceremony is also being organized, with people writing down their hopes for healing on ribbons that will be put together and displayed like a giant tapestry near Ground Zero.

A curriculum has also been put together for use as a teachers’ resource on religious tolerance for seventh and eighth graders.

Much remains to be done. Mohamed Younis, senior analyst of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, told us in Washington that their polls showed 48 percent of Muslims saying they were discriminated against in the United States in the past 12 months - the highest among all religions.

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, there are signs of progress in healing, but the process is far from complete in America.