Mike Kelly
NorthJersey.com
9/13/2010
A funny thing happened Monday as the Muslim cleric behind the Islamic center near Ground Zero basked in the glow of a diplomatically polite forum at the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan.
Back in New Jersey, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was taken to court.
Union City officials say they are so fed up with what they call Rauf’s foot-dragging to repair dangerous code violations at a low-income apartment building that they want a judge to step in and appoint a special “custodial receiver” to run the place.
It was a day of dueling realities – and the surreal mystery about Rauf and who he really is.
Rauf, who lives in North Bergen, may fancy himself as a spiritual leader who dreams of building bridges between religions with a proposed $100 million Islamic center two blocks north of Ground Zero. But his slummy apartment building on Central Avenue in Union City is such a fire trap that the police department has now assigned cops to stand guard round-the-clock until Rauf fixes the fire alarms.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” said Rauf, speaking in a soft voice inside the Council’s plush Park Avenue auditorium to an audience that included former National Security Council staffer Richard Haass and Ted Sorensen, the former speech writer for President John F. Kennedy…
…Last Wednesday, as Rauf granted his first interview in months to CNN, Union City officials slapped him with 17 new code violations on the Central Avenue apartments. The city accused Rauf of not only failing to fix a variety of nagging problems but of not being responsive – or available for calls.
“We reached the end of our rope,” said Stack’s chief of staff, Mark Albiez. “There is a lack of responsibility.”…
…Rauf did not even mention his slum problems as he spoke and answered questions at the Council on Foreign Relations. Indeed, what was curious about him was how he twisted his own reality.
“I am a typical New Yorker,” he began, not mentioning that he lives in a two-story home in North Bergen.
Then, when listing his occupations, Rauf mentioned he had been a “high school teacher, a salesman of industrial products and a struggling writer” – all true. But there was a major omission – that he has spent most of the last two decades as a real estate developer who, records show, was continually facing financial problems…
The entire article is at NorthJersey.com
H/T Weasel Zippers
