Lazio presses for source of Ground Zero mosque funds

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and opponents of a planned mosque near Ground Zero Tuesday demanded that owners reveal their funding source for the $100-million project a day after Mayor Bloomberg said to do so would be "un-American."

Lazio said he had "serious" doubts whether the mosque's imam was a "peace maker or bridge builder."

"Right now, I'm not seeing this with this particular imam," said Lazio, who is running against Democrat Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Lazio has asked Cuomo to investigate the mosque's finances and accused Iman Feisal Abdul Rauf of supporting radical Islamic ideology.

Cuomo has not responded to Lazio's request to investigate the religious group's finances. Monday, Bloomberg said he was against such requests.

Lazio's emotionally charged comments Tuesday were made after he spoke at a hearing on the mosque before the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Mosque officials have described it as progressive with an aim to build dialogue between Muslims and other faiths. Rauf said at a May community board meeting in lower Manhattan that American Muslims suffered at Ground Zero and also were first responders after Sept. 11.

Other Muslims said the mosque should not be built.

Zeshan Hamid, of Amityville, and member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, said the mosque's imam at Ground Zero should back off his plans to build.

"What is the purpose of this mosque if the community does not want it? The imam should appease the people," Hamid said.

Tensions were heated at the hearing. Commissioners will decide whether to give the building landmark status this summer.

Landmark status would prevent mosque owners from tearing down the Renaissance Italian palazzo-style building constructed in 1856, and develop a 15-story building that would accommodate 2,000 worshipers, a community center and classrooms for interfaith lectures.

Mosque lawyer Shelley Friedman, who represents the property owner and mosque member Sharif El-Gamal of Soho Properties, said his research shows the "building is not unique or historically significant."

But family members who lost loved ones on 9/11 and opponents to the mosque dispute that.

They asked the commission to grant landmark status on the basis that the building has historical value because the landing gear from one of the hijacked planes that crashed into the Twin Towers landed on the roof.