Christiana Ampour - "This Week" - Imam Rauf and Islam in America

Panel responds to Imam Rauf's assertions made HERE

AMANPOUR: Tell me about your plans for the Islamic center.  Are you going to keep it at Park 51, where you proposed?

RAUF: The decisions that I will make -- that we will make -- will be predicated on what is best for everybody.

AMANPOUR: How do you decide that?

RAUF: That's been very difficult and very challenging, because, unfortunately, the -- the discourse has been, to a certain extent, hijacked by the radicals. The radicals on both sides, the radicals in the United States and the radicals in the Muslim world, feed off each other. And to a certain extent, the attention that they've been able to get by the media has even aggravated the problem.

AMANPOUR: 71 percent of New Yorkers say it should be moved. What is your main reason for not wanting to move it?

RAUF: My major concern with moving it is that the headline in the Muslim world will be Islam is under attack in America, this will strengthen the radicals in the Muslim world, help their recruitment, this will put our people -- our soldiers, our troops, our embassies, our citizens -- under attack in the Muslim world and we have expanded and given and fueled terrorism.

AMANPOUR: Do you think that is a legitimate reason not to move it?

RAUF: It is an extremely important consideration.

AMANPOUR: . People are saying that because you intimated that it would cause great anger in Muslim countries around the world, it could threaten the United States. And people are saying that you made a threat.

Is that -- was that your intention?

RAUF: I have never made a threat. I've never made a threat, never expressed a threat, never -- I've never -- I would never threaten violence ever, because I am a man of peace, dedicated to peace.

We have two audiences. We have the American audience and we have the Muslim audience. And this issue has riveted the attention of the whole Muslim world. And whatever we do and whatever say and how we move and the discourse about it is being watched very, very closely. And if we make the wrong move, it will only expand and strengthen the voice of the radicals and the extremists.