Backers of the Ground Zero mosque held a secret meeting this month with a handful of 9/11 victims’ families in an attempt to ease their suspicions about the project — but it may have had the opposite effect, several in attendance told The Post.
Convened Aug. 10 by Daisy Khan, wife of Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam for the controversial mosque, and Sharif El Gamal, one of its developers, the meeting had been billed as a chance for the families to get their questions answered.
But retired firefighter Robert Reeg, 58, who was injured on 9/11, said the mosque backers refused to say one word about where the $100 million in financing would come from.
“They kept talking about wanting to build bridges, but they weren’t answering any questions,” he said.
Raheel Raza, a member of the Muslim Canadian Congress, who also raised questions about financing, described Khan and El Gamal as “very arrogant” at the get-together at the Interfaith Center on Riverside Drive.
As for building the mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, it’s “a deliberate provocation,” Raza told a Canadian news service.
Raza came with Maureen Basnicki, 59, of Toronto, whose husband died in the World Trade Center’s north tower.
“I went in wanting to embrace this. I think we were all tolerant of other religions, and I didn’t want to be portrayed as a bigot,” she said. “But I left more certain than when I arrived that this mosque was something I didn’t want to see.”