The Kaaba at Ground Zero

Tablet magazine published a lengthy (over 8,000 words) and thought-provoking article Wednesday calling attention to a startling fact: “a modernist version of the Kaaba, the distinctive cubelike shrine at the heart of the Islamic faith,” now stands “adjacent to the footprint of the Twin Towers, which were destroyed by al-Qaida terrorists on 9/11.” This cube-shaped “not only reproduces the form of the Kaaba, but also slyly replicates several of the distinctive features of the chief shrine of Islam, including its fabric covering, known as the Kiswa. The building is also tilted at an angle to its surroundings, so that one corner points directly toward Mecca.”

Back in December 2009, the New York Times published an article about plans to construct a mosque at Ground Zero, in a space that at that time was occupied by a building that had been extensively damaged in the Sept. 11, 2001 jihad attack that killed nearly three thousand people.

The plan was to build a 16-story mega-mosque at the principal site of the 9/11 attacks. The Times, which enthusiastically supported the project, quoted the public face of the initiative, the sinister-visaged imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, explaining what it was all about: “A presence so close to the World Trade Center, ‘where a piece of the wreckage fell,’ said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric leading the project, ‘sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.’ ‘We want to push back against the extremists,’ added Imam Feisal, 61.”

Who could object to that? Anyone who knew that in the 1,400-year history of Islamic jihad activity, there have been innumerable triumphal mosques built on the sites of jihad victories, and not a single mosque built anywhere at any time in order to “push back against the extremists.” Activist Pamela Geller saw that article and alerted me to the project, and we swung into action, organizing two rallies against the Ground Zero Mosque in lower Manhattan.

We were excoriated as racists, bigots, and “Islamophobes.” Leftists vilified us and alleged conservatives shrank away in fear of getting canceled themselves. The establishment media never could discover any reason to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque other than “hate.” The New York City establishment threw so many roadblocks in our way that I almost missed one of the rallies I had helped to organize, stopped at one of the innumerable checkpoints city officials had set up to discourage attendance.

Everyone wanted the mosque, it turned out, except the American people. A poll showed that 70% of Americans opposed the project. Over ten thousand people showed up for our first rally, and over twenty thousand at the second. And despite the entire leftist intelligentsia doing everything it could to smear the opponents of the mosque and get the thing built, it never did go up.

And yet now, there is this Kaaba-shaped building, the strangely-named Perelman Center, which opened on September 13, 2023. The building does bear a striking resemblance to the cube-shaped building in Mecca that Muslims circumambulate during their required pilgrimage to that city. Those who would discount the fact that “the building is also tilted at an angle to its surroundings, so that one corner points directly toward Mecca” on the grounds that virtually every four-cornered building is likely to have one corner pointing somewhere toward Mecca have not paid sufficient attention to aerial photographs (Tablet mag supplies one) showing that the building is oddly skewed off its foundations, as if its designers meant for it to point in a particular direction.

When the Perelman Center opened, the New York Times’ architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, called it “the most glamorous civic building to land in New York in years,” as well as a “retort to terrorism.” Kimmelman also noted that “its architect is Joshua Ramus. He refers to the building as a ‘mystery box,’ alluding to the three exquisitely engineered, shape-shifting theaters tucked inside it.” Kimmelman also noted “if you look closely, you may notice that the building’s footprint is oriented at a slight angle to the skyscrapers around it. A serendipity of the underground engineering, the angle is a tad irreverent,” and that “at ground zero, irreverence is new and good.”

David Samuels, the author of the Tablet mag article, interviewed Ramus at length, but is still only able to guess at his intentions: “One possible answer is that Ramus never intended to rebuild the Kaaba or a secular Western facsimile thereof at Ground Zero—at least not in the sense of starting out with that particular idea in mind, with whatever motive. Rather, what seems more likely is that the Kaaba-like building is simply what emerged from his process, and by the time he realized what he was building his process was simply too far advanced.” And after all, why try to correct the impression when only evil right wingers would object? “Yes, the building could have been tilted three degrees east or west to avoid one corner pointing directly at Mecca, but why bother—to guard against the future outrage of some Islamophobic conspiracy nuts, riled up by Fox News? That’s not how anyone builds a great building.”

Samuels further speculates that “if one were an architect, for example, one might seek to discourage certain types of people from flying an airplane into your building by designing it in the shape of the Kaaba. Or perhaps that would make an attack by those certain types of people more likely. Who knows.” He wonders: “Would the Islamist fanatic Mohamed Atta, piloting American Airlines Flight 11 and the 92 people onboard into the World Trade Center on 9/11 in the furtherance of Osama bin Laden’s considered plan to spur the United States into invading the Middle East, in order to humiliate it there, and thereby cause it to withdraw its support for local despots, who could then be more easily toppled, have stopped short when he looked out of the cockpit and saw the Kaaba below him? Again, who knows.”

The answer, Mr. Samuels, is no. He would likely have seen a Kaaba-like building in New York City, built by unbelievers, as an insult to Islam. After 9/11, however, it’s a different story. Feisal Abdul Rauf and his shady developer, Sharif el-Gamal, didn’t get their Ground Zero Mosque. But did they get an Islamic shrine nevertheless? Do they understand the Perelman Center as a sign of Islam’s victory over the Great Satan on September 11, 2001? Or do the Perelman Center’s developers see it as a gesture of good will, and a tacit request please not to do it again? One thing is certain: no reporter will ever ask anyone involved what they were thinking when they constructed this peculiar building.