Furthermore, after collecting less than $9,000 through a nonprofit organization, Muslims for Peace, started by four Muslim moms in 2006, Park51 took down the “donate” button on its website this past weekend and stopped its fundraising efforts. I was one of the founders of Muslims for Peace but recused myself from support for the center and mosque over concerns about the location and future fundraising. I just stepped down from the group because of backlash to an article I wrote for The Daily Beast about the fundraising. Organizers claimed I was attempting to sabotage the effort. But what I was trying to do was humanize the story and show that, despite the conspiracy theories, the fundraising isn’t the financial juggernaut some are accusing it of being. In a vacuum of actual details, insinuations about Saudi clerics and Iranian Holocaust deniers funding the project have permeated the media coverage.

In a phone call before my fundraising article ran, El-Gamal, owner of the building at 51 Park Place, asked that details about the fundraising levels not be disclosed because it would make the organization look “juvenile and amateur.” He said he had already felt backlash after Politico reported that the latest fundraising report with the New York state attorney general’s office, from 2008, revealed that Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative had only $18,255. The Islamic center effort won’t even be getting that money. (El-Gamal asked that his comments be taken off the record after he made them.)