Most claim a stake in 9/11 site

NEW YORK -- It is a place of sacrifice. A place of mourning. A place people pass by on their way to grab lunch. It's a place where tourists crane their necks to snatch a glimpse around barriers walling off an enormous construction site -- which is also what it is.

Ground zero.

Depending on whom you talk to, it's a scar on this city where horror still lingers, a bustling hive symbolizing the resilience of a nation, or simply, for those who live and work nearby, a place where life goes on.

In recent weeks, as debate has raged over the placement of a planned Islamic cultural center and mosque a couple of blocks from the construction, Americans have been reminded of just how many people lay claim to this place, the focal point for all those who have a stake in the legacy of Sept. 11.

Almost everyone has a stake.

Gesturing at the land he helped clear in the weeks after 9/11, Louis Pabon thinks he knows who owns it: "This is mine."

This place was once a giant plaza filled with businesspeople and tourists and shoppers and commuters rushing to the subway. After 9/11, there were weeks, and months, of coming to grips. Everyone had lost something. A child. An acquaintance. A skyline. A sense of safety. A center of business. A solid stock portfolio. A feeling that we knew where everything was heading.

The city's Muslims, many of them, lost a willingness to speak out. They had enjoyed a kind of anonymity -- a knowledge that they were just another ingredient in the hearty stew of New York. But since Sept. 11, they have felt an unwanted spotlight, and some have been afraid.

"Now no one can talk about Islam ... because Islam became like equal to violence," said Noureddine Elberhoumi, a cab driver who says that after Sept. 11 he stopped volunteering information about his religious affiliation. "In their mind, Islam is always going back to Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11 -- that's it."

For the family members of more than 1,100 of the victims whose remains were never recovered, ground zero is the only gravesite they have.

"This pit of evil and doom," Sally Regenhard calls it now, her voice shaking nine years after the death here of her firefighter son, Christian.

"My son's beautiful remains are forever scattered," she said. "Ground zero is a burial ground."

Some families successfully challenged the creation of a freedom museum at the site, and some questioned whether a planned performing arts center there is appropriate. How best to pay respect to the dead?

Now, most everyone is staking out a position on the planned Islamic cultural center, to include a mosque, auditorium and other facilities about two blocks from the construction barriers. Some say the location should be moved out of sensitivity because the Sept. 11 hijackers claimed to act in the name of Islam. Others say that moving the mosque would be bowing to intolerance and curtailing religious freedom.

Through all of this conflict, ground zero has been shuttered. Few have walked on its soil, except for the workers who cleared the site and those who are rebuilding it. Family members and others invited to the yearly memorial ceremonies have been allowed in, as was the pope on his 2008 pilgrimage.

How much reverence will be given to this open space in the city's maze, which still carries for many the memories of screams and dust and panic? Can it stay sacred?

That question was answered long ago, says a family member.

"The memorial museum is selling souvenirs, for God's sake," said Diane Horning, who lost her son, Matthew. "You can't stand in ground zero without seeing Century 21's big banners advertising whatever their special is. ... This hasn't been sacred space since the day they put the first rivets in something. It's office buildings, it's places to eat, it's everything but sacred space."