The imam is Sufi and his current mosque is in the area but a few more blocks out.
If the objective is truly to ‘promote understanding’ , moving close to Ground Zero and smoozing with the Aspen Institute types is an idiotic way to do it.
Sufis are regarded as heretics by other Muslims, but then, so were Black Muslims (Nation of Islam) until fairly recently.
“Orthodox” Islam has realized that it can used Sufism to gain legitimacy since Sufism seems to be attractive to wealthy Western intellectual seekers, such as Prince Charles, who can conveniently skip over the things in Islam that they don’t like and go out and whirl around in a circle until their brains liquify.
I have a friend like this, a sweet guy who is gay and would be stoned to death in an instant by real Muslims, who has gone off to Turkey to live in the town of a Sufi “saint.” He’s a sweet guy, but a real idiot. The crocodile will eat him, too.
Not a surprise that the mosque is nearby, since that area seems to be the location of some taxi depots. For a certain stretch of Church Street, there are more than a few cheap halal fast-food type restaurants.