The imam at the center of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" is breaking his silence on the project. Will it ease fears or raise more suspicion?

In this op/ed in the New York Times, Feisal Abdul Rauf now says the $100 million community center will include separate prayer spaces for "Muslims, Christians, Jews and men and women of other faiths." (Previously, it was only going to have Muslim prayer space). He added there would be a memorial for victims of 9/11. And he insists that all financing would be made public.

That may be encouraging to some. But others, including Islamic expert Tawfik Hamid, will still argue that the high-rise two blocks from where the World Trade Center towers stood nine years ago amounts to a victory mosque.

And if you're still wanting an answer to the question, "Why build there?" the imam says this: "Our broader mission — to strengthen relations between the Western and Muslim worlds and to help counter radical ideology — lies not in skirting the margins of issues that have polarized relations within the Muslim world and between non-Muslims and Muslims. It lies in confronting them as a joint multifaith, multinational effort."

He says he's "very sensitive to the feelings of the families of victims of 9/11," and that "we will accordingly seek the support of those families."

But he's not so sensitive that he'll even consider moving the project further away from Ground Zero -- the main complaint about the whole project..