Pat Dollard

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New York (AP) – - WASHINGTON — The State Department says the imam leading plans for an Islamic center near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York is returning to the United States on Wednesday.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner says Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has completed a Persian Gulf trip that was intended to promote religious tolerance. Rauf is departing the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, and will return to New York.

Toner says Rauf’s early return did not cause the cancellation of any programs on his State Department-funded trip.

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Rauf said Tuesday that the controversy over the Islamic center “has expanded beyond a piece of real estate and expanded to Islam in America and what it means for America,” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told a group that included professors and policy researchers in Dubai.

Rauf suggested that the fierce challenges to the planned mosque and community center in lower Manhattan could leave many Muslim questioning their place in American political and civic life.

But he avoided questions over whether an alternative site is possible. Instead, he repeatedly stressed the need to embrace the religious and political freedoms in the United States.

“I am happy to be American,” Rauf told about 200 people at the Dubai School of Government think tank.