71 percent New Yorkers oppose mosque near Ground Zero

NEW YORK - Despite their support for freedom of religion, 71 percent of New Yorkers believe the planned mosque and Islamic community centre near Ground Zero should be built “somewhere else” and not two blocks from the terrorist-destroyed World Trade Centre, a poll said Tuesday.

The Quinnipiac University poll said that 54 percent of those interviewed recognised that “because of American freedom of religion, Muslims have the right to build the mosque near Ground Zero”.

But because of sensitivities for families of the nearly 3,000 people killed by the terrorist attacks Sep 11, 2001, Muslims should not be allowed to build the mosque near the site, respondents said.

At issue is a plan by the Cordoba Institute led by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to raise $100 million to buy a multi-storey building, a former textile factory, on Park Place and convert it into an Islamic cultural centre. The institute has been holding Friday prayers at the site since 2009.

The imam is currently on a good-will tour of the Arabic-speaking world sponsored by the US State Department.

Seventyone percent of the 1,497 New Yorkers questioned in the poll said the Muslim group should voluntarily build the mosque somewhere else “because of the opposition of Ground Zero relatives”.

Twenty-one percent disagreed with that statement.

“The heated, sometimes angry, debate over the proposal … has New York State voters twisted in knots, with some of them taking contradictory positions depending on how the question is asked,” said Maurice Caroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll Institute.

The controversy has also helped stir what a US Muslim group calls a “rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment”. Monday, the “My Faith, My Voice” group launched a campaign calling for dialogue and suggesting ways that American Muslims can argue against the tide.

Last week, one New York taxi driver who hails from Bangladesh was attacked with a knife by a drunken customer, after the attacker found out the Bangladeshi driver was Muslim.

The poll released Tuesday, conducted August 23-29 with a plus-and-minus margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, said most respondents to the poll believe Muslims should voluntarily choose another location for the mosque.

The poll says also that 71 percent of respondents want New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate the sources of funding of the Cordoba Institute, while 22 percent were opposed to the probe.

In their response to the question about freedom of religion, 40 percent disagreed that because of the American guarantees of freedom of religion, “Muslims have the right to build the mosque near Ground Zero”.