NEW YORK, August 31, 2010 (AFP) – New York voters overwhelmingly donot want a mosque to be built near the New York City site of theSeptember 11, 2011 terrorist strikes, according to a new poll outTuesday.

By a 71-21 percent margin, those surveyed by QuinnipiacUniversity agreed that the project’s backers “should voluntarily buildthe mosque somewhere else” to accommodate the feelings of relatives ofthose killed in the attacks.

And 71 percent said that New YorkState Attorney General Andrew Cuomo should investigate the financing ofthe project, a community center including a mosque two blocks from”Ground Zero” where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

The study, conducted August 23-29, had an error margin of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Thesurvey found New Yorkers agreed by a 54-40 percent margin that “Muslimshave the right to build the mosque near Ground Zero” — but also agreedby a 53-39 margin that “because of the sensitivities of 9/11 relatives,Muslims should not be allowed to build the mosque near Ground Zero.”

“Theheated, sometimes angry, debate over the proposal to build a mosque twoblocks from Ground Zero has New York State voters twisted in knots,with some of them taking contradictory positions depending on how thequestion is asked,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the QuinnipiacUniversity Polling Institute.

The study found that New York City voters generally hold more positive views of Islam than voters elsewhere in the state.

NewYork City voters say by a 62-21 percent margin that Islam is a peacefulreligion, against 49-28 percent among upstate voters and 51-25 percentamong suburban voters, according to the poll.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading …