New Yorkers see right to mosque, but want it moved

A woman walks past the lower Manhattan building that will possibly house the Cordoba Initiative Mosque and Cultural Center in New York August 16, 2010.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York voters contradicted themselves over a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site, with majorities saying both that Muslims have the right to build one but that they should be forced to move it, a poll issued on Tuesday finds.

Fifty-four percent of those polled believe Muslims have the right to build the center and mosque near "Ground Zero" because of American freedom of religion, but a similar 53 percent said that right should be denied because of the sensitivities of relatives of those killed on September 11, 2001.

The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,497 New York state registered voters from August 23 to 29, at the height of the controversy that Republicans who oppose the mosque have seized on for a political edge over Democrats ahead of November 2 congressional elections.

It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Forty-five percent had a favorable opinion of Islam compared to 31 percent with an unfavorable opinion, and 54 percent said mainstream Islam was a peaceful religion compared to 24 percent who said it encourages violence.

"The heated, sometimes angry, debate over the proposal to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero has New York state voters twisted in knots, with some of them taking contradictory positions depending on how the question is asked," Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

Fifty-four percent said Muslims have the right to build, with 40 percent disagreeing, while 53 percent thought they should be denied this right, with 39 percent opposed.

But a larger majority, 71 percent, said the organization behind the mosque should voluntarily move elsewhere because of opposition from September 11 survivors, with 21 percent opposed.

And an identical 71 percent told the poll that the state attorney general should investigate the financing of the mosque, with 22 percent disagreeing.

The 13-story, $100 million cultural center, which will include a prayer room, was proposed by organization called the Cordoba Initiative, led by a Kuwaiti-born Sufi Muslim imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, who the U.S. State Department has sent to Middle East as a goodwill ambassador.

The group has said it has not begun fund-raising in earnest but opponents of the center have said they fear it could be financed by Islamist extremists. Developers of the mosque have resisted calls to move further away from the World Trade Center, saying their freedom of religion was at stake.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Eric Walsh)