Plans For Mosque Near Ground Zero Draw Outrage in New York

May 18, 2010 — -- Plans for an Islamic cultural center and mosque near New York City's most hallowed ground have divided families of the nearly 3,000 people who perished on Sept. 11, 2001.

While details of the funding for the $100 million complex just two blocks from the former World Trade Center site remain sketchy, proponents say the project would be a bridge between Islam and a city still recovering from the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

For some survivors, erecting a mosque and 12-story glass-and-steel complex at the old Burlington Coat Factory at 45 Park Place in lower Manhattan is offensive. For others, the cultural center represents a step towards improved relations with the Muslim world.

Retired New York Fire Department Deputy Chief Jim Riches, whose 29-year-old son Jim, a firefighter, was killed on 9/11, said he wasn't opposed to the mosque. But don't build it so close to ground considered sacred by many New Yorkers, he said.

"There are still 1,000 bodies that haven't been found," he said of remains of the 2,752 people killed in the attacks. "They're still finding little bits and pieces of the victims. And these people want to build a big 12-story mosque with a swimming pool."

Riches called the Islamic center proposal "a slap in the face of the families."

"To me, it's a religion of hate," he said of Islam. "There might be some good ones. I don't know them but they haven't stood up and knocked the other ones down. I don't want to go down there on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and see 2,000 Arabs outside. Maybe they'll start cheering."

Ted Sjurseth, a founder of America's 9/11 Foundation, a Virginia-based support group for first responders, called the mosque plan "a stick in the eye."

"It's tasteless that the city has allowed this to get as far as it has," Sjurseth said.

The controversy over the cultural center highlights the raw tensions that persist nearly a decade after the terrorist attacks shook the nation and sent it to war. Since the attacks, American Muslims have been increasingly targeted as terror suspects.