NEW YORK (Reuters) – Plans to build a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks have touched off a firestorm among New Yorkers nearly a decade after Muslim extremists linked to al Qaeda slammed planes into the World Trade Center.

The Cordoba House mosque, part of a Muslim centre to be built two blocks from what is now known as Ground Zero proposed as a conciliatory move, was overwhelmingly approved by a local community board in May.

But the plans are being resisted by some New Yorkers who say a mosque would be inappropriate so close to the place where nearly 3,000 people were killed.

“I’m certainly not against religious expression, but I feel it’s an insensitive place to do that,” said Paul Sipos, a member of the community board who did not vote on the issue. “Cordoba House should have reached out to the people who were most affected, instead of doing it by confrontation.”

The centre is a project of the Cordoba Initiative, a New York group aiming to improve relations between Muslims and the West. It would feature a 13-storey structure with a 500-person auditorium, swimming pool, bookstores and a prayer space.

Cordoba Initiative’s chairman, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, an Islamic scholar, said the center would be open to everyone and would help foster better understanding.

“My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists,” Rauf wrote in an editorial in New York’s Daily News. “We are the people who want to embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the radical rhetoric.”

The proposed mosque is now awaiting approval from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission which expects to vote on the issue some time this summer.

The dispute plays into broader, unanswered questions of what should become of the World Trade Center site. Some favour a rebuilding to show the city’s strength and resilience, while others believe the site should be a memorial and a place of reflection and remembrance.
“The meaning of the site is still contested,” said Rosemary R Hicks, a Columbia University scholar whose research focuses on Muslims in the United States. “What does it mean to us as Americans? Americans are so unsure, and that’s why the mosque is hitting such a nerve.”

Muslims too disagree over the wisdom of putting a mosque near the site of the attacks.

“After all, it was 19 Egyptian and Saudi Arabian thugs calling themselves Muslims who perpetrated this heinous crime on September 11th,” said Hossein Kamaly, a professor of Middle Eastern culture at Barnard College, part of Columbia University.