NEW YORK |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Opponents of a planned mosque and cultural center near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York stepped up their campaign on Thursday by presenting a petition they said was signed by 120,000 Americans."This nationwide petition that you see right here calls upon Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other elected officials in New York to urge Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf to reverse course," Guy Rodgers, a leader of the anti-mosque movement, told a news conference at City Hall attended by several family members of 9/11 victims.Rodgers is Executive Director of ACT! for America, an organization that says it wants to be "a collective voice for the democratic values of Western civilization" and is opposed to "the authoritarian values of radical Islam."
Bloomberg has strongly defended the planned center led by Rauf, even as polls show that a majority of New Yorkers and Americans opposed it.
Supporters of the center say it would promote religious tolerance and that canceling or moving the project would only fuel Islamist radicals who see the United States as an enemy of Islam.
Rosaleen Tallon, the sister of a firefighter who was killed on 9/11, said that her opposition to the mosque was a result of the attack being carried out by Muslims, rather than opposition to Islam itself.
"This attack was perpetrated by some Muslim people. Not all Muslim people, but by some Muslim people. If it had been perpetrated by some Irish people, I would not want an Irish cultural center and church placed there," she said.
(Reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr., editing by Jonathan Oatis)
