NYC mosque plan draws protest

A few hundred people gathered in Lower Manhattan Sunday to protest against plans to build a mosque within a community centre near the site of Ground Zero.

The group Stop Islamization of America organized the protest at the corner of Church and Liberty streets, where two Muslim groups, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, want to build the 13-storey-high project, to be named Cordoba House.

It would be two blocks from where aircraft hijacked by al-Qaeda extremists slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Cordoba Initiative says there would be "Islamic, interfaith and secular programming" at the centre.

Many of the protesters were waving American flags and holding signs saying they find it offensive that a mosque would be built on what they call sacred ground.

Cordoba House would be an "insult to victims of 9/11 and establish a beachhead for political Islam," the group said on its website.