Nearly 7 in 10 Americans OK with Community Mosque

A new poll shows that a majority of Americans would be okay with a mosque in their community.

Sixty-nine percent of surveyed Americans agreed while 28 percent disagreed, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, released Thursday.

Opposition mainly comes from the South where half of the rural population is against mosques in their area.

Muslims make up 0.8 to 2.6 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In recent years, particularly since the proposal of an Islamic center near the site of the September 11, 2011, terrorist attacks in New York, Muslims have been met with increasing fear and opposition to their attempts to build mosques.

The American Civil Liberties Union has documented anti-mosque activity in 21 states over the past five years.

In response to protests against mosque building in America, a group of religious figures, including a conservative evangelical, formed an interfaith coalition to vocalize support for Muslims to exercise religious freedom and the right to have places of worship.

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