As the anniversary of 9/11 and the Islamophobic rally led by far-right blogger Pamela Geller converge today, over 1,000 New Yorkers gathered Sept. 10 at Park Place in lower Manhattan for a candlelight vigil in support of the proposed Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero that has ignited a national firestorm over Islam in America.

Organized by New York Neighbors for American Values, a new coalition of over 100 groups formed in response to the opposition to the Cordoba House project, faith leaders, elected officials, musicians and activists voiced strong support for the proposed Islamic community center, which will also include a September 11 memorial, a restaurant and culinary school and more.

“This is not just an issue I should support silently,” said Frank Fredericks, the co-director of Religious Freedom USA. “This is a core, essential issue that Americans should stand up for.”

The supporters of the center, holding candles, filled more than two blocks, and some had to stand on a sidewalk across the street from the vigil. The music of Bob Marley, John Lennon and a live rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” filled the air.

“There’s enough for all of us. Nobody has to be thrown away. We can do this thing if we hang together. There’s enough room in this neighborhood for an Islamic center,” the keynote speaker of the event, Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, said. “We don’t have to say they gotta go… They are our fellow Americans.”

The action came the night before the 9th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and a planned rally in lower Manhattan organized by the right-wing Stop Islamization of America group.

“No neighborhood should be off-limits for any particular group,” said Aliya Latif, the civil rights director for the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations

“I think we all know that nobody would object to a community center on Park Place unless it was sponsored by Muslims. And no one can say with a straight face that that’s not based on religious discrimination,” said Richard Gottfried, a New York State Assemblyman. “People who share American values do not do that.”

The vigil came in the midst of an increase of anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, stoked by the right-wing press. There has been a spate of anti-Muslim actions over the past couple of weeks as the debate over the Muslim community center in New York has heated up. While two-thirds of New York City residents want the proposed center to be moved farther away from the site of Ground Zero, a majority of Manhattan residents support the project, according to a recent New York Times poll.

“We have every right to worship wherever we want. This country was founded on the basis of religious freedom,” said Rabyaah Althaibani, a Muslim Arab-American.

Indypendent, 11 September 2010

See also NY1, 10 September 2010

Competing demonstrations have been held in New York on the anniversary of 9/11 over plans for an Islamic cultural centre close to Ground Zero. Hundreds of people attended both demonstrations which became heated but passed off without violent incident.

New York authorities blocked off the street passing the site of the proposed Islamic cultural centre, a short walk away from Ground Zero. Mounted police and dog units patrolled the streets, keeping the protests separated in two pens a distance away from the site of the former World Trade Center.

The competing protests attracted people from many different groups, from anti-war activists to Hell’s Angels, former US Marines to Buddhists.

Mr Wilders, a right-wing politician from the Netherlands who believes that Islam is comparable with Fascism, told the crowd that the planned cultural centre should not be allowed to go ahead. “We must never give a free hand to those who want to subjugate us, draw this line so that New York will never become New Mecca,” he said.

The rally was also addressed by the former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton and other Republican commentators. But others said campaigners against the mosque were part of a hate campaign against Muslims.

“I’m really fearful of all of the hate that’s going on in our country,” Elizabeth Meehan, 51, told the Associated Press. “People in one brand of Christianity are coming out against other faiths, and I find that so sad, Muslims are fellow Americans; they should have the right to worship in America just like anyone else.”

BBC News, 11 September 2010

See also AFP, AOL, NY1, TPM and New York Daily News.

In a straight-to-DVD movie that will premiere tomorrow night in D.C., Newt Gingrich and Citizens United warn Americans of the impending threat of radical Islam. As one of their talking heads says in the trailer, “This is the end of times. This is the final struggle.”

The movie, called “America At Risk“, paints the world as a dangerous place filled with radicalized Muslims who want to – and, importantly, can – destroy America.

If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s extremely similar to movies by the Clarion Fund, the nonprofit which produced “The Third Jihad” and “Obsession.” The latter, sent to 30 million homes during the 2008 election, helped plant the seeds of the current spate of anti-mosque protests and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

It has the same themes (immediate threat of death by Islam), the same shots of terrorist attacks and scary “death to America” rallies, and many of the same people, like M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim doctor from Arizona, and Bernard Lewis, a Princeton professor and sounce of the aforementioned “final struggle” line.

“America At Risk” goes on the attack against the Obama administration much more than the Clarion movies, however, calling it “crazy” that the administration doesn’t say “Islam” enough when discussing the war on terror.

TPM, 10 September 2010

Several U.S. bishops attended an interfaith dialogue earlier this week in Washington D.C. and voiced their opposition to recent events in the country that have displayed anti-Muslim sentiments.

Numerous religious leaders from Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths attended a Sept. 7 meeting in D.C., titled “Beyond Park 51,” which was hosted by the Islamic Society of North America.

In a statement on Thursday, Archbishop Wilton Gregory, Bishop William Murphy and Bishop Howard Hubbard said they voiced their “solidarity” with the leaders who gathered to “denounce categorically derision, misinformation and outright bigotry being directed against America’s Muslim community.”

The three prelates are chairmen of USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and Committee on International Justice and Peace, respectively.

CNA, 9 September 2010

The Florida Christian preacher who has received world fame and condemnation by threatening to burn a pile of Korans demands strict obedience and unpaid labor from his tiny flock and sells used furniture out of his sanctuary, those who know him say.

He was ejected from a church he headed in Germany by his own followers. Even his daughter says she believes he has lost his mind in his fanatical crusade against Islam.

Terry Jones, a previously obscure 58-year-old fundamentalist pastor with slicked-back gray hair and a shaggy mustache, has gained a global pulpit with his proposed burning of Korans, the Islamic holy book.

His estranged daughter, Emma Jones, called the church a cult that forced obedience through “mental violence” and threats of God’s punishment. She said he ignored her emails urging him not to burn Korans.

“I think he has gone mad,” she told Germany’s Spiegel Online.

Reuters, 10 September 2010