Protest Day seems to have passed without major incident. I heard third-hand that there were more cops than protesters. You don’t mess with the NYPD.

I haven’t heard crowd estimates, but Poison Pam is claiming 40,000 attendees for her side. Applying the standard hyperbole:reality formula for wingnut crowd estimate claims, that puts the actual number at somewhere between 12 and 30. I assume there may have been a few more people than that, though.

From New York Newsday:

Corey, a retired high schoolteacher from Ossining, was looking for the anti-Islamic center protest that was to be held two blocks away. He carried a sign that read: “Christ turned the other cheek. Muhammad never did. He beheaded instead.”

So, Mr. Corey, whose example do we then choose to follow — Christ’s or Muhammad’s? I’m not seeing much cheek-turning there, or among the so-called conservative “Christians” who stood around in front of the White House tearing pages out of Q’rans. At least they read the pages before tearing them, which is more than they seem to do with their Gospels.

Well, I’m not in lower Manhattan counter-protesting. Miss Lucy isn’t feeling well, and we have a vet appointment in a couple of hours. Priorities.

In the New York Times, Samuel Freedman writes that there was a Mulsim prayer room in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It was destroyed, of course, and many of the people who used to pray there were lost.

Naturally, the jolly crew at Weasel Zippers responded with the usual magnanimity:

If there was a prayer room there, why did the muzz terrorists destroy it and kill fellow muslims against the teaching of Mo?

Possibly for the same reason a couple of the perps didn’t bother to attend mosque and were known to drink alcohol, contrary to Muslim rules, according to the 9/11 commission. Deep down, their motivations may not have been all that religious.

You Moosies call your fucking pretend god from someplace else. GZ is sacred ground. You leftist schmucks and yentas can go join them.

Yentas? The weasels are being anti-semitic now?

Anyone muslim dumb enough to associate with the kufr deserves to die

I’m not even going to comment on that one.

So, in the leftists twisted and warped way of logic, one small room is somehow magically transferred into a huge monsterous building? Than maybe that greek orthodox church that the city of NY keeps denying a permit to build should be built as a huge cathedral. Would only seem fair.

Regarding the Greek Orthodox church — the church in question was a very small one destroyed in the terrorist attacks. Fox News keeps reporting that the city of New York won’t let the congregation rebuild the church, but of course that’s not the whole story. The congregation didn’t want to rebuild on the old site, because it was very small; only 1,200 square feet. So the congregation either sold or entered into an agreement to sell the property to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2008, and also negotiated to acquire a bigger plot in the same neighborhood.

They seem to want the spot where the Deutsche Bank Building is/was. The Deutsche Bank Building was heavily damaged on 9/11, and a decision was made to demolish it and start over. But anything involving the Deutsche Bank Building ends up getting unbelievably complicated, which is why the bleeping building is still being demolished. I swear, the property is haunted. Anyway, there seems to be some confusion as to who is first in line to get the property, jinxed as it is, once the old building is totally gone.

And there are all kinds of issues involving whether the congregation can come up with the money to build what they want to build, and whether their plans for an underground garage might somehow hold up other building plans at Ground Zero and the neighborhood. It’s a big mess. If the congregation had just rebuilt the old church on the old property it would probably be finished now, although I don’t blame them for wanting something bigger.

Of course, on the Right, what is complicated becomes very simple. New York City won’t let the congregation build its church because the city doesn’t like Christians.

The ever sensitive New York Post has published a map showing that bodies of 9/11 victims were found outside the “ground zero” site, meaning that the sacred and holy part of lower Manhattan is actually much bigger than just ground zero. Apparently a body was found only one block away from the proposed site of the Park Place Islamic center, so of course it would be sacrilege to build there. Bars and porn video shops OK, but no Islamic center.

Leslie Minora asks,

What if the human remains found — chillingly, as the Post says — so close to the site of the proposed mosque were actually those of a Muslim victim of the attacks? Would that make a difference to people?

Only in that Weasel Zippers readers would want to find the spot and pee on it.

An editorial in the New York Times describes the development of Ground Zero. The memorial garden is supposed to be finished for this time next year. A museum will be under the garden, which some are taking to be some kind of insult to the 9/11 victims. Like New York would do that. But from underground people will be able to see some of the original foundation of the World Trade Center, as well as a preserved steel beam and the “survivor’s staircase,” a granite staircase that served as an escape route for thousands of people. So I think it works.