There were no major incidents reported on Saturday in Florida, in the most tension filled anniversary of the terrorist attacks that occurred on American soil nine years ago.
In Tampa there was an official ceremony outside the Tampa Convention Center, and a "Pole Barn" in Riverview, which featured a special Rolling Thunder "Follow the Flag" ride. That's where there were over a hundred motorcyclists who met up in Ybor City and rode throughout the Bay area before ending up in Riverview -the third year in a row that such an event was held to benefit 9/11 victims and families.
It was also extremely mellow in Gainesville, after pastor Terry Jones blew off his hyped Koran burning event (and said on the Today show that it will never ever happen). Approximately 300 protesters did hold a peaceful demonstration to condemn the whole lunacy of what Jones and (and later the media) had wrought over the past week.
It wasn't so peaceful in Manhattan, where there were an estimated 5,500 activists both for and against the proposed mosque angrily squared off. One man started tearing a Koran and burning a few of its pages before he was escorted to safety by the police.
On Sunday morning, the Imam at the center of the controversy over Park51, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, gave just his second interview on American television since the controversy over his proposed Muslim cultural center went viral this summer, where he told ABC's This Week's Christiane Amanpour that in the wake of the raging controversy, would he do it all over again knowing how much consternation has erupted, said no.
AMANPOUR: Did you ever imagine that recommending or suggesting or buying a place so close to Ground Zero would cause this kind of controversy?
RAUF: No.
AMANPOUR: And if you thought it would have provoked this kind of controversy, what would you have done?
RAUF: I would never have done it. I'm a man of peace. I mean the whole — the whole objective of peace work is not to do something that would provoke controversy.
Imam Rauf said he was concerned about the feelings of his critics in the U.S, including some family members of 9/11 victims at Ground Zero. He said moving the cultural center at this point would antagonize the Muslim world, and essentially aid Al-Qaeda (the argument made by the President and others as to why Pastor Terry Jones should not have been burning Korans). Amanpour suggested that to some, such a comment was a threat to violence, to which the Imam strongly objected.
RAUF: I have never made a threat. I've never made a threat, never expressed a threat, never — I've never — I would never threaten violence ever, because I am a man of peace, dedicated to peace.
We have two audiences. We have the American audience and we have the Muslim audience. And this issue has riveted the attention of the whole Muslim world. And whatever we do and whatever say and how we move and the discourse about it is being watched very, very closely. And if we make the wrong move, it will only expand and strengthen the voice of the radicals and the extremists.
This article appears in Sep 9-15, 2010.