Nowhere do emotions run higher than in New York, where the proposed Islamic center just two blocks north of ground zero has inflamed passions before the commemoration.
Activists are organizing a pair of rallies — one against the planned Islamic center, one supporting it — to follow New York's official ceremony at a park southeast of the trade center site.
The anti-mosque rally has bitterly divided family members of those who died in the attacks, with some planning to attend the rally and speak, while others denounce it as unnecessary and wrong.
Sally Regenhard, who lost her firefighter son, Christian Regenhard, in the attacks, said she would attend the city ceremony in the morning where the names of the dead are read aloud, as she has done each year since the attacks. Then, she planned to head over to the anti-mosque rally.
"The purpose is to speak out and express our feelings that this mosque, the location of it, is a grievous offense to the sensitivity of 9/11 families," Regenhard said. "There's nothing political about people who want to speak out against something they think is so wrong, so hurtful and so devastating."
But Donna Marsh O'Connor, whose pregnant daughter, Vanessa, was killed in the attacks, supports the mosque. She said she strongly opposes the planned rally and the political motivations behind it.
"It's more of the same hate mongering and fear mongering that's been going on for years," O'Connor said. "People have a right to free speech. But if they're talking about sensitivities to 9/11 families, why are they rallying and doing events on a day we should spend thinking about those we lost?
The rally is being hosted by Pamela Geller, a conservative blogger who has actively opposed the planned Islamic center since the project's inception.
John Bolton, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, was expected to send a videotaped message of support to the rally, as was conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart. Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who advocates banning the Quran and taxing Muslim women who wear head scarves, planned to address the crowd in person, as do a handful of Republican congressional candidates who have made opposition to the mosque a centerpiece of their campaigns.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Geller said the rally would be "respectful" and was not intended to provoke violence or other inappropriate behavior on what has typically been a somber, mournful anniversary.
"It's a rally of remembrance for tens of thousands who lost loved ones that day," Geller said. "It's not a political event, it's a human rights event."
Former 9/11 Commision chairman Lee Hamilton said the U.S. relationship with the Islamic world "is one of the really great foreign policy challenges of the next decades."
"We're not going to solve it in a year or two or five or even 10 years. The kind of debates we're having today in New York City and Florida and other places reflects that. How do we get right, how do we line up this relationship better than we do," Hamilton said.
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters this week his department was prepared for the rally and had already deployed additional security at the mosque site since it's been the target of protests already.
But, Kelly said, police weren't anticipating major problems.
"We have no reason to anticipate violence at these demonstrations. ... There is no indication, no intelligence that would indicate violence occurring," Kelly said.
Posted by Pamela Geller
