FDI/SIOA Applauds the Tens of Thousands of Patriots Who Attended 9/11 Rally of Remembrance Against Ground Zero Mosque

NEW YORK, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The human rights organization Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) applauds the tens of thousands of patriots and lovers of America who attended the pro-freedom Rally of Remembrance against the Ground Zero mega-mosque on September 11 in lower Manhattan.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100913/DC64009)

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100913/DC64009)

Speakers emphasized patriotism, love of country, and the necessity to defend Western values. They included 9/11 family members Nelly Braginskaya and Rosa P. Leonetti; the keynote speaker, Dutch Parliamentarian and freedom fighter Geert Wilders; former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton (video message); former U.S. Marine and North Carolina Congressional candidate Ilario Pantano; Coptic Christian activist Joseph Nassralla; journalist Andrew Breitbart (video message); popular radio hosts Mike Gallagher and Steve Malzberg; Iranian human rights activist Sahand Khoshbaten; Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, which has filed suit to stop the Ground Zero mega-mosque; and other patriots and freedom fighters.

The rally began with a brief memorial service for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, featuring prayers offered by Rabbi Steven Axelman; Dr. Jim Garlow, a Christian minister; and Fr. Christopher Manuele, a Catholic priest. The acclaimed vocalist Sarah Lee Michaels sang the National Anthem.

Hosting the rally were Pamela Geller, the popular blogger and columnist who publishes the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog and executive director of FDI and SIOA; and SIOA associate director Robert Spencer, the bestselling author and director of JihadWatch.org. Geller is the author (with Spencer) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton), published by Simon & Schuster.

Geller remarked in a statement on the rally that "the highlights included Geert Wilders, who was greeted as the great hero that he is, and spoke about how a sharia mosque at Ground Zero would be the death New York's proud tradition of Dutch tolerance."

"Ambassador John Bolton," she added, "spoke bluntly and unequivocally via video link about the affront to American values that this mosque would constitute." 

Geller noted an inconsistency in the mainstream media coverage of the event. Besides releasing attendance estimates for the rally that were strikingly lower than the size of the crowd indicated by photographs of the rally, the media missed one of the most noteworthy elements of the rally as a whole: the speech made by Coptic activist Joseph Nassralla. Nassralla, said Geller, "was the unwilling media darling of our June 6th rally, when a misunderstanding was blown out of proportion by the mainstream media as a racist incident. Joseph Nassralla was the Arab who was supposedly in a confrontation at that rally. At this rally we were proud to feature him, and he was so passionate and rousing in his love for America and fierce denunciation of the thousand-year-old Islamic oppression of the Coptic Christians in Egypt that the crowd went wild as Joseph led them in cheers of G-d Bless America! But his warning was clear. The Ground Zero mosque would be the beginning of the end, and Egypt shows where the presence of Islam leads in a free nation."

FDI/SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

Join SIOA's Facebook page here.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller at [email protected].

SOURCE Freedom Defense Initiative