There was apparently a big protest yesterday, around the corner from the site of the former World Trade Center. Crazed, middle-aged, white people, emboldened by the likes of FOX News and Sarah Palin, had taken to the streets to show their displeasure over plans to build a 13-story Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan. And, as some are pointing out, their frothy-mouthed antics are likely playing right into the hands of al Qaeda. Here, on that subject, is a clip from today’s New York Times:

Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.

Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda’s claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence, some specialists on Islamic militancy say.

“I know people in this debate don’t intend it, but there are consequences for these kinds of remarks,” said Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism for the New America Foundation here.

He said that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric hiding in Yemen who has been linked to several terrorist plots, has been arguing for months in Web speeches and in a new Qaeda magazine that American Muslims face a dark future of ever-worsening discrimination and vilification…

Pardon the interruption, but there’s a fucking al Qaeda magazine? Can someone please verify this? Or, better yet, send me a copy? I’m curious as hell as to who the advertisers are… OK, back to the article:

…“When the rhetoric is so inflammatory that it serves the interests of a jihadi recruiter like Awlaki, politicians need to be called on it,” Mr. Fishman said.

Evan F. Kohlmann, who tracks militant Web sites at the security consulting firm Flashpoint Global Partners, said supporters of Al Qaeda have seized on the controversy “with glee.” On radical Web forums, he said, the dispute over the Islamic center, which would include space for worship, is lumped together with fringe developments like a Florida pastor’s call for making Sept. 11 “Burn a Koran Day”…

Oh, speaking of that Florida pastor, his name is Terry Jones, and he was just arrested for possession of child pornography. Of course, that’s not to say that he’s not totally credible when he preaches of our moral superiority.

Back to this weekend’s protest in Manhattan, from the video I’ve seen, it looks like a real good time… at least as long as you’re white. Here, to illustrate that fact, is a short video clip that shows a back man, who is thought by the crowd to be Muslim, due to his unfortunate choice of headwear, having to be escorted out for his own safety.

And, here, by way a background, is an explanation of the video shared by someone calling herself Jane Austentatious, at the online community Reddit:

Taken by a friend of mine live-blogging the conservative Anti-Mosque rally held at Ground Zero today in NYC. You can hear chants of “NO MOSQUE HERE” over and over. Here is what my friend had to say:

“The crowd turns on Kenny. At the end of the rally a black man named Kenny walked through the crowd, and was immediately mistaken for being Muslim. They mistook the Under-Armour head cap he was wearing as the Muslim skull cap, and as he walked through the crowd several people confronted him. Ultimately he was asked to leave by security.

After this I caught up with him and had a long conversation about how scary that was for him. He works at Ground Zero as a union carpenter. The hate at this rally was palpable. This is what scares me about the direction America is taking. I really got a good taste of the mob mentality at work.”

And, why do you think it is that anti-Muslim sentiment, especially as it concerns this one particular mosque, is running so high these days? It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the “Fair and Balanced” network, could it? Here, on that subject, is a clip from today’s column by Frank Rich:

…At the Islamophobia command center, Murdoch’s News Corporation, the hypocrisy is, if anything, thicker. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial darkly cited unspecified “reports” that Park51 has “money coming from Saudi charities or Gulf princes that also fund Wahabi madrassas.” As Jon Stewart observed, this brand of innuendo could also be applied to News Corp., whose second largest shareholder after the Murdoch family is a member of the Saudi royal family. Perhaps last week’s revelation that News Corp. has poured $1 million into G.O.P. campaign coffers was a fiendishly clever smokescreen to deflect anyone from following the far greater sum of Saudi money (a $3 billion stake) that has flowed into Murdoch enterprises, or the News Corp. money (at least $70 million) recently invested in a Saudi media company…

And, here, if you haven’t seen it yet, is that Jon Stewart segment that Rich refers to:

So, have you got all that?

Here are the main points as I see them… A few weeks ago, the folks at FOX thought that the 51 Park project was a good idea. Then, for what would appear to be strictly political reasons, they reversed course. It would seem that they smelled blood in the water, and knew that they could use this to beat up on Democrats, who would be seen as soft on terror if they were were to defend the progressive Muslim group seeking to build the community center. (Murdock and company know damned well that their audience’s love of the Constitution only goes so far.) So, FOX knew that they could make political hay, and, at the same time, draw some big ratings, which would, in turn, earn them more advertising revenue. So, they started the drumbeat about the “Ground Zero Mosque,” and how future terrorist attacks may be planned there. But, in the process, they not only fed this xenophobic monster that’s welling up within the American populous, but they also helped confirm to the Muslim world that we hate them, thereby making their recruitment of young American jihadists even easier. That couldn’t possibly matter to Rupert Murdoch, though. All he cares about it pushing ratings, and getting his Republican candidates into office – the hell with journalist ethics, the Constitution, and the future of our nation.

update: It’s too early to say for sure, but one wonders if FOX might now have blood on their hands. It’s being reported that a cab driver in New York was just stabbed in the throat by a passenger who, right before the attack, asked “Are you Muslim?”