Or are both of them tearing us apart

Thousands of rowdy protestors with dueling agendas converged on Lower Manhattan today, using the spotlight of 9/11 as a showcase for the Ground Zero mosque debate.

Both sides drew large, boisterous crowds with about 3,000 pro-mosque demonstrators marching from City Hall to the Federal Building and 2,500 anti-mosque protestors rallying near the controversial Park Place site of the proposed Islamic Center.

No arrests have been reported, though things got heated when several college kids agitated a group of anti-mosque demonstrators.

Anti-mosque rally leader Pam Geller opened the demonstration with a moment of silence — but it was loud and rowdy from there on.
Pro (R) and anti-mosque(L) protesters argue near the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site. Thousands came out on the ninth anniversay of the terrorist attacks.
Getty Images
Pro (R) and anti-mosque(L) protesters argue near the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site. Thousands came out on the ninth anniversay of the terrorist attacks.
People demonstrate against the mosque.
Getty Images
People demonstrate against the mosque.
Pro-mosque demonstrators march in support near Ground Zero.
AP
Pro-mosque demonstrators march in support near Ground Zero.

A trumpet player played TAPS, the crowd sang "The Star Spangled Banner," waved American flags and chanted U-S-A.

"Every year it’s bad," Nelly Braginsky, who lost her 38-year old son Alex in the towers, told the crowd. "Nobody can bring me back my son. ... It’s not about freedom of religion. This is about geography."

Geert Wilders, politician from Holland and keynote speaker asked the crowd: "Did New York deserve this? Did America deserve this? Did the West deserve this?"

The crowd answered with shouts of "NO!"

"We do not deserve a mosque at Ground Zero either," he told them. "We are here today because we have not forgotten. ... When the faces of Jihad attacked New York, they attacked the world."

Jackie Drew, 45, of Staten Island, who works as a clerical staff for NYPD, said the anti-mosque protest was her first, but that she felt it was important.

"I don’t trust this isn’t terrorist-related," she said. "Muslims build where they had a victory. We shouldn’t have to bow down to other groups. I’m tired of Americans bowing down."

An angry anti-mosque protestor was allegedly ready to clock one of the young students before cops swooped in and separated the two groups.

Natalie Sowinski, 19, and her friends Andressa Leite, 20 and Dennis Grabowski, 20, were watching the protest – Sowinski with a scarf wrapped around her head like a hijab and Leite, blowing a notoriously loud vuvuzela at the anti-mosque demonstrators.

The demonstrators set upon the three, ripping the scarf off Sowinski’s head, grabbing the horn and screaming in their faces: "Did you lose someone on 9/11?"

"There was a moment when I got scared for my life," Sowinski told The Post.

Another college student, Cat Glenn, 22, tried to intervene, grabbing at the demonstrators who were snatching at Sowinski’s head.

"I’m very intolerant of injustice when it’s physical and in front of my face," Glenn said.

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