Some Americans angry about Muslims who died at Ground Zero

This was inevitable:

NEW YORK (AFP) — Fresh from her comments condemning the building of a mosque so close to the site of the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed on September 11, 2001, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has chosen a new target in her bid to prevent sacrilege against the so-called "Ground Zero" site: Muslims who were killed in the terror attacks of 9/11.

"I think it was highly insensitive that dozens of followers of Mohammed chose to die in a place that is sacrosanctimonious to Christians and Judeos," she tweeted. "I recognize Islamics' right to die, but they should have chosen a less sensitive location. Emotions are just too raw."

She repeated her sentence about Muslims having a right to die, then turned to the camera and gave a two-second wink.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich echoed her sentiments. "It's easy to speculate that Muslims stuck up in the towers were praying to Allah after the planes hit," he said in a speech to an Atlanta gathering of Daughters of the American War On Terror. "That's the same Allah that the bin Ladenites were chanting to when they crashed the planes. Really, why should we be concerned about their feelings when they would be so brazen as to worship the same false prophet as bin Laden and Imam Ralph. Christianity, and by that I mean evangelical Protestantism, is under attack."

Writing in the New York Post, pundit Adam Goldberg openly opined that the Muslim dead might actually have been in on the massive terror attack. "We already had nineteen Muslimites killing themselves on the planes, so it's not hard to imagine a few dozen more sacrificing themselves in order for Islamic fifth columnists to claim their co-religionists were also victims of 9/11. They're just that sneaky. And when it comes to getting a slew of virgins in the afterlife, people have died for far worse reasons."

The news that Muslims had died at Ground Zero angered David Schmidt, organizer of a "No Mosque Here" demonstration. "Mohammed was a child-diddling pig!" he shouted before grabbing a baseball bat and running after a man wearing a kufi that turned out to be a Nike jogging cap.

Dalip Singh, a Manhattan resident who works three blocks from Ground Zero, was visibly annoyed when he learned that Muslims had died in the 9/11 attacks. "Why did they have to die there? Couldn't they have made it to Thomas Street to croak? Every time the Muslims make trouble with mainstream America, at least three of us Sikhs get killed. It really sucks."

The Anti-Defamation League, long a supporter of interfaith dialogue, sought to reach out to local imams about officially moving the location-of-death of the dozens of Muslims killed in the 9/11 attacks. "Perhaps we could say they were all on United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, far from the raw nerves of Ground Zero," Rabbi Simon Rheins suggested. "Think how much more peaceful it'd be for their families to imagine they met their maker in a grassy field than the asbestos-filled streets of New York."

The founder of the Institute for Islamic-American Justice, however, was angered by the outrage. "Look, this is nonsense," said Imam Mohammed Zargarpour in a cell phone interview. "If we Muslim Americans want to die in terror attacks, that's our right as citizens of the United..." he said before the call was apparently dropped. The FBI later issued a press release stating that Mr Zargarpour was being questioned over threats to air transportation.

Governor Palin made clear she would not relent on this divisive issue. "If I'm elected president in 2011, I will pass a Constitutional appendment forbidding Muslims from dying at Ground Zero, and I call on our possibly Kenya-born president to do the same." She then boarded a plane headed for Orange County, California, to investigate claims by columnist Michelle Malkin that Disneyland's "It's A Small World" ride contains several depictions of Arabs.