New York turned out to pray yesterday. On the day that the United States' official period of mourning ended for the attacks, thousands of the city's residents attended an emotional prayer and musical service in the home of New York baseball, Yankee stadium.
Called "A Prayer for America" it was a mix of religion, music, entertainment and military symbolism. In an extraordinary display of religious and ethnic unity, representatives of the Catholic, Protestant, Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Sikh faiths addressed the gathering in the stadium and sang the prayers of their own faith.
During the ceremony the city's mayor Rudolph Giuliani received a sustained ovation, before he spoke, for his handling of the greatest crisis the city has faced. Maintaining the theme of ethnic and religious unity, he said the fire fighters who entered the trade centre did not ask what race, nationality or religion anybody was before they went in to rescue others. He added that the twin towers "no longer stand but our skyline will stand again".
The talk show host Oprah Winfrey presented the ceremony and said that they were there to show that "hope lives, love lives", while the actor James Earl Jones said that the US was united, "not only in grief but in our resolve to build a better world".
The call of the Islamic faithful to prayer rang out over the stadium as an Imam intoned "Allah u Akbar" (God is Great). "We Muslims, Americans, stand today with a heavy weight on our shoulder that those who do such dastardly acts claim our faith," said Imam Izak El M Pasha, a chaplain of New York Police department. They are no believers in God or in Mohammad," he said to a standing ovation. "This must stop. We cannot tolerate oppression of any type."
A nation's power lies only in the strength of its unity, the Hindu represented told the audience.
The commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Robert Natter said the US flag was more than a symbol. "It will lead us to victory in the future," he said. And he had a warning "for the terrorists. You picked the wrong city, you picked the wrong country."
Former US president Bill Clinton and Senator Hilary Clinton were among the dignitaries while Beth Midler, Placido Domingo, and Irish tenor Ronan Tynan performed at the ceremony. The Haarlem boys and girls choir sang the African American anthem We shall overcome.
New York's fire department, police officers, military personnel and the emergency service members were among the thousands attending the three-and-a-half hour service. Relatives carried posters and pictures of husbands and brothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends, missing from the trade centre.
Three police officers sang the national anthem and the ceremony veered between sombre prayer and silence to the atmosphere of a baseball game which clapping, cheering and shouts of "USA, USA." Singer Mark Anthony concluded the ceremony with a rousing rendition of America the Beautiful.
The event was organised amid huge security and tight restrictions. Admission was intended to be by ticket only, available at several locations around the city up to midday on Saturday. However, the stadium was not filled to its expected capacity of 60,000.
A three-mile no-fly zone was enforced around Yankee Stadium and hundreds of police were on duty, with sniffer dogs.