Christ First Forum

Capitol Hill gathering to inspire Muslim aggression?
Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 9/25/2009 4:00:00 AMA political activist and pro-family leader says he has great concerns about today's Capitol Hill gathering of Muslims from all across the United States.

The event is called Islam on Capitol Hill 2009, and is expected to draw 50,000 Muslims to the nation's capital. It is being promoted as a day of Islamic unity "to express and illustrate the wonderful diversity of Islam." The organizers also said they intend to inspire a new generation of Muslims to work for the greater good of all people, regardless of race, religion, or national origin.

Robert Knight is a senior fellow at the American Civil Rights Union and a senior writer for Coral Ridge Ministries. He says having 50,000 Muslims on Capitol Hill paints a very potent picture for Muslims around the world.

"It's adding up to a picture that the United States may not want to paint because there are a lot of Muslims who will be inspired, perhaps, to get more militant if they think the United States is falling into Muslim hands, basically," he points out.

According to Knight, many Muslims believe they have a sympathetic ear in President Barack Obama. "Obama held no National Day of Prayer events at the White House this year, but gave a very positive eloquent speech about Ramadan," he recalls. "And he also has said some very interesting things overseas about the emergence of Islam."

Organizers say it was President Obama's inauguration speech in January and his speech broadcast from Egypt in June that inspired them to hold Friday's event, scheduled to begin at 1:00 p.m. Eastern.



At least one pro-family organization has expressed deep concern about the individuals who have organized the gathering and who are scheduled to speak. In an Action Alert to its constituents, the American Family Association has described those individuals as "men who harbor both anti-Semitic and fundamentally anti-American views." And like Knight, AFA notes President Obama's refusal to participate in the National Day of Prayer in May -- in contrast to his hosting of a White House dinner celebrating what Obama called "the Holy Month of Ramadan."



Meanwhile, Christians alarmed at today's scheduled gathering of tens of thousands of Muslims outside the U.S. Capitol have prayed together in a national conference call. Shirley Dobson, who heads the National Day of Prayer Task Force, said she and other Christians "are so troubled at what we see going on in our nation -- we're watching the foundations crumble."


Associated Press says Christian leaders in last night's conference call were unconvinced the gathering will be a time for Muslims to pray together, read the Quran, and celebrate America's religious freedom -- as its organizers insist. Family Research Council president Tony Perkins wondered if the Muslims would be "praying for the well-being of our nation."


Perkins called the Muslim gathering "a wake-up call for the church" and a warning that if Christians do not "fill the void that's in this nation with the truth, it will be filled with something else."

Editor's Note: The American Family Association is the parent organization of the American Family News Network, which operates OneNewsNow.com.

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Update:

Muslim prayer event fails to draw expected numbers
Fred Jackson - OneNewsNow - 9/26/2009 6:50:00 AM

Washington - Organizers of Friday's Muslim prayer event on Capital Hill were hoping about 50-thousand would attend. Instead, media outlets estimated the crowd size at somewhere between 3 and 5-thousand.



Many Christians had expressed concern over the so-called " Islam on Capital Hill' event. Among those concerns was the fact that one of the key organizers, Hassen Abdellah, was part of the legal team that represented one of the men convicted in the 1993 World Trade center bombing. He also represented a Baltimore Muslim cabdriver who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aid a terrorist group.



Leading up to the event, Christian evangelist, Lou Engle, was quoted by the Washington Post as saying it was " much more than a nice little Muslim gathering. It's an invocation of spiritual powers of ideology" that" doesn't have the same values that our nation has had."



And the head of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, called the event " a wake-up call for the church" and a warning that if Christians don't " fill the void that's in this nation with the truth, it will be filled with something else."



Perkins was also one of several conservatives who wrote a letter several days before the Friday gathering calling on Abdellah and other organizers to " unequivocally denounce" specific terrorist acts and plots of recent years, starting with the September 11th attacks.



There is no indication from media reports that any of the Muslim speakers at Friday's event did that.

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