09/24/09
The event sounds like yet another Tea Party protest, or perhaps a repeat of last weekend's Values Voter Summit: Devout believers joining together this Friday to pray on Capitol Hill for the soul of America.
Who could argue with that? Well, when the believers happen to be Muslims, and there could be as many as 50,000 of them kneeling to pray in Arabic, yes, you could see how there might be some blowback from the usual suspects. This event should be close to the same size as the Teabagging event on September 12th.
Indeed, the online publication from David Horowitz, FrontPageMag.com, sounded the alarm in an article titled "Taking Islamism to the Streets," and the title of the "9/12 Project" post is simply, "OUTRAGED!"
The writers at "Bare Naked Islam" are calling the event "disgusting" and "treasonous" and warn that "50,000 Muslims, terrorists, and terrorist sympathizers" will turn the Capitol into "a giant outdoor mosque." Charisma magazine, a mainstream Pentecostal publication, quoted Christians in its account saying things like, "It is warfare time."
The most organized pushback so far is from a new organization of a nativist bent called Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). It describes itself as a group of "scholar warriors/ideological warriors in the cause of American freedom and Constitutional government"-- and defines Islam as against those things. SIOA is using Friday's event, "Islam on Capitol Hill," as a launchpad for the group and to stage a counterprotest.
But perhaps the most intriguing objections to this unprecedented event have come from within the American Muslim community itself.
"The truth may not be welcome, but remains truth: thousands of Muslims lining up for silent prayer in unison, within sight of the center of American government, is going to be misconstrued as an intimidation rather than an outreach, and not just to the rabid Islamophobic fringe," wrote Aziz Poonawalla, a Muslim blogger at Beliefnet, in a post last Friday.
"It really doesn't help that the official slogan for the event plastered all over the Web site is '
Our time has come.' Or that when you load the official homepage, you are blasted with audio of a thickly accented Islamic prayer."
"It's unwise to ignore the effect of such an event upon the paranoid segment of the American public -- who were out in force at the Tea Party last week on the National Mall -- who will certainly see the event as a threatening gesture which only validates their racism and Islamophobia."
See the rest of the story at:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/09/24/50-000-muslims-to-pray-on-capitol-hill-guess-whos-not-happy/
Get 30 days of free traffic analysis simply by going to Web-Stat:
http://www.web-stat.com/?id=2955
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed:
feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
Netcraft rank: 8774 http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com
