They said 20,000 Muslims would be converging on Charlotte before the DNC; it was more like a couple of hundred :)
Really? So stop suing businesses, public schools, the government, etc., for special accomodation and special rights.Islamic prayers in Marshall Park draw critics Charlotte Observer, Aug. 31, 2012 (thanks to John)
Muslim leaders were disappointed that the event, expected to draw thousands, attracted about 300. But they said their message – that Muslim Americans should take part in the political process – was more important than their number.
“We must make the Constitution work for all Americans. We’re not asking for anything more or anything less,” said Jibril Hough of Charlotte, spokesman for the event’s sponsor, the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs, headquartered in Newark, N.J.
Siraj Wahhaj was an un-indicted co-conspirator in the '93 World Trade Center bombings -- "made America better"? Classic taqiyya.The gathering kicked off a week of religious events in Charlotte during the Democratic National Convention.
[...]It’s the connection to the Democratic National Convention that prompted a storm of criticism from conservative pundits and bloggers who claimed the Muslim prayer event was evidence that the DNC has aligned itself with radical Islam.
Hough denied claims, repeated by Benham at the event, that the outdoor prayer service was endorsed by the DNC host committee.
“We’re nonpartisan,” he said. “We’re not seeking to endorse any candidates. We are seeking to endorse issues.”
Benham was among those complaining the DNC had endorsed the Muslim event by promoting it on the DNC website. At the same time, he said the DNC had refused to allow Christian leaders to distribute gift bags to convention delegates.
A DNC host committee official said Thursday the committee had never sponsored the Muslim event. The event was removed from the committee website’s events calendar, the official said, “because speakers for the event and statements and positions from event organizers were not appropriate and relevant to the host committee.”
Participants in the Muslim prayer service didn’t let the protesters interfere with their worship. But Jamil Abdur-Rahman, a member of the National Muslim Council for Justice who traveled to Charlotte from Red House, Va., said the intrusion was “insulting.”
“You never see a Muslim at a Christian gathering trying to insult people,” he said. “You never see us doing anything like that.”
New Jersey resident Abdul Razzaq, 60, who grew up in Kershaw, S.C., and played football at Salisbury’s Livingstone College, said he’d like to see a time when every Muslim “paraded across the television screen is not portrayed to be a terrorist.”
“I don’t even know a terrorist,” he said. “We’re very peaceful people. We’re law-abiding, we vote, and we matter.” [...]
The main speaker was Siraj Wahhaj, imam of an American Black Muslim mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the first Muslim to give an invocation in the U.S. House of Representatives. Wearing a long white robe and cap, he encouraged fellow Muslims to participate in the political system to “make America better.”
