By Robert SpencerFrontPageMagazine.com February 6, 2007
Many people in today’s Democratic party have contempt for religion, but they still have time for prayer. Last Friday, during the Democratic National Committee’s Annual Winter Meeting in Washington, Husham Al-Husainy, Imam of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center, a Shi’ite mosque in Dearborn, Michigan, offered an invocation.
As the assembled Democrats bowed their heads, Al-Husainy prayed:
In the name of God the most merciful, the most compassionate. We thank you, God, to bless us among your creations. We thank you, God, to make us as a great nation. We thank you God, to send us your messages through our father Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Mohammed. Through you, God, we unite. So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. Help us, God, to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality. And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation. Ameen.
A touching moment of ecumenical generosity and hope for peace? Not quite. In mentioning “Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Mohammed,” Al-Husainy no doubt sounded as if he was expansive, broad-minded, and not narrowly sectarian to the assembled Democrats.
But in fact, he was almost certainly invoking them in their capacity as Muslim prophets: it is mainstream Islam that all of these were prophets who taught Islam, and that the followers of Moses and Jesus corrupted their teachings to create Judaism and Christianity.
The Qur’an says that Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian, but a Muslim (3:67), and depicts Jesus denying his own divinity (5:116) -- and this, of course, is the Imam’s frame of reference.
So what seems to be a gesture of ecumenical generosity actually amounts to a declaration of religious supremacism and the delegitimization of other religions.
Entire Article Here.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
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