UnChristian & Unpatriotic

By Dr. A S Nakadar, TMO CEO and Publisher

On 11-11-11, the Ford Field in Detroit witnessed a highly publicized bigoted event.  The venue, Ford Field is where the Detroit Lions play and the area is near Dearborn that has a large Muslim population.

The organizer of this event was “TheCall” organization; a relatively unknown organization that has been in existence for about a decade. It claims to tackle issues such as economy, racial strife, same sex relationship, abortion and other such issues. But to many it appeared that the objective of this event was to gain cheap publicity by bashing Muslims and Islam. The organizers had said in their statements that they wanted to raise concerns against the growing Islamic popularity and Islamic renaissance in USA.

They heavily promoted their Detroit event on their website. According to “The Christian Post” they called it, “The Rising Tide of the Islamic Movement.” But after receiving complaints, perhaps, about the factuality and the phrase giving legitimacy to the prevailing situation, TheCall dropped the phrase from its web site.

The Pentecostal Minister, Engle, had announced that the program would start on Friday night (11-11-11) and would end the next day, Saturday morning. Their announcement also touted that they expected a crowd of more than 50,000. But most reports suggest the program was a flop in attendance. The stadium mostly remained empty and according to some reports the attendance was about less than tenth of their predicted number.

The reason given for the night vigil and night prayer, according to “The Christian Post”, quoting their minister Engler, “You got to pray all night long because it’s when the Muslims sleep.”

Looking at the thin attendance, he found out that Christians and others sleep during those hours too. 

Earlier this week and prior to the event, a group of Christian pastors gathered in Grand Circus Park, near the Ford Field venue, to denounce Lou Engle’s “The Call Detroit” rally at Ford Field as “un-Christian, “un-American,” and “idolatrous.”

This group counts Islam among the ills facing the nation. Some Muslims answered this by saying, “their heads needs to be examined” while others said, “I bet you they will say “Occupy Wall Street” movement is Muslim inspired;” others from the group said “I wish to bring to their attention the Muslim contribution to this great nation.” He went on to say: “More than 50% of the Muslims income bracket was over $50,000 as compared to nationwide average income of $47,000 and nearly 60% Muslims are college graduates as compared to 27% as a whole.”

The statement emphasized the great contributions Muslims have made in practically all fields, be it social, military, political, economic, medical, engineering, business, technology and you name it.

Most in the group agreed that we were here to strengthen the country. We want to see communities unified, and not divided. The action of “TheCall” group is divisive and needs to be condemned in strongest terms.

A true American would surely know that pluralism is the Achilles Heel of our society’s foundation.

Today our biggest concern and the concern of all of us should be the challenges that our pluralistic society and our country face.

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