Woman
interrupts Muslim service at National Cathedral: 'Jesus Christ is Lord' She is quickly escorted out of iconic D.C. church
American Muslims were invited to offer prayers to Allah
inside the nation’s most iconic Christian church Friday in Washington, D.C.,
but the intended message of peace, harmony and tolerance isn’t so well received
in Muslim countries, according to Christian leaders contacted by WND.
The Washington National Cathedral, which earned the title
“America’s House of Prayer” for its hosting of presidential funerals and
inauguration-related prayer services, was turned into a virtual mosque in which
Muslims bowed toward Mecca and shielded their eyes from the Christian cross.
Prayer carpets were arranged
diagonally, to the side of the sanctuary, so worshipers could face in the
direction of Mecca without seeing crosses or other Christian symbols. Muslims
are not supposed to pray in view of sacred symbols “alien to their faith,” the Voice
of America reported.
The Episcopal cathedral becomes the first church in America
to host a Muslim-led prayer service. And this isn’t just any church. Famous
people are buried there, including President Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller and
Admiral George Dewey, and it is perhaps the most recognizable Christian
sanctuary in the nation with its soaring Gothic architecture and grand entrance
hall.
A receptionist at the cathedral told WND Friday the event
was not open to the public but it was live-streamed on the cathedral’s website.
Attendance was by invitation only, and the invite list came from the South
African ambassador, who helped plan the event. She said she did not know if any
Christians were invited to the service or how many may have attended.
Christian woman stands up, speaks out
The cathedral has hosted Muslims at interfaith services in
the past. But this is the first time the cathedral has invited Muslims to come
and lead their own prayers there.
But just as the Imam was about to give the Muslim call to
prayer, a Christian woman, who apparently sneaked into the service, stood up,
pointed to the cross and shouted “Jesus Christ died on that cross. He is the
reason we are to worship only Him. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. We have
built enough of your mosques in this country. Why don’t you worship in your
mosques and leave our churches alone? …America was founded on Christian
principles…Leave our church alone!”
She was immediately grabbed by the
arms and forcibly led out of the church by two men. The unidentified woman’s
interruption of the service was captured on video by one of the attendees and posted
online at PamelaGeller.com.
Planners of the event said
in a news release that they hoped “people around the
world will take note of this service and the welcome extended by the Cathedral
so that Muslims everywhere will adopt a reciprocal welcome of Christians by
Muslims.”
Christian leaders react
The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham,
said in a Facebook post Thursday that the Muslim prayer service at the National
Cathedral is “sad to see” because the church should only open its doors for
worship of “the One True God of the Bible.”
Graham, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
and Samaritan’s Purse, said, “Tomorrow, the National Cathedral in Washington,
D.C. – one of the most prominent Episcopal churches in America – will
host a Muslim prayer service to Allah.”
“It’s sad to see a church open its doors to the worship of
anything other than the One True God of the Bible who sent His Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, to earth to save us from our sins,” said Graham. “Jesus was clear
when He said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through Me’ (John 14:6).”
The cathedral’s press
release said the goal was to encourage
greater acceptance between Christians and Muslims, calling the Islamic Jumma
prayers a “powerful symbolic gesture.”
“Leaders believe offering Muslim prayers at the Christian
cathedral shows more than hospitality,” representatives for the National
Cathedral said about the event. “It demonstrates an appreciation of one
another’s prayer traditions and is a powerful symbolic gesture toward a deeper
relationship between the two Abrahamic traditions.”
The event was planned by the Rev. Gina Campbell, the
cathedral’s director of liturgy, and South African Ambassador to the United
States Ebrahim Rasool, who is a Muslim.
Campbell spoke at the service and said a prayer “in the name
of God” but did not mention Jesus Christ. She told her Muslim guests that “we
approach the same God.”
A statement by Rasool called the service “a dramatic moment
in the world and in Muslim-Christian relations.”
“This needs to be a world in which all are free to believe
and practice and in which we avoid bigotry, Islamaphobia, racism,
anti-Semitism, and anti-Christianity and to embrace our humanity and to embrace
faith,” Rasool added.
But Christian convert and former Muslim Dr. Mark Christian
said the gesture will never be reciprocated by Muslims. They would never allow
Christians into a mosque sanctuary to hold a Christian-led prayer service.
“No, not ever. They can let Christians and Jews only in the
U.S. and West sometimes into their mosques, because they have an agenda, but
they will let them in the basement or another room, not in the main sanctuary
and certainly not to say a Christian prayer. That would make it unclean. That
would defile their sanctuary in their eyes,” said Christain, who lives under a
fatwa placed on his life by Muslims in his native Egypt.
The Washington Post quoted a local Muslim spokesperson who
said: “We want the world to see the Christian community is partnering with us
and is supporting our religious freedom in the same way we are calling for
religious freedom for all minorities in Muslim countries. Let this be a lesson
to the world.”
Sponsors of the event included the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and the Islamic Society of North America,
also called ISNA.
CAIR and ISNA are known front groups for the Muslim
Brotherhood. The groups in question have been named as unindicted
co-conspirators in the largest terrorism funding trial in U.S history. ISNA and
CAIR were directly involved in laundering money through fake charities to fund
Hamas operations as documented in court records related to the 2009 Holy Land
Foundation trial.
This is not the first time the
National Cathedral has delved head first into controversial territory. In June,
it celebrated “Gay Pride Month” by allowing
a transgender priest to preach a sermon
from its pulpit.
Making ‘tolerance a god’
Joel Richardson, a Christian
filmmaker and author of “The
Islamic Antichrist,” said the hypocrisy of the Muslim
world is “beyond words” when it comes to interfaith programs like the one held
Friday at the National Cathedral. The Christians who host such events have made
“tolerance” a god, he said.
“We as a Christian nation are called to love Muslims in our
midst but that does not mean we allow ourselves to be subjugated in their
presence,” he said.
Not only would such a prayer service by Christians not be
allowed in a mosque in Islam’s home country, Saudi Arabia, he said, but
Christians would not even be allowed to build a church there.
“Why don’t they allow churches in Saudi Arabia? Because
that’s a sign of subjugation,” Richardson said.
The message being sent from Washington to Muslim countries
around the world is not one of tolerance but one of subjugation, Richardson
said.
“To them, they are sending a sign that they have defeated
us, that they’re conquering us. There’s conquest and occupation,” he said.
To find an example of how tolerant Muslims are of Christians
and Jews in their “holy places,” one should look at Istanbul, Turkey, and Jerusalem,
Israel, Richardson said.
In Istanbul, one of the oldest, most famous Christian
churches, the Hagia Sophia cathedral, has recently been turned into a museum by
the Turkish Islamic government and is in the process of transitioning into a
mosque.
Richardson visited there last year and said Christians were
not allowed to pray overtly Christian prayers in the former church. The same is
true on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which Arabs call al-Aqsa and guard closely
for any sign of Jews or Christians uttering prayers.
“The Temple Mount was Jewish, but Muslims conquered it so
the idea of them allowing Christian prayers was out of the question,”
Richardson said. “They view it as their conquest of us, and to them once
something has been conquered it’s considered Islamic from there on forward, and
they’re allowed to wage jihad to maintain it. The hypocrisy of the Islamic
world is beyond words on these matters.”
Islam as the ‘perfect’ conquering religion
Mark Christian, whose father and uncle are Muslim
Brotherhood members and whose great-uncle was one of its co-founders in Egypt
during the 1960s, also cited a “conquering mentality” that is dominant among
Muslim Brotherhood organizations.
He said Islam has a “supremacy problem” based upon the idea
that Islam has perfected the religions practiced by Jews and Christians.
“In Islamic tradition, supremacy is demonstrated to all by
practicing Islam where Christianity or Judaism once reigned,” he said. “This is
what animates the building of mosques on the holy sites of other religions. It
is a conqueror’s philosophy.”
The decision to allow a Muslim imam
to conduct an Islamic service from the altar of the National Cathedral in
Washington is to Muslims the functional equivalent of Islam standing supreme
atop Christianity in America “in our own house,” said Christian, who founded
the Global Faith
Institute in Nebraska and has been
confronting an interfaith project in that city.
While America’s interfaith community may be well-intentioned,
they are more often than not used by radical Islamists as a method of appearing
“mainstream,” he said. The Islamists gain legitimacy while the Christians are
left holding a watered down gospel message.
According to Pew Research Center, Muslims make up just under
1 percent of the U.S. population.
“CAIR and ISNA are known fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Is there really any doubt as to how they will present the National Cathedral
event to their followers?” Christian asks. “Perhaps as a reciprocal gesture,
the rector of the National Cathedral can offer communion at the al-Aqsa Mosque
in Jerusalem? I won’t hold my breath.”
Todd Nettleton, director of media and public relations for
Voice of the Martyrs, an organization that advocates for persecuted Christians
around the world, many of them in Islamic countries, said the event sends a
chilling message that was perhaps not intended by its Episcopal organizers.
“I can’t think of a country where Muslims would willingly
and openly allow a Christian prayer service to take place inside of a mosque,”
he told WND. “We have on occasion seen some pretty amazing things. I recall
some of my co-workers in Sudan wanted to show ‘The Jesus Film,’ and the best
screen available was the side of a mosque so it was used for that purpose, but
not a prayer service or evangelistic service inside of a mosque – that would
likely never happen.
“And this is the National Cathedral here, a national symbol
of Christianity, so you would not see something at a prominent level like a
grand mosque in Cairo opening up to a Christian prayer service. That would
never happen.”
Sending the wrong message
The message received by Muslims around the world will be
clear, Nettleton said.
“I think of the pictures that will be seen across the world
of Muslims praying and holding an Islamic prayer services in the National
Cathedra. People will think, ‘Wow, more people must be becoming Muslims in
America,’ and, ‘They’re taking over Christian churches now in America.’
Frankly, I wish more churches would allow Muslims in to hear the gospel message
because that is what they need to hear. It’s disappointing to see this. It
seems like a compromise that doesn’t necessarily send the right message.”
Richardson said tolerance is a Christian virtue that can be
counterproductive when taken to extremes.
“Although tolerance is a good principle that’s built into
who we are, that tolerance has become the national idol of our time and our
country to the point where issues such as freedom, liberty and really just
rational thought have been subordinated on that great altar of tolerance,” he
said. “We’ve literally become suicidal as a nation. When we welcome in those
that are foundationally opposed to who we are as a nation and our Constitution,
that’s called suicide. When someone says ‘I’ll eat anything’ and someone hands
them a gallon of antifreeze, that’s suicide. We reach out in tolerance, but we
actually welcome in that which is hyper intolerant.”
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