A CRAZY Christian outfit called TheCall are gathering in Detroit tonight to purge the city of its “satanic spirit” which includes “the rising tide of the Islamic movement.”
Lou Engel (click on pic for a very scary video)
Given that that Detroit has one of the largest Muslim communities outside the Middle East, Islamic leaders see the planned 11.11.11 rally at Ford Field football stadium as confrontational and objectionable.
The gathering is designed to tackle issues such as the economy, race, same-sex relationships and abortion, as well as the “Muslim problem”.
According to this report, leaders of TheCall, co-founded by bat-shit barmy Lou Engel, believe “a satanic spirit is shaping all parts of American society, and it must be challenged through intensive Christian prayer and fasting”.
Such a demonic spirit has taken hold of specific areas, Detroit among them, organisers say.
Dawud Walid, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter, complained:
Our concern is that we are literally being demonized by the organizers of this group. And given the recent history of other groups that have come into Michigan … we’re concerned about this prayer vigil stoking up the flames of divisiveness in the community.
TheCall is the latest and largest of several groups or individuals to come to the Detroit area with a message that has annoyed many of its estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Muslims. Recent visitors have included demented Koran-burning Florida pastor Terry Jones; drooling halfwits from the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas; and the Acts 17 Apologetics, missionaries who were arrested for disorderly conduct last year at Dearborn’s Arab International Festival but were later acquitted.
As with many other Christian groups, TheCall and its adherents believe Jesus is the only path to salvation. While they consider all other religions false, they have a specific focus on Islam, largely in response to the September 11 attacks, terrorism overseas and fear that Islam, which is also a proselytizing faith, will spread faster than Christianity.
Muslims aren’t the only ones concerned about tonight’s event. A coalition of Detroit clergy plans to march to the football stadium and hold their own rally.
The Rev Charles Williams II, pastor of Historic King Solomon Church in Detroit, said:
We do not agree with the spread of a message of hate, but a message of peace and a message of love. We love our Muslim brothers. We love those who are homosexual and we are not scared … to stand up when the time calls for us to.
One of TheCall’s bigwigs in Detroit, “Apostle” Ellis Smith of the Jubilee City Church, insists that fears of the event taking on an anti-Muslim tone are overblown. He said attendees won’t be “praying against Muslims,” but rather “against terrorism that has its roots in Islam”.
But in a pre-event sermon he delivered October 9 at a suburban church, Smith called Islam a “false,” ”lame” and “perverse” religion.
And Christianity isn’t!?
Happily amognst all this religious angst and hatred the atheists remain calm, unobtrustive and a force for reason, decency and open mindedness.
But in a pre-event sermon he delivered October 9 at a suburban church, Smith called Islam a “false,” ”lame” and “perverse” religion.
And Christianity isn’t!?
Of course it isn’t. Like all other faiths, it’s the one true religion. It just happens that there are thousands of one true religions.
As if Detroit didn’t have enough problems…
LAME? that’s like calling it nerdy, or random, or saying muslims as ‘like losers’ with an upward inflexion … What’s going on? Is he trying to get with the youthspeak?
Just shows you, not all xtians are bad(HeHeHe)
As usual Richard Dawkins got it right when he said everyone is an atheist regarding every religion except their own. He just goes one further.
Remembrance Day (11.11.11) in the UK is primarily an acknowledgement of all those who have fallen in war, and is not about the justification of any particular war. But that’s not how some British Muslims see it:
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/11/10/british-muslim-group-cancels-hell-for-heroes-protest-on-remembrance-day
So, when Dawud Walid says “Our concern is that we are literally being demonized by the organizers of this group….” perhaps he should consider the demonization of Western democracy by Muslims.
Some Muslims want to demonstrate and demonize others, while others want to prevent a demonstration that demonizes them. What a surprise.
I’d be a liar if I said there was not a small part of me liking the idea of christians and muslims get into a wee scrap tonight.
On the other hand the thought of both sides yet again playing the ‘persecution’ card, post fight, has put my daydreams back on the straight and narrow.
Demonic spirits shaping society? These people are completely barking. I suppose they think that sin causes earthquakes and cancer too (I just got myself barred from a particularly odious catholic message board for having the temerity to blame plate tectonics and faulty genes, when it seems it’s actually something called ‘natural evil’ that’s causing all the problems).
Lucy – he doesn’t mean ‘lame’ in the pejorative sense. He means being hindered such that movement is difficult or impossible.
@AgentCormac: Regarding demons these people really are back in the 16th century. I take the following from James Gaines brilliant “Evening in the Palace of Reason”:
“Hell was not a metaphor. It was a place you went to, body and soul, where you would burn in actual, unquenchable fire, in unimaginable agony, forever and ever.”
The devil’s work appeared every day: in the bubonic plague, floods that swamped villages, fires that burned the wooden houses and the rape, pillage, slaughter and torture that was visited on them during the thirty years war. Rape and massacre were the soldiers recreation and famine led to the eating of corpses and the skin of dead rats.
The effect of the religious indoctrination of TheCall and their kind is that they are still, in their terrified minds, in the 16th century.
Broga
How very strange you should say that. As I was watching the video of Lou Engel (what a nut job he is!), my immediate reaction was that he was just like I imagine the Inquisitors and witch-burners to have been. And ironically, demonic is just how he comes across.
@thoreau
A limping religion? So xtianity is striding out?
Prayer and fasting eh? Self indoctrination and hunger to highlight the effects of it after a long day of loud pa systems and near group hysteria. Brainwashing at its best, by the sound of it.
At least it won’t actually *do* anything. As Rick Perry has illustrated, prayer and fasting don’t work.
@SteveZ: Rick Perry just ain’t praying hard enough. I loved his 50 seconds when he couldn’t remember the third agency he wanted to abolish. What irritates me is when UK comentators say, “You have to feel sorry for him.” This is a religious nutter with a lust for judicial killing. I have better people to expend my sympathy on. Rick Perry is repellent – typical hypocrital fundie christian. Didn’t he also seem to give a speech when drunk recently? Although, how would anyone know?
Muslims aren’t happy
You’re having us on, Barry!
Broga
That clip of Perry pretty much losing any chance he ever had of getting the god party’s – sorry, the Republican party’s nomination is superb. And here it is if you haven’t already seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUA2rDVrmNg
Also, did anybody else read the ‘Mocking God in the heart of Texas’ article by Tim Minchin in last Sunday’s Observer? He hates Perry and I just loved the ending.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/nov/06/tim-minchin-mocking-god-in-texas
I seen this guy Lou Engel in a news clip spewing his insane thoughts and plugging his event. What I could not help but notice, was how he was rocking back and forth while sitting in the chair, like someone with some mental issues…I think he is certifiable.
As for our conservative candidates, john Stewart had a good line…since three of them claim god wanted them to run for president…god must be fu*king with two of them.
@Marky Mark: Thanks for the John Stewart line. I’ll use that one. Brilliant.
Strongly recommend the atheists take a day trip elsewhere, and let the theists lose to take care of each other.
SteveZ:
Rick Perry actually demonstrated that prayer works too well. This latterday sorcerer’s apprentice had a three-day pray-for-rain binge in April. By the first week of May not only Texas but the whole Mississippi valley too was inundated with severe floods. Like they say, be careful what you ask for…..
But Perry doesn’t seem to have learned from the experience
On behalf of the religious nut jobs we protect with our 1st Amendment I apologize. They seem to think the 1st Amendment is meant to protect Christianity and F*** everyone else.
God is love after all unless you aren’t my flavor then God hates you.
I wonder if Lou’s surname Engel is real or adopted as it is German for angel.
There is an irony here because the German carneval season officially starts at 11:11 am on 11th November. It is a time when fools and jesters descend on towns in the mainly Catholic parts of the country. Lou Engel and the unhappy Muslims would feel quite at home there.
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111111-38813.html
This seems like the ultimate contradiction in terms
http://www.ihrc.org.uk/