Duke Retreats, Won't Be Allowing Call to Prayer

Church and state must be ruthlessly kept separate, except if a university receiving state funds wants to permit Islam to broadcast its calls to prayers to a mostly non-Islamic neighborhood. Then let's have some mixing of church and state.

Duke University has reversed itself, and announced Thursday afternoon it will not allow a Muslim call to prayer Friday from its iconic cathedral.

The decision had met with widespread controversy....

The three-minute chant by members of the Duke Muslim Students Association was to have been "moderately amplified" via a speaker system in the Duke Chapel’s bell tower, the university said.

Word of the move this week by the private university in Durham quickly swept through many social media outlets. [Franklin] Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, took to Facebook to urge people to withdraw financial support of the university until the policy is reversed.

"As Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn’t submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism," Graham wrote on Facebook Wednesday.

In an interview Thursday with The Observer, Graham said Duke should not allow the chapel to be used for the call to prayer. "It's wrong because it's a different god," he said. "Using the bell tower that signifies worship of Jesus Christ, using (it) as a minaret is wrong."

Of course.

posted by Ace at 04:29 PM

| Access Comments