Muslim 'Day of Unity' Draws Prayerful, Protests in D.C.

"Allah Akbar!" shouted the sea of worshippers in flowing white and gold robes and headwear, following a mid-afternoon recital from the Koran. The estimated 8,000 in attendance chanted and used carpets, blankets, jackets, and plastic tarp as the traditional ground cover on which they knelt in prayer. A sermon afterward urged all Muslims to "God bless America" and avoid the "trap" of hating anyone, particularly Christians and Jews.

The crowd in attendance on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building was comprised predominantly of people of color and men, with females seated separately. They arrived from disparate points across the country, mostly the East Coast, to take part in what organizers billed as "Jummah Prayer on Capitol Hill: A Day of Islamic Unity." In Arabic, "Jummah" refers to a day of gathering, usually traditional Friday prayers.

(...) At remote locations, distanced far away from the proceedings and under the watchful eyes of uniformed and plainclothes Capitol Police, scattered groups of Christians used microphones and public address systems to voice their displeasure with the Muslim event.

One such group, whose members displayed two oversized tablets similar to those seen in Biblical depictions of the Ten Commandments, called itself "Operation Save America" and distributed pamphlets saying: "Abortion is Murder!! Homosexuality is Sin!! Islam is a Lie!!"

The organizer of the Muslim event, Hassen Abdellah, a criminal defense lawyer from Elizabeth, New Jersey, urged the Christian groups to "show respect" and not disrupt the Muslim worship service. But the din of the Christians' rally chants, amplified over their portable public address systems, could still be heard while an aged Muslim cleric led the thousands of Muslims in prayer.

(...) "The idea [behind the event] is to express and illustrate the beautiful diversity in Islam, the spirituality in Islam, the humanity in Islam," he told FOX News in an interview Thursday.

"Americans have been asking and requesting and calling out for Muslims to come out who renounce the violence, who renounce the criminality and the hijacking of the religion," he said. "And we believed that if we started a grassroots movement, Muslims would appear and show up in tens [of thousands] and droves, because the majority of Muslims in America love this country."