Sacred Ground by Eboo Patel

Author:Eboo Patel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press

THE ART OF INTERFAITH LEADERSHIP

“I’m inspired,” I heard the man say. “But I wonder if he’s just preaching to the choir?” We were walking out of an arena in Chicago where His Holiness the Dalai Lama had just done a teaching on interfaith cooperation in front of about eight thousand people. “Pretty big choir,” I thought to myself. “A choir that size, it could do a lot in this world.”

About every other speech I give, somebody stands up and says, “Thanks for your talk, but didn’t you just preach to the choir?” They mean it as a mild rebuke, but increasingly I’m not so sure I see the metaphor the same way.

One of the striking things about the furor around Cordoba House was the consistency and pattern of language used by a wide group of people:

Radical Imam

Terrorist Command Center

Oppress women

Sharia sharia sharia

Stealth jihad

Taqiyya

Replace Constitution

Sharia sharia sharia

Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. It was a large choir singing a song loudly. They knew every word and every note, and every day they grew in size and increased in volume. How did they learn that song? Well, there was Newt Gingrich on television using and twisting terms like sharia and “stealth jihad.” Robert Spencer was doing it in books, Brigitte Gabriel in her public speeches, Franklin Graham in his television appearances, Pamela Geller on her blog, David Yerushalmi in his anti-sharia legislation. These were the preachers. Some even wore collars.

The people who logged on to their websites, read their books, listened to their sermons, sent checks to their organizations—they were the choir. Why were they so effective in creating a climate of fear around Muslims? Simple. They sang the song the preachers taught them. Some people who heard the song found the music compelling and joined the choir, so the choir got larger and the song of religious prejudice got louder. The choir members with the most dedication and the best voices were picked out and given special training—preacher training. They were sent on the road to start new choirs. More preachers, new choirs, louder song, repeat cycle. Pretty good way to build a movement, actually.

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