USA-CONNECTICUT: ISLAMIC BRAINWASHING OF INFIDELS IN SOMERS

Imam's Talk On Islam Called Eye-Opening
Crowd Gets Insight Into A Faith `We Don't Know Anything About'
November 7, 2006
By LYNN DOAN, Courant Staff Writer


SOMERS -- With a bit of humor and storytelling, Imam Abdullah Antepli outlined the basic beliefs and traditions of Islam Monday night to a crowd of nearly 100 at Somers Congregational Church.

Speaking before the group, Antepli, the head of Hartford Seminary's Islamic chaplaincy program, drew similarities between his faith and those of Jews and Christians. Like Christians, he said, Muslims believe in one god, Allah, scriptures, apostles and a day of judgment.

"Judgment is pretty much like IRS auditing," he said, prompting a burst of laughter. "If you're in the plus side, you go to the sheep."

But a person who falls in the red, he said, "goes to the goats ... I'm not sure why goats are a bad thing."

The Rev. Barry Cass, head pastor for the church, said he hired Antepli to speak before his congregation after a couple of churchgoers attended a similar presentation in West Hartford.

"It just seemed like a way of opening our minds," Cass said. "We talk a lot about a thing we don't know anything about."

A number of listeners asked Antepli about suicide bombers and their connection to the Islam faith.

"They are promised things if they kill themselves over their religion, but after hearing you talk, it's hard to believe that your religion has room for killing," Warren Ball said. "It just sounds so abhorrent. How can that be?"

Though Antepli was quick to clarify that the Islam faith does not tolerate murder or suicide, he explained why the actions of some have infuriated Muslims.

For example, news agencies reported claims last year that an interrogator at Guantanamo prison had flushed a Koran down a toilet. The reports sparked protests and deadly riots across the Islamic world.

To Muslims, Antepli said, the Koran is as sacred as Jesus is to Christians. "You can understand how deeply affected they were," he said.

"You can understand the outrage."

Churchgoers said they walked away from the presentation with a newfound respect for the Islam faith. And those with Sept. 11 still fresh in their minds said they had a better understanding of a terrorist's mindset.

"Now I understand that they had free will, but they didn't really feel like they had free will," parishioner Judith Cardoni said.

Somers resident Laurie White said she hoped the church would arrange more discussions with Muslims.

"I was looking for a better understanding of what it really meant to be Muslim, and that's what I got," White said. "I knew so very little about it that everything was sort of a revelation."

See moslems are just like Christians & Jews, murder is abhorent and so is suicide bombing, so is beheading, etc...The infidels, instead of picking up their own copies of the qur'an, hadiths, etc. and reading for themselves ask an imam about islam...

Yup, they sure as hell are going to get the "right" image of islam.

Pertinent Links:

1) Imam's Talk On Islam Called Eye-Opening