Muslim Prayer Day in DC Draws Sparse Crowd

This event was hyped up with claims up to 50,000 people would attend.

Yet a mere 1000 showed up, and that's probably being generous. Naturally, they blamed the mean old conservatives.

About 1,000 people gathered Friday morning on the west front lawn of the Capitol, with more streaming in via charter buses and Metro, for a day of Muslim unity that organizers said was about prayer, not protest.

"We are decent Muslims," said one of the organizers, Imam Ali Jaaher from Dar-ul-Islam mosque in Elizabeth, N. J. "We work, we pay taxes. We are Muslims who truly love this country."

Organizers had said they hoped 50,000 worshipers would show up for the traditional Muslim afternoon prayer at 1 p.m. But they said many people have been frightened away by the backlash against the event. Some conservative Christian groups and bloggers have been calling it anti-Christian and un-American.

Considering all the terrorism arrests in recent days, I'm surprised the capitol didn't clear out entirely.

Naturally CNN, which went out of their way to play down the hundreds of thousands who attended the 9/12 Tea Party, claims the paltry gathering attracted thousands.

Thousands of Muslims gathered Friday on Capitol Hill for a day of prayer that organizers said was intended to inspire American Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

They provide no evidence to support this claim.

Malik said attendees were traveling from all over the United States -- including Texas, Florida and Georgia -- as well as from other countries, such as Britain and Canada.

Sure.

Curiously one of the organizers is a lawyer who has defended terrorists in the past.

A major organizer of the prayer rally is attorney Hassen Abdellah, president of the Dar-ul-Islam mosque in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Abdellah represented several terrorists, including: Mahmoud Abouhalima, who was convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and is serving a life sentence in Florence, Colorado, and Mahamed el-Atriss, who was convicted of selling fake IDs to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. On Oct. 25, 1993, New York Times reporter Richard Bernstein described Abdellah as “by far the most aggressively combative of the lawyers in the case.”