Religious leaders from all sects and denominations stood shoulder-to-shoulder at All Saints Church in Pasadena on Thursday to denounce a spate of hate mail the parish received for hosting a popular Muslim event at the church.

Church officials claim they received more than two dozen emails from individuals condemning All Saints Episcopal Church for hosting the 12th Annual Muslim Public Affairs Council Convention on Dec. 15.

Church officials produced three of the "close to 30" emails they received. They described many of the others as too "vituperative" to release to the public. At least one email accused the parish of "providing cover and legitimacy to an organization dedicated to overthrowing the Constitution, and substituting Sharia law." Another email warned parishoners to not "be gullible suckers."

During the Thursday press conference, convention organizers and church staff said the conference will go on as planned and denounced the emails as hateful.

"What we hear too often unfortunately, is that what we are doing is a waste of time," MPAC President Salam Al Mayarati said. "What we also hear is people trying to drag us back to the rivalries of the middle East, the bloody rivalries of the middle east."

All Saints Rector Ed Bacon characterized the emails as a tragic reminder of the political and cultural realities of contemporary America. "The fact is our life in America is transacted in a culture of fear, and transacted in a culture of hatred; and a politics of fear and a politics of hatred," Bacon said.

Bacon said he hoped to convert the negative attention from the emails into something positive for interfaith relations. "We are very happy to have this occasion to put on a display of our relations and stand in solidarity," Bacon said.

In one email, a South Carolina man said "Islam is indistinguishable from Nazism," "Islam caused the Dark Ages" and that "every host country that has invited Islam into it has either been destroyed, or is in the process of being destroyed."

Church officials said the attacks came after Institute on Religion and Democracy published a criticism of the convention on its website. "If MPAC's convention is like past ones, Islamists will again be given a platform to rally Muslims to their cause but this time, it won't be in a mosque or a hotel conference room. It'll be from a church pulpit," the Nov. 30 article by Ryan Mauro, the "national security analyst of RadicalIslam.org," who is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel.

MPAC Senior Adviser Dr. Maher Hathout said groups like IRD often cite Hathout's work with the Muslim Brotherhood as a reason to doubt his good intentions. I "was working with the Muslim Brotherhood student movement 60 years ago against the British occupation and against the Nasser (Gamal Abdel Nasser former President of Egypt) dictatorship and I am very proud of that record," Hathout said Thursday. "Since that time I have no connection with any group or party. In the last 40 years in America, I never dealt with any organization outside the U.S."

The MPAC national convention is scheduled to run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Dec. 15.

MPAC and the church are working with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pasadena Police Department on increasing security for the event, Al Mayariti said.

Pasadena Star-News, 7 December 2012

Update:  In a piece for the Washington Post's Guest Voices blog ("Hate mail over Muslim conference provides opportunity for Christian witness") the Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite points out that the Institute on Religion and Democracy article that provoked this outpouring of hate was crossposted from David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine.

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U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., was named Thursday to the citizens advisory board of an Ann Arbor-based legal center that fights for conservative Christian causes.

The appointment of Bachmann, who dropped out of the presidential primary in January, brings another high-profile conservative to the Thomas More Law Center, which increasingly has focused on Islam in recent years. In May, the center named U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., whose views also have sparked controversy, to the advisory board.

"I am pleased to join forces with the Thomas More Law Center," Bachmann said Thursday. "They are in the courts aggressively fighting the internal threat to America posed by radical Islam."

Richard Thompson, the center's president and chief counsel, said that Bachmann "puts country before politics."

"She understands the threat of radical Islam," Thompson said. "We share her concerns regarding the stealth jihad that's being perpetrated against the United States."

Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that Bachmann is a "perfect fit" for the board. "Since Michigan has been a target of nationwide of anti-Islam campaigns, it makes sense that Bachmann would join a Michigan-based group ... openly hostile to the Islamic faith."

Detroit Free Press, 4 August 2012

The Thomas More Law Center has acted on behalf of mad Pamela Geller and Qur'an-burning pastor Terry Jones, whose loopy views it entirely shares.

In an interview with WorldNetDaily earlier this year Richard Thompson stated: "Islam is more than a religion. It is a political ideology that regulates every aspect of human existence and calls for the Islamic domination of the world. Since radical Muslims know they can never defeat our military on the battlefield, they devised the strategy of internal subversion."

He added: "Like the ancient Trojan Horse welcomed within the city's gates, Islam has entered America disguised as a religion. But its ultimate objective is political: Destroy America and establish an Islamic nation under Shariah law. So while America sleeps, they are awake and subverting our government, as well as our public schools and universities. And we will not be deterred from our efforts to stop them."

See also Alex Seitz-Wald, "Keith Ellison slams Bachmann's 'galling' witch hunt", Salon, 4 August 2012

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Glen Jenvey, the self-styled terrorism expert responsible for the Sun's fabricated "Terror Target Sugar" story about a supposed Muslim extremist hitlist (although he now denies this), recently posted a glowing account of the English Defence League and its membership ("I was amazed at the grass root support of EDL and the British Freedom Party which is a new political party which has been now merged with the EDL leadership ... it was made up of every race as they have a open membership which is not reported in the UK media").

And now it appears that Jenvey has taken his admiration one step further and joined the British Freedom party. They have crossposted an article by Jenvey on their website denouncing the sale of halal meat, with an introduction describing him as a British Freedom member.

Given his record, British Freedom might be advised to be a bit wary of Jenvey. A few years back he announced his conversion to Islam, and joined Anjem Choudary's group, only to subsequently declare that this had been a sting operation aimed at exposing Choudary and the terrorist threat he supposedly represents. Before that, Jenvey claimed to have infiltrated the Tamil Tigers.

However, in view of his long history of stoking Islamophobia, which includes an appearance in the notorious documentary Obsession – Radical Islam's War Against the West, there are perhaps stronger grounds for accepting Jenvey's new affiliation as genuine.

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The EDL have delightedly posted a link to a Sky news report of their members attacking a "Stuff the Jubilee party" in Newcastle earlier today. This despite a clear statement in the report that "Nazi salutes and chants" were directed against the anti-Jubilee protestors by the EDL.

There is also video footage of an EDL supporter throwing a firework, which apparently hit one of the anti-Jubilee crowd, burning his hair, much to the pleasure of his attackers, who admitted in gloating Facebook comments to throwing bottles as well.

The EDL's football hooligan division, Casuals United, has posted a short report too, making no attempt to hide the fact that the EDL organised the demonstration in co-operation with the Infidels breakaway group, with whom the EDL had supposedly severed links due to the Infidels' neo-Nazi sympathies.

Hope Not Hate reports that the EDL and Infidels met up at a Newcastle pub before going on to join a contingent from the National Front led by "veteran far right bonehead Simon Biggs". HNH's reporter also spotted another notorious Nazi, Kevin Watmough of Redwatch, on the demonstration.

HNH notes that Mark Walls of the Infidels "appeared very friendly with the rival EDL leader Alan Spence, who has only recently been released from prison". Spence, you may remember, is a former BNP parliamentary candidate who received a seven months' sentence for his part in a 2010 attack by the EDL on the Tyneside Irish Centre, where the Socialist Workers Party was due to hold a meeting.

Based on Facebook comments, one of the Infidels' supporters involved in the Newcastle confrontation was an individual who goes by the pseudonym of Sir-Northeast Markio. His real name is Mark Turnbull, and he is a former BNP member from Gateshead who was in court back in 2010 following violence at an EDL demonstration in Leicester.

Another participant from the neo-Nazi milieu was a National Front member from Sunderland named Paul Birleson, who stood as an NF candidate in last month's council elections. Birleson says that it was the NF who led the attack on the anti-Jubilee protestors, with back-up from the EDL and Infidels:

The EDL's claim that they are not part of the far right, but are merely a non-violent human rights movement whose aim is limited to peacefully protesting against Muslim extremists, is so laughable that you wonder why they insist on holding themselves up to ridicule by continuing to repeat these lies.

Not part of the far right? Fascist thug accompanying EDL banner throws a Nazi salute

Not part of the far right? EDL and NF members demonstrate side by side

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