Come And Use Our Church

Guess who is coming to the US next month?

Despite a diplomatic standoff over nuclear weapons and other difficult issues, a former Iranian president is making plans to speak next month at the Washington National Cathedral.

The former president, Mohammad Khatami, would be the most senior Iranian official to visit Washington since Islamic fundamentalists seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979 and held Americans there hostage for 444 days.

And it gets better, really.  Guess who took it upon himself to suggest that we let Khatami come over here and use the National Cathedral to lecture us about how to forge a peace with Islam?

At the Cathedral, the Rev. Canon John L. Peterson, director of its Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation, said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had invited Khatami to participate in a conference Sept. 5-6 to promote dialogue.

He said the church’s center “thought it would be appropriate to invite the president to speak on the role that the three Abrahamic faiths can play in shaping peace.”

Okay, if we really want to do something this stupid, I’m not objecting on religious grounds.  After all, the National Cathedral has to be open to a great many perspectives.  Khatami’s speach isn’t a religious service.

But it is interesting that a non-Muslim is forbidden from entering Mecca, or it is forbidden to enter many Islamic nations with Christian items, such as bibles.  The Islamic world is not open to non-Muslims, yet we don’t seem to have a problem with inviting them into what many of us consider holy sites to lecture us about our sins.

To be fair, as far as ‘moderates’ go, Khatami could be considered open to sanity.  He chants the standard ‘Death to America, down with Israel, yada yada yada’ while trying to introduce reforms while president of Iran.

But do we really need him here?

And incidently, who knew Darth Vader had a place at the Cathedral?