The decision by Hartford, Conn., leaders to begin kicking off their council meetings with a Koranic prayer -- in a show of solidarity with Muslims -- led to a busy morning Wednesday for staff members who were bombarded by hate mail overnight.
UPDATE 9/13/10: City backs off (won't have Muslim prayer), so Muslims counter
-- From "Hartford's Inclusion of Muslim Prayers in Council Meetings Sparks Outrage" by Stephen Clark, FoxNews.com 9/8/10
Council leaders decided they would invite local imams "to perform the invocations at beginning of the council meetings in September," a break from the typical start of meetings with Christian prayers, or occasionally an invocation by a rabbi.
"If they check their history, we're a Christian nation," said Pat McEwen, a spokeswoman for Operation Save America, an evangelical Christian group. "For years, prayers just referred to God. I think breaking with that tradition is a bad idea."
"I think they may have been offended but being offended is much less hard than ending up in hell," McEwen told FoxNews.com. "Those who are thinking Mohammed is the way is wrong and they're going to have an awful shock. ... I think opening with Islamic prayer is opening up for more people to go straight to hell."
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