President Obama will host an iftar — the special evening meal observed during Ramadan — on Friday night in the White House dining room.
Obama participated in a similar gathering last year.
Celebrations like iftar dinners “remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings,” Obama wrote in a statement Wednesday.
“Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality … a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.”
The dinner comes amid a growing controversy over the proposed construction of an Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan, near the site of the World Trade Center. A CNN poll released Wednesday found that 68 percent of the public opposes the project.
Meanwhile, the White House — which has made great efforts to reach out to the Muslim community — has been silent on the issue.
“This is rightly a matter for New York City and the local community to decide,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Aug. 3.
Ramadan began on Wednesday and will end around Sept. 10.
Steve Hilton
babybttrfly
Mike
Aug 13, 2010 @ 16:17:51
When are people going to see….Obama is a Muslim, instead of a Christian as he leads us to think…..he canceled the National Day of Prayer ceremony in the White House this year and last year, yet held an Iftar dinner last year and now this year.
Sep 01, 2010 @ 22:08:31
Steve, here’s an unbelievable statement made by Obama at that Iftar dinner in the White House, which is an outright lie. Barack Obama, speaking on August 14, 2010, at the “Annual Iftar Dinner” at the White House, “The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan — making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.”…..this never happened.
The American navy, fed up with the constant depredations by Muslim corsairs, who were not so much pirates as Muslims who were encouraged to prey on Christian shipping, and who at times even recorded the areas of the Mediterranean where they planned to go in search of Christian prey, seized a ship that belonged to those who were ruled by the Bey of Tunis. And the Bey of Tunis wanted that ship back. He sent to Washington, for six months, a temporary envoy, one Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, who was not, pace Obama, “the first Muslim ambassador to the United States,” but, rather, a temporary envoy.
Here, from the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, is a bit of the background to the story:
The crisis with Tunis erupted when the USS Constitution captured Tunisian vessels attempting to run the American blockade of Tripoli. The bey of Tunis threatened war and sent Mellimelli to the United States to negotiate full restitution for the captured vessels and to barter for tribute.
The backdrop to this state visit was the ongoing conflict between the United States and the Barbary states, autonomous provinces of the Ottoman Empire that rimmed the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Soon after the Revolutionary War and the consequent loss of the British navy’s protection, American merchant vessels had become prey for Barbary corsairs. Jefferson was outraged by the demands of ransom for civilians captured from American vessels and the Barbary states’ expectation of annual tribute to be paid as insurance against future seizures. He took an uncharacteristically hawkish position against the prevailing thought that it was cheaper to pay tribute than maintain a navy to protect shipping from piracy.
Jefferson balked at paying tribute but accepted the expectation that the host government would cover all expenses for such an emissary. He arranged for Mellimelli and his 11 attendants to be housed at a Washington hotel, and rationalized that the sale of the four horses and other fine gifts sent by the bey of Tunis would cover costs. Mellimelli’s request for “concubines” as a part of his accommodations was left to Secretary of State James Madison.
During the six solar months Mellimelli was here, the lunar month of Ramadan occurred. And as it happens, during that Ramadan observed by Mellimelli, but naturally unobserved, hardly noticed, by the Americans, President Jefferson invited Sidi Soliman Mellimelli for dinner at the White House. He probably during that six-month period had done it more than once. Mellimelli replied that he could not come at the appointed hour of three thirty in the afternoon (our ancestors rose much earlier, and ate much earlier, and went to bed much earlier, in the pre-Edison days of their existence). That time fell, for him, but not for Thomas Jefferson or anyone else in the United States of America, during the fasting period of the month of Ramadan. He replied that he could not come at the hour set, that is, at half-past three, but only after sundown.
Jefferson, a courteous man, simply moved the dinner forward by a few hours. He didn’t change the menu, he didn’t change anything else. And moving the dinner forward by a few hours hardly turns that dinner into a soi-disant “Iftar Dinner.” Barack Obama’s trying to do so, trying that is, to rewrite American history, in order to flatter or please his Muslim guests, is false. And, being false, is also disgusting. It is disgusting for an American President to misrepresent American history to Americans, including all the schoolchildren who are now being subjected to all kinds of Islamic propaganda, cunningly woven into the newly-mandated textbooks, that so favorably misrepresent Islam, as here.
So there’s the rest of the story…….
Sep 04, 2010 @ 23:39:09
Oh, and what was left out, was the original reason that he had a copy of the Koran to start with…it was to study his enemy….
Sep 05, 2010 @ 09:05:43
Yes that is true…because they were having trouble with the muslims back then as well…..thus the Treaty of Tripoli to stop them from attacking our ships.