"Hey! Wrong tower!"
Reverend Luke Powery, who is the dean of the Duke University Chapel, has issued a letter to the campus community calling for-you guessed it- Dialogue (sic).
http://www.wral.com/duke-chapel-dean-calls-for-dialogue-after-muslim-prayer-controversy/14366474/
"In a Jan. 18 letter addressed to the Duke Chapel community, the Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery acknowledged the “painful, stressful week that the Muslim community at Duke endured” and said the controversy reaffirmed the chapel’s role as a place of hospitality toward the diverse religions and cultures on campus."
Stop it. All they had to do was provide a room somewhere else without the hoopla of the call to prayer. I'm sorry, but having a Muslim call to prayer from the steeple is offensive when you consider that the daily prayers include Sura 1, which refers to Jews and Christians as "those who have incurred (God's) wrath" and "those who have gone astray" respectively. If Muslim students are "stressed and pained" that they lost their opportunity to lord it over the campus with their adhan, that is too bad. On the contrary, they have learned a valuable life's lesson. That is that people are waking up and saying no to this steady encroachment. Religion should be a private matter among congregants. Nobody wants it shoved down their throats. The call to prayer is fine in a Muslim-majority country. It is not fine in other countries where people would rather not be disturbed. Send a memo or better yet, an e-mail.
In addition, Duke is now talking of some "credible and serious" security threat as a reason for cancelling the use of the steeple.
http://www.wral.com/duke-reverses-plan-to-allow-islamic-call-to-prayer-from-campus-chapel/14359650/
What are they implying-that some bunch of Christians was going to bomb the chapel? Are you kidding me? Sorry, but the Crusades ended a long time ago. I suspect the real security threat they were worried about was the security of continued $$$$ from their donors.
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