Dark Bilious Vapors

if there really was a "religious Left". I don't mean to imply that there aren't religious progressives/liberals (and thank what powers that be for that)--a quick glance at the Right Christians can serve to disabuse you of that notion PDQ--I just wish that they were as organized, as loud, and as "in yer face" as the Christian Right. However, this sounds to me like a pretty damn good start:

Organizers canceled a planned prayer breakfast Tuesday after learning that most of Washington County's mayors and one of two main speakers wouldn't attend the May 5 event because a Muslim leader was excluded from participating.

"The purpose of the event is gone," said Roy Dancer, the breakfast's longtime registrar for its sponsor, the Beaverton-Tigard Chapter of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship & Concerned Citizens.

Uniting the community's pastoral, political and business people in prayer had been the purpose of the Mayors' Prayer Breakfast of Washington County, he said. Without the host -- Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake -- and other mayors, he said, that couldn't happen.

Shahriar Ahmed, president of the Bilal Mosque Association in Beaverton, along with Rabbi David Rosenberg of Portland, had been invited to the otherwise Christian breakfast at Drake's request.

Ahmed had been scheduled to give the breakfast's closing prayer from the dais before the fellowship informed him he couldn't.

...

Drake told fellowship members late last week he would not attend because they had withdrawn their invitation to Ahmed. Rosenberg also decided not to attend. And several other county mayors and Tom Brian, chairman of the county's Board of Commissioners, quickly followed Drake's lead.

Len on 05.01.04 @ 07:55 PM CST