Consorting with Muslims, Again!

Last night we broke bread with Muslims for the first time since returning from our Silk Road bicycle crossing. Claire's father Dave and stepmother Lynn, took us to a fund raising dinner for the local Muslim association in Carroll County Maryland. The draw was a wonderful Pakistani dinner, hot and savory. They are now having Friday prayers, in a local Christian church which I found both amazing and wonderful.

The church apparently lost a few members and were criticized by a few locals who seem to think all Muslims are terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers. That is ignorant. It's like saying that because the KKK carried crosses when they hung Negroes in the South, that all Christians of the time supported murder.

The food and the faces, the scarves on the women, brought back memories of hearing prayers from minarets as we rode Zippy across Central Asia; and the amazing hospitality they showed to us as Americans, when our government is not very popular in much of the world.

Someday there will be a real mosque in Carroll County, and it will be partly because of the congregation of one Christian church who did what Jesus would do, and other Christian and secular Caucasian Americans who support the cause of inclusion and brotherly love.

It gave me a feeling of hope that I haven't had for awhile.