Guess Who Came to Dinner?

Well, this should have made for some interesting dinner conversation. Atlanta imam Plemon El-Amin, who's on the guest list for last night's Ramadan dinner at the White House, once compared U.S.-led raids on mosques held by insurgents in Iraq to white supremacist attacks on African-American churches during the 1960s. Via Nexis, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on October 16, 2004:

Imam Plemon El-Amin of the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam compared the outrage many Muslims feel about the raids to what African-Americans felt after the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four young black girls.

"At some point during the 1960s, churches were under attack and the people who actually perpetrated the attack felt that they were justified because that's where the boycotts and sit-ins were being organized," El-Amin said. He stressed, however, that he does not condone insurgents turning mosques into "any kind of fortress."

I recalled El-Amin's name from a story I wrote a few years back about two homegrown terrorists who met at El-Amin's Al-Farooq mosque in Atlanta. One has been convicted of terrorism charges, and the other is still on trial.

Too bad Jeremiah Wright wasn't on the guest list. The two would probably get along famously.