A Mosque at a Baptist University?

Cal Thomas | Syndicated columnist | Updated: Jul 26, 2002

A Mosque at a Baptist University?

Muslims at a historically black Baptist university in Raleigh, North Carolina, are fighting the university's plan to convert an on-campus mosque into offices for professors who have been displaced by construction of a football weight room.

The mosque and the building that surrounds it were built with a $1 million gift from King Khalid of Saudi Arabia in 1983. As many as 500 Middle Eastern Muslims then enrolled at the school. Today, about 100 Muslims from West Africa and the U.S. use the mosque.

September 11 has created a schism in the Raleigh community. But my question is what is a mosque doing on the campus of a Baptist university? Would Baptists be able to construct a church at a Muslim university in an Islamic country? Of course not. Christians, for example, are prohibiting from worshipping openly in most Islamic countries and in some restrictions are placed on private worship. Conversion can mean death in some countries, to the converted and to the person doing the witnessing.

Do we really understand the threat facing us? Apparently not. I'm Cal Thomas in Washington.

A Mosque at a Baptist University?