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The religious right is in full froth this week as some American Muslims prepare to gather in prayer in the nation’s capital on Friday. The stated objective of the “Our Time Has Come” gathering, according to organizers who hope 50,000 Muslims will take part, “is to invite the Muslim Communities and friends of Islam to express and illustrate the wonderful diversity of Islam.”

The event isn’t universally welcome among American Muslims. Some, such as blogger Aziz Poonawalla at Beliefnet.com, worry that the event hasn’t been well thought out, particularly regarding how it will be perceived by non-Muslims in America:

“I certainly understand and appreciate the sentiments and intentions of this, but it just strikes me as the wrong way to go about it. It’s unwise to ignore the “optics” of such an event upon the paranoid segment of the American public – who were out in force at the Tea Party last week on the National Mall – who will certainly see the event as a threatening gesture which only validates their racism and Islamophobia.”

Sadly, such fears about reaction from the extremist right in America appear to be well-founded. David Gibson at PoliticsDaily notes some of this:

Indeed, the online publication from David Horowitz, FrontPageMag.com, sounded the alarm in an article Monday titled “Taking Islamism to the Streets,” and the title of the “9/12 Project” post is simply, “OUTRAGED!”“Bare Naked Islam” are calling the event “disgusting” and “treasonous” and warn that “50,000 Muslims, terrorists, and terrorist sympathizers” will turn the Capitol into “a giant outdoor mosque.” And Charisma magazine, a mainstream Pentecostal publication, quoted Christians in its account saying things like, “It is warfare time.”

The writers at Talk of “warfare” and other violent imagery has become standard fare for the religious right in America. That has been especially true when the rhetorical focus is on Islam. An e-mail today about the Washington event from the extremist group Operation Rescue/Operation Save America provides another example:

Abortion is Murder
Homosexuality is Sin
Islam is a Lie

The e-mail goes on to quote the group’s director, the Rev. Flip Benham, a former Garland pastor who ran Operation Rescue chapters in Dallas and Fort Worth before becoming head of the national organization. His rhetoric was especially incendiary:

“What do these three [abortion, homosexuality, Islam] have in common? They are, all three, physical manifestations of the battle between two seeds — the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Genesis 3:15. Islam is a visible manifestation of this battle and has been at war with Christianity for fourteen centuries. There is no dialogue, no common ground, no reaching across the aisle in this battle. We are not called to build bridges to Islam. We are called to storm the gates of hell — to defeat the false god of Islam with the unsheathed Word of God and to set people free from the monstrous tyranny and bondage of this religion birthed in the deepest pits of hell.”

Sadly, this kind of viciousness will only feed the hatred and fear among extremists both in America and in the Islamic world.