Crowd hears pastor denounce Islam

The Flathead Valley may be more than 200 miles from the nearest mosque, but more than 250 people gathered in Kalispell last week to hear a controversial pastor from Spokane present a nearly three-hour denunciation of Islam.

The Flathead chapter of Act! for America brought Shahram Hadian to the Hilton Garden Inn Thursday night for a talk titled, “Unveiling the True Face of Islam: A Wake-up Call for the World.”

Hadian, who in 1999 converted from Islam to Christianity, has given talks throughout the Northwest detailing his opposition to the faith. He is the founder of the Truth in Love Project Ministry, which focuses on the threat of Islam.

On Thursday night, Hadian pulled no punches, calling President Obama a Muslim and condemning the Islamic religion, practiced by nearly 3 million Americans and more than a billion people worldwide, as “an evil ideology that is corrupting individuals, not the other way around.”

“I love Muslims, because I used to be one of them, but I am ‘anti’ the ideology,” said Hadian, who was born in Iran, but grew up in the United States and Canada.

By turns, Hadian’s lengthy discourse drew laughter, applause and gasps from attendees who paid $15 each to hear him. Afterward, many people said his high-energy presentation had resonated with them, listing the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States as their greatest concern.

Kalispell resident Russ Gerard likened the refugees to “a Trojan horse” and said he was motivated to take the message to his elected officials.

“They are coming into our country, and they’re just putting them wherever they want,” Gerard said. “How can they do that in America?”

Speaking the day after the massacre in San Bernardino, California, that left 14 people dead, Hadian repeatedly tied the event to his conviction that Islam is incompatible with American values. Law enforcement officials at the time had not declared a link between the shooting and the assailants’ faith, but now the FBI has linked the two shooters to radical Islam and to ISIS.

The shooting was evidence, Hadian said, of the danger posed by accepting Syrian refugees into the United States. Although neither of the California shooters were Syrian, the female terrorist had been vetted by Homeland Security when she entered the United States on a K-1 fiance visa.

“There is no making peace with the ideology of Islam,” he said. “It’s time we got bolder with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Hadian’s anti-Islamic views have attracted criticism from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Arsalan Bukhari, executive director of the organization’s Seattle branch, condemned Hadian’s approach as “fear-mongering” and “recycled anti-Semitism.”

Bukhari said millions of American Muslims, including thousands of physicians and men and women serving in America’s armed forces, have shown that Islam’s followers are far from un-American. “Their stories are just amazing. They’re all-American stories of people who are contributing to society and literally saving lives,” he said.

“When people like him make statements like this, they are not only false, they result in hate crimes against everyday Muslims,” Bukhari said. “They inspire violence, bullying, discrimination and taunts.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is itself controversial, and in 2007 the organization was named by U.S. federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding Hamas, a Palestinian group listed by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.

Bukhari called Act! for America an “anti-Muslim hate group,” citing its designation as such by the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center.

Caroline Solomon of Bigfork, who co-founded the local Act! for America chapter in 2014, disagreed with that characterization. Noting that the organization’s mission includes securing U.S. borders, becoming energy independent and protecting the rights of women and children, she said the group is not opposed to Islam.

The national organization’s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, visited the valley in July and spoke to a crowd of 500.

However, she avoided denouncing Islam itself, focusing instead on the religion’s extremists.

Nationwide, Act! for America has 300,000 members and more than 250 chapters. The Flathead Valley group was the first active chapter in Montana and has grown rapidly. Solomon said a typical work meeting brings about 70 to 80 members, and her group’s success has led to the recent establishment of another chapter in Lake County.

Among Hadian’s calls to action was the passage of laws prohibiting the imposition of sharia law in local and state jurisdictions. Earlier this year, Solomon’s group was instrumental in the introduction in the Montana Legislature of Senate Bill 199, which would have prohibited the use of foreign laws in state courts.

Sponsored by state Sen. Janna Taylor, R-Dayton, the bill died in committee during the regular legislative session, but Solomon said her group would work to reintroduce it in 2017.

“Everything that is happening in our country and worldwide, I think people are realizing that it is something you cannot say is not going to happen in Montana,” Solomon said. “There is a mosque in Bozeman. We have nothing against having a mosque; it is our constitutional right to do that, but people cannot say it is not affecting us in Montana.”

Hadian in part focused his closing remarks on the federal refugee resettlement program, through which some Syrian refugees are to be relocated to Twin Falls, Idaho.

“People go, ‘This is Montana, we don’t have problems with Islam here.’ Yet,” he said. “You, as a community, have to stand up, because once they come in and once they establish enclaves, trying to move them out is going to be almost impossible.”

While many of the attendees disapproved of the refugee program, not all of them embraced the full extent of Hadian’s views. Gerard’s friend, Art Upton, said he’s willing to listen to other viewpoints about Islam as well.

“He’s obviously an informed person,” Upton said of Hadian. “I don’t know what the other side says, per se, but I know what I believe, and I believe that most of the stuff he’s saying, there’s certainly some truth to that.”

He added that he had the opportunity to speak with a Muslim man during a recent plane ride.

“He came across as a mild-mannered fellow,” Upton said. “He has become American, and loves America and everything. But I think, there’s a lot of people out there. I think he’s in the minority.”

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.