Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry - Squatters on the Moral High Ground

Oklahoma State Representative
John Bennett of Sallisaw.
by Theodore J. King - 
On September 11, 2014, Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry (TMM) released a statement condemning State Representative John Bennett of Sallisaw for comments he made about the dangers, he perceives, of Islam in the United States.

On February 15, 2015, TMM promoted a candle light prayer vigil held at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church for three Muslim college students: Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, who were shot to death by an atheist over a parking space in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

While it is reasonable for TMM to condemn the murder of anyone over a parking space, regardless of religion, TMM had no comment on the beheading of Colleen Hufford and the stabbing of Traci Johnson, employees of Vaughan Foods in Moore, Oklahoma. Alton Nolan, a recent convert to Islam who had renamed himself Jah'Keem Yisreal, on September 24, 2014, beheaded Colleen Hufford and stabbed Traci Johnson at the Vaughn Foods factory in Moore, Oklahoma. He was stopped from killing Johnson when the owner of the factory, a reserve Oklahoma County Deputy, shot Nolan/Yisreal, wounding him. TMM promoted and participated in a prayer vigil for the killings that occurred in North Carolina, a thousand miles from Tulsa, but made no mention of a killing by an Islamic fanatic, a little over a hundred miles away in Moore. In my meeting with Rev. Ray Hickman, TMM's executive director, on November 8, 2016, I asked him about this.