“Amazing Grace,” Kamal Saleem said, is a song that describes his story.
He came from a totally different world from the one in which he lives today, said Saleem, a self-proclaimed ex-terrorist who converted from Islam to Christianity in the mid-1980s after nearly dying in a car accident.
Born into a large Sunni Muslim Lebanese family in the Middle East, he was taught to fight and to hate Jews and Christians from an early age, starting his first mission at age 7, smuggling weapons into Israel as a soldier for Yasser Arafat. His parents sat on either side of the family’s table, educating Saleem about Allah – the name for God in the Islam faith – and telling their young son that his highest calling was to destroy Western civilization, including Americans and Jews.
“The highest sin in Islam is to question Islam or to question Allah,” Saleem told about 600 attendees Thursday morning at the 37th annual Independence Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast. “In Islam, liberty, pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech, freedom of thoughts – all of these are false and must be destroyed.”
Saleem said he grew up “dirt poor” in a three-room house with a family of 14 brothers and sisters. At times, his speech at Community of Christ’s Laurel Club took a comedic tone, drawing laughter and applause from some audience members, including his description and imitation of “a redneck” Christian man from the South who helped him after his car accident.
Following his discharge from the hospital, a Christian family took Saleem in, and a group of children prayed for him in the name of Jesus Christ.
“I was trained to fight the best of the best,” Saleem said, “but I was not trained to fight love.”
Now in his mid-50s, Saleem is the author of “The Blood of Lambs,” and has spoken to political and military leaders, law enforcement agencies, foundations, faith organizations of different denominations and beliefs, universities and “receptive Muslim audiences,” according to his website.
“My heart’s desire is to see this nation reaching out for the Muslim,” Saleem said, “because the Muslim are good people at heart. They love God. Our fight is not against Muslims. My fight is against Islam. ... Not all Muslim are bad people.”
Not everyone was pleased with Saleem’s message, including Independence resident Josef Walker, who is a current member and a past president of the Independence Ministerial Alliance.
Saleem’s distortions of Muslim beliefs, including his leaving the impression that all Muslims are terrorists and wife beaters, left Walker concerned, he said.
“Are there Muslim extremists? Sure,” Walker said. “But his assumption that all of the student organizations in the United States are led by a terrorist organization – that’s the kind of rhetoric that was so sad to hear at a public event in our city. He was worse than I could have imagined he could be.”
Walker sat at the Prayer Breakfast with six of his Muslim friends, four of whom are medical doctors who practice in the Kansas City area. Walker said he apologized to his Muslim friends following Saleem’s speech and invited them to share their concerns with Mayor Don Reimal.
“It was painful to observe them hearing their beloved religion being slandered – that’s the only word for it. They were just in pain. It was very, very sad,” Walker said. “The tragedy is that there were people there who just don’t know anything about Islam. They wouldn’t know necessarily that it was wrong.”
India native Syed Hasan, a lifelong Muslim and a professor of geosciences at the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1979, said he left the Prayer Breakfast feeling sad for “the kindhearted folks” who attended.
“What they took away from the speech is that Islam and Muslim are not to be trusted,” Hasan said. “(Saleem) made many comments that were wrong and was not being factual and truthful about it. I think it is incumbent upon all of the civic leaders in Independence to undo the wrongs that he has done.”
Hasan said Saleem’s message instilled an element of fear in audience members about Islam. Hasan also questioned the authenticity of portions of Saleem’s speech and said Saleem misquoted the Quran, the Muslim holy book, and took some portions out of context.
Still, Hasan doesn’t regret attending the event.
“I’m glad that I went there. I had read something about him, but I wanted a firsthand experience of it,” said Hasan, who lives in Shawnee, Kan., and attended an Independence Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast for the first time Thursday. “When I heard about this, I looked up information about Kamal and had some doubts and concerns.”
Perhaps a more appropriate message, Walker said, would have been Saleem telling his personal conversion story from Islam to Christianity.
But to Walker, very little of Saleem’s personal testimony was actually spoken.
“This would be my challenge to mayor’s committee: Would you have a Christian fundamentalist who converted to Islam come and talk, or are we using our power to promote a particular viewpoint within a religion?” Walker said. “Saleem’s beliefs of hating other people don’t promote the kind of Christianity that I practice.”
Reimal said he thought the breakfast went well and talked with attendees who were pleased with the speaker, as well as Wennely Quezada’s musical performances.
Quezada, a sixth grade student at James Bridger Middle School, sang three selections, each of which drew a standing ovation from those in attendance. Upon first hearing her sing at the opening ceremonies for the Independence School District this academic year, Reimal thought to himself, “I have to have her for my Prayer Breakfast this year.”
“No one was upset – well, I wouldn’t say no one. But they were upset before we had the Prayer Breakfast,” Reimal said. “If those were the only eight who were upset about what was said, then I’m not counting that as a minus to the Prayer Breakfast. There were a lot of people who learned about what was going on in the world, and they weren’t upset about it.”
Regardless of the differing viewpoints, Reimal said the 2011 Prayer Breakfast can be counted as a successful one in Independence.
“I appreciate the folks who came out and were willing to listen and made their mind up after hearing what our speaker had to say,” he said. “Again, I think people learned a lot and were very interested in what he had to say.”
