{"id":6369,"date":"2011-08-22T13:15:27","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T17:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=6369"},"modified":"2011-08-22T13:15:27","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T17:15:27","slug":"npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims","title":{"rendered":"NPR: Tennessee church lends sanctuary to local Muslims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Tennessee\u00a0pastor\u00a0startled his neighborhood, his congregation and local Muslims when he\u00a0invited the\u00a0local Islamic\u00a0community to celebrate\u00a0Ramadan inside his church.<\/p>\n<p>Their own cultural center was under construction nearby. So, Pastor Steve Stone offered the main sanctuary at his 550-member Heartsong Church in Cordova, a Memphis suburb,\u00a0as\u00a0a place for Muslim faithful to pray during the holy week of Ramadan 2010.<\/p>\n<p>It sparked an unusual alliance that&#8217;s still strong a year later, reports National Public Radio.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obviously we were taken aback, but in a very positive way,&#8221; said Danish Siddiqui, a board member of the Memphis Islamic Center. On the NPR program\u00a0&#8220;All Things Considered,&#8221;\u00a0he told\u00a0guest host Laura Sullivan, &#8220;Muslims, we tend to think of ourselves as good neighbors, but Steve beat us to the punch.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>NPR reports:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Muslim community was building a new mosque, but it was a delicate time. Proposed Islamic centers were kicking up controversy from New York to Murfreesboro \u2014 another Tennessee town just 200 miles away from Cordova.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were looking at some close-by halls and rental spaces and none of them were available,&#8221; Siddiqui says. They asked Stone if they could borrow a small space inside his Heartsong Church. &#8220;He said, &#8216;No. You&#8217;re going to pray in our main worship space.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were so honored to be asked, because we knew that if they ever had any thought that we would say no, they would not have asked us,&#8221; Stone says.<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone was as thrilled as Stone however. He received criticism from colleagues \u2014 and even members of his own church \u2014 who felt that he was blending Christianity and Islam. Ultimately, 20 members left his church.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/08\/21\/139831309\/a-ramadan-story-of-two-faiths-bound-in-friendship\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Tennessee\u00a0pastor\u00a0startled his neighborhood, his congregation and local Muslims when he\u00a0invited the\u00a0local Islamic\u00a0community to celebrate\u00a0Ramadan inside his church. Their own cultural center was under construction nearby. So, Pastor Steve Stone offered the main sanctuary at his 550-member Heartsong Church in Cordova, a Memphis suburb,\u00a0as\u00a0a place for Muslim faithful to pray during the holy week of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,55],"tags":[2204,1460,2208],"class_list":["post-6369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-islam","tag-christian","tag-heartsong-church","tag-islam"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>NPR: Tennessee church lends sanctuary to local Muslims<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NPR: Tennessee church lends sanctuary to local Muslims\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Tennessee\u00a0pastor\u00a0startled his neighborhood, his congregation and local Muslims when he\u00a0invited the\u00a0local Islamic\u00a0community to celebrate\u00a0Ramadan inside his church. Their own cultural center was under construction nearby. 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Their own cultural center was under construction nearby. So, Pastor Steve Stone offered the main sanctuary at his 550-member Heartsong Church in Cordova, a Memphis suburb,\u00a0as\u00a0a place for Muslim faithful to pray during the holy week of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-08-22T17:15:27+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims","name":"NPR: Tennessee church lends sanctuary to local Muslims","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-08-22T17:15:27+00:00","dateModified":"2011-08-22T17:15:27+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/npr-tennessee-church-lends-sanctuary-to-local-muslims#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"NPR: Tennessee church lends sanctuary to local Muslims"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6369"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6371,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6369\/revisions\/6371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}