CURRENT PUBLISHING: Beckwith calls for government to ban Islamic call to prayer
Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is calling for the government to ban Islamic public calls to prayer.
Beckwith, who also is pastor of the Life Church campus in Noblesville, made the comment during an appearance on the June 26 episode of the “Conservative Review” podcast.
“If you’re a mosque and you want to have a loudspeaker and you want to start pumping these out five times a day locally, the state can say, you’re not going to do that,” Beckwith, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist, said on the podcast. “We’re not going to let you put these words of death and destruction throughout the city streets in any of our cities, right?”
On July 10, Beckwith confirmed his position in a social media post.
“Yes, I 100% want to ban mosques in America from blaring the Muslim call to prayer through loudspeakers 5 times a day across our cities,” he stated. “Hope this clarifies everything and have a great weekend!”
Current contacted the lieutenant governor’s office with questions about Beckwith’s reasons for supporting a ban and whether Islamic calls to prayer have been reported as problematic in specific communities and received a statement from Deputy Communications Director Graham Loughead in response.
“Hoosiers across Indiana are concerned about the rise of Islam, not only in our state, but across the country,” the statement reads. “Lt. Gov. Beckwith will always stand up for American values and refuses to apologize for saying Sharia Law has no place in this country and that America is now and always should be one nation under God.”
Also on the podcast, Beckwith claimed that America is a Christian nation, which gives Christianity precedence over other faiths in public life.
The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a July 10 statement describing Beckwith’s remarks on the podcast as “fearmongering and constitutional misinformation.”
“The adhan is a peaceful call to prayer recited by Muslims around the world for more than 14 centuries. To portray it as a call to ‘death and destruction’ is not only offensive — it is a malicious falsehood that demonizes an entire faith and the millions of Americans who practice it,” stated Hafsa Haider, communications director for CAIR-Chicago.
Current contacted Life Church for comment and didn’t receive a response.