(2003-10-29) — The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today filed suit against the Bush administration, claiming that the annual White House Ramadan feast is an “egregious breach of the separation of church and state.”
“This is worse than saying ‘under God’ during the Pledge at public school,” said an unnamed ACLU spokesman. “The President himself hosted this explicitly-Muslim feast in the peoples’ house — the White House. Taxpayer dollars were used to pay for some or all of the food, the decorations, the staff. Forcing the people to pay for a religious event is unconstitutional.”
The traditional feast, or Iftar, breaks the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. President Bush began the tradition of hosting an Iftar in 2001.
Keynote speaker General William ‘Jerry’ Boykin, the undersecretary of defense in charge of finding Osama bin Laden, called the Iftar a “battle between food and eater, with a predictable outcome.”
Meanwhile, several Muslim Imams marked the occasion by denouncing Islamic terrorism and calling on faithful Muslims to turn over Osama bin Laden, his deputies and financiers to the United States to face charges in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

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