Kamal Saleem of Berkley spoke at the rally and testified before the House Commerce Committee supporting legislation introduced by Rep. Dave Agema (R-Grandville) that would require contractors for the state and temporary agencies to use E-Verify, a federal system to verify a person’s immigration status.

E-Verify is a federal program that has been found to return false denials, resulting in people losing jobs. The legislation was tabled by the Commerce Committee for a second time.

“I came to the United States of America not to love you all. I came to be — exactly — to destroy this country as a terrorist. We crossed the Canadian border. We brought weapon caches right through cities, through Windsor,” Saleem told attendees. “This is what is all happening by allowing illegals in here to come through our borders and become a part of our country. They can become legal terrorists in your hometown to kill your children, and your grandchildren and your future as we know it.”

Saleem claims that he was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as well as the Muslim Brotherhood when he came to the U.S. in 1979 “for the first time.” He said the E-Verify system was important to prevent future terror attacks on American soil.

“This (E-Verify) will not allow people like me to come to this country to destroy it and would allow the American people to legally work and have their freedom in this country,” he said.

For Calvin College history professor Douglas Howard, there is much to doubt about the claim to have been a former terrorist. Howard researched Saleem’s background in 2007 when the Calvin College Republican Club invited him to present at the conservative Christian college. Howard said that as an expert in Middle East history, his department tasked him with reviewing Saleem’s credentials and advising the department on whether or not it should co-sponsor the event.

“I concluded this person is a fraud,” Howard says.

Howard tried to get the appearance canceled but it was too late in the process.

In a 2010 Books and Culture: A Christian Review article about Saleem’s book “The Blood of the Lambs,” Howard explains how he first came to question Saleem’s story.

A look at his website told me immediately that he was not who he said he was. The signature of his deception was his statement that “in my family was the Grand Wazir of Islam.” The term is ridiculous, a spurious title meant to mislead the innocent with an aura of authority.

In the conclusion of that article — in which he calls Saleem a fraud and deconstructs errors in his book — Howard writes of Saleem’s book:

“It is insulting to be told that we have to look down the barrel of a gun to see life’s inner meaning, or that only a killer can really understand Islam. Authentic experience comes when we see a man or a woman before we see a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew; when we hear a human voice before we hear ‘a thick Middle Eastern accent’; when the person next to us on the plane is a young man—with a father and a mother waiting for him—before he is a Nigerian or an American. Anything else leads down the road toward extremism. Although Kamal Saleem has forsaken much, he has evidently not yet forsaken that.”

Howard says that while he was doing research on Saleem, he called a former employer. He did not name the employer during the interview with Michigan Messenger, however, he identifies the employer as Focus on the Family in Books and Culture review.

“He claimed to have been a former football player, a placekicker for Barry Switzer (former coach of the University of Oklahoma football program) and claimed that he won a game in the last three seconds with a field goal,” Howard recalled Focus on the Family staff telling him. The problem? No such game existed and while Saleem makes a big deal about hiding his real name, Focus on the Family staff referred to him by his given name — allowing Howard to check Oklahoma rosters.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation reported in 2008 on Saleem’s history:

Kamal Saleem, whose real name is Khodor Shami, worked for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network for sixteen years, and was hired by Focus on the Family in 2003. In 2006, he launched Koome Ministries, whose mission is to “expose the true agenda of [Muslims] who would deceive our nation and the free nations of the world… America must wake-up and set a continued Christian agenda of Liberty and Truth as a standard to follow throughout the free world.”

Focus on the Family staff expressed discomfort with Saleem, Howard said, particularly with his claims of Christian conversion. Saleem alleges that he was in a near fatal car wreck, but Christians cared for him, taking him into their home and provided for him while he healed. That he says lead to his conversion. In an interview with Pat Robertson 700 Club TV show, Saleem says he called out for Allah to answer him, and when he didn’t he decided to kill himself for questioning his faith. At that moment, Saleem claims, the Christian God came to him. Robertson is transfixed by this tale.

Saleem has never identified what city or state this near fatal accident occurred in, nor has he ever identified the Christian doctor who allegedly gave him refuge and helped him pay his bills while he was recovering.

The history professor says that Saleem’s claim on Tuesday to have smuggled weapons into the U.S. is new. “It sounds like he is upping the ante,” Howard said.

The story Saleem tells is bewitching, Howard admits.

“It preys on people’s lack of information and their worries and their fears and their wanting to find a way to justify their own attitudes toward Islam and Middle East policy,” Howard says. “There’s a market out there that wants Kamal Saleem’s story to be true.”

And Saleem is not alone in this new, post 9-11 market. He has appeared with another well known former terrorist, Walid Shoebat. Shoebat was recently the subject of an investigation by CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 show. That investigation raised questions about the veracity of Shoebat’s claims to being a former terrorist.

Boyd, the DOJ National Security spokesman, declined to discuss the concerns about Saleem’s accuracy.

“Further, we have no comment on whether Mr. Saleem’s other statements are accurate or not,” he said.

Maria Elena Garcia Upson, spokesperson for the Citizenship and Immigration Services, would not comment on Saleem’s case specifically, citing privacy rules. But she did comment in general about alleged ex-terrorists receiving American citizenship.

“Well obviously it would be a concern in general, but we are not the enforcement arm, you will have to talk to Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Upson said.

An ICE spokesperson did not return inquires by press time.

Others are arguing that if Saleem’s story is true, that raises even more questions both about his citizenship and his appearance at the rally.

“If Representative Agema recruited as a speaker an admitted terrorist who says he brought weapons into the United States my first question is why this guy isn’t in custody or in jail? And why was Mr. Saleem allowed to become a United States citizen?” asks David Holtz, executive director of Progress Michigan. “In trying to make a point about illegal immigration, Dave Agema instead makes you question his judgment and sanity. Perhaps the FBI should be invited to future Agema events since he may decide he needs more terrorists to deliver his talking points.”

State Rep. Rashida Talib (D-Detroit) went even further.

“I am unforgiving for any terrorist,” Talib said in exclusive interview with Michigan Messenger. “He should be deported for that. And you can quote me on that.”

Agema defends Saleem.

“What happened with Kamal is totally different,” Agema says of the reformed terrorist. Agema says following his conversion to Christianity, Saleem helped the federal government track down terror cells in the U.S., a claim that could not be verified.

“As a general rule, the Justice Department does not publicly comment on whether or not someone has provided assistance to the U.S. government in counter-terrorism operations,” said Dean Boyd, spokesman for the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, when asked what role, if any, Saleem had played in uncovering terror plots in the U.S.

Howard also called Agema out over Saleem’s appearance and testimony.

“It is really unfortunate that Rep. Agema has decided to align himself with this kind of cynical opportunism,” he said. “That is unbelievable that he could testify before a House committee.”

With Baptists, Huckabee leads Romney 39-16 with 10 for Palin and 10 for Gingrich. Among Dutch Reformed voters, Huckabee leads Palin 50-13 with 8 for Romney. Huckabee leads Palin 34-14 with non-Baptist, non-Reformed evangelicals with 7 for Romney and Gingrich and 5 for Pawlenty. With Baptists, Huckabee leads Romney 39-16 with 10 for Palin and 10 for Gingrich.

The poll only counted those who attended services weekly into its subtotals broken down by religion, or a total of 65 percent of the voters. (The original poll gave Huckabee a 24-19 lead over Mitt Romney, with Palin at 11 percent and Newt Gingrich at 8 percent.)

Overall, evangelicals were 35 percent of those who attended services weekly, while mainline protestants were 23 percent, Lutherans 20 percent, and Catholics 19 percent. Catholics favored Romney over Huckabee by a 25-16 percent margin, while Lutherans split at 19 percent for Romney, Huckabee and Palin.

Huckabee is still uncertain about entering the presidential race — he has said that if he does run, the announcement will come this summer. If so, in Iowa, he will have a base of evangelical voters that know him and support him already.

Comprehensive reform won’t get passed without some Republican support. Evangelicals said they support reform because they don’t want to see families ripped apart by deportations and restrictive immigration laws. But don’t count on evangelicals to continue to support immigration reform if it includes provisions to ease immigration for gay and lesbian couples, a measure Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Mike Honda (D-Calif.) want included in a comprehensive reform bill:

Taking the lead for immigration overhaul is the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that represents more than 40 denominations. Last year the association passed a resolution calling for comprehensive immigration overhaul, and this year reform is one of its top three policy priorities, along with reducing abortions and studying the impact of climate change on the poor. The association’s president, the Rev. Leith Anderson, was in the front row for Mr. Obama’s address, along with Dr. Land and Mr. Rodriguez.

One of the more recent converts to overhaul is Mr. Staver. He said that deporting illegal immigrants violated the biblical imperative to welcome the stranger. “We’re going to break up families,” Mr. Staver said, “and I don’t see how you could claim to be pro-family and condone the separation of families.”

(To which Mr. Fischer responded, “We don’t want to break up families, so let’s help them all return to their country of origin.”)

Mr. Staver was one of six evangelical leaders, including two prominent black evangelicals, who issued a statement last month advocating a comprehensive new law. One, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican candidate for Ohio governor in 2006 and now a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group, said he expected more evangelical leaders to come on board.

But Mr. Blackwell said the whole effort could implode if the final legislation extended family reunification provisions to same-sex couples where one spouse did not have legal status. For evangelicals, he said, “That would be a deal-breaker.”

Immigrants, including veterans fighting deportation, will speak at the event, as will Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who, with House and Senate allies, will set out key principles of a comprehensive immigration reform bill he plans to introduce later this fall. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) and Congressional Asian Pacific Caucus Member Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) are also expected to speak at the event.

The rally is being organized by an immigrants’ advocacy coalition called Reform Immigration for America.

A combined 54 percent of at-least-weekly church-goers say torture is either often or sometimes justifiable; for those who attend monthly or a few times a year, that figure is 51 percent; for those who do not attend, it is 42 percent.

Evangelicals, according to the survey, are more prone to saying torture is justifiable than members of the nation’s other two main Christian groups: so-called “mainline” Protestants and white, non-Hispanic Catholics. Unaffiliateds–a conglomerated group of atheists, agnostics, and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular–support torture the least: 40 percent say it’s justifiable often or sometimes.

An emailer notes to Good, “I’m hoping they aren’t approving of torture for the sake of causing pain, but rather find it necessary in order to protect the country from attack.” Uh, that’s more Christlike? You can torture people when you think you have good reason? Like Adam says, remember this the next time the right talks about the collapse of moral values in America heralded by two people of the same gender who seek to spend the rest of their lives together in matrimony.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) (Zuma Press)

WASILLA, Alaska – Pastor Larry Kroon of the Wasilla Bible Church, where Gov. Sarah Palin attends services, calls on his congregation to make up their own minds about politics.

“I’m not the one you look to for policy—foreign, domestic or local,” Kroon said Sunday morning to a sea of 500 attendees. “I’m not the one you look to for analysis.”

Instead, Kroon challenges church members to hold him to task on his core religious mission, to help them discover the “wonder, glory and mystery of Jesus.” Though Kroon has said he does not push an ideological perspective, when the church faithful study the Bible, they tend to see the world through a conservative lens.

Palin has also been a member of the Assembly of God Church, where she gave a talk in June to high-school students urging them to pray that an Alaska gas pipeline and the war in Iraq fulfill “God’s will.”

In tapping Palin, who is ardently pro-life, Sen. John McCain’s Republican presidential campaign is hoping to galvanize the evangelical base of the party. Since Palin joined the ticket, all indications show that the Alaska maverick has lit a fire under the sleeping giant of the GOP Christian conservative base that had so far shown lackluster support for McCain. Evangelicals, who have often been overlooked in this campaign cycle, are suddenly becoming a critical demographic — thanks to Palin.

Bridging the “enthusiasm divide,” Palin has not entirely spelled doom for Sen. Barack Obama, who has some religious support of his own among progressive evangelicals.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

But the Palin pick did boost McCain’s efforts to court the religious right, regarded as among his biggest weaknesses. Back in 2006, McCain was accused of flip-flopping in supporting the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, having previously called him an “agent of intolerance.”

In contrast, conservative religious powerbrokers, like James Dobson, who had expressed scepticism about McCain, quickly took to Palin, a lifelong pro-lifer and card-carrying member of the National Rifle Assn. In the 24 hours hours after McCain announced his selection, his campaign raked in a record $7 million in Internet donations.

“She’s a devastatingly good choice,” said Jacques Berlinerblau, the author of “Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics” and director of the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University. “From a religious perspective, Biden gave [Obama] nothing.”

Berlinerblau, who has not endorsed a presidential candidate, pointed out that the evangelical voting bloc does more for McCain than just energize voters in an abstract sense. These active churchgoers have a framework in place to bring out the vote, particularly in large churches. Churches like Palin’s, which enjoy non-profit tax status, are not allowed to endorse candidates, though pastors can freely discuss hot-topics like abortion.

“Infrastructure is almost synonymous with ‘church,’” Berlinerblau said. “Everybody knows what’s going on, [the pastor] just has to roll out the issues and everybody knows what he’s talking about.”

Though Berlinerblau predicts a backlash against such use of religious institutions in future elections, the pulpit could end up being a powerful political tool in 2008.

Obama does have an advantage against such mobilizing, compared to Democratic contenders of the past. The Illinois senator carries extra religious clout. During the Democratic and Republican primary seasons, a Time magazine poll found that among likely voters, 24 percent considered Obama “a person of strong religious faith” out of a list of prominent politicians, while about 15 percent of respondents said the same about McCain.

At the time of the poll, in May 2007, Time magazine pointed to a history of black Democratic politicians being associated with mobilizing their communities through Christian churches. Obama was perceived in this same context.

Considering that Sen. John Kerry appealed to the progressive wing of evangelicals and managed to siphon off about 20 to 22 percent of the evangelical vote in 2004, some experts say Obama has a good shot of holding some ground with the voting bloc.

Martin E. Marty, a prominent religion and culture scholar, said it’s important to remember that evangelicals are not a homogenous group.

“In the last eight years – the Bush years – there has been a great growth in the internal diversity of the group called evangelicals,” Marty said. “I don’t think many of them would depart from the criticism of abortion, but I don’t think they all give it the same priority.”

Marty noted that many evangelicals ascribe to a the social justice ethic outlined by Cardinal Joseph Berardin in 1983, the “consistent ethic of life” or seamless web. This philosophy opposes abortion but also euthanasia, war and the death penalty.

Factoring in these progressive evangelicals, Berlinerblau estimates Obama could be carrying as much as 24 to 25 percent of the voting bloc.

Now in a neck-and-neck race with McCain, Obama needs to hold onto them, particularly in swing states like Ohio.

“If Kerry had won 6 percent more evangelicals in Ohio [in 2004],” Berlinerblau said he calculated in researching his book, “he would have won the election.”

Midwestern evangelicals are perhaps a better target for the Obama campaign than elsewhere in the country, like the Deep South. Marty pointed out that in places like the upper-Midwest, residents are exposed to more of a mix of religious viewpoints that tend to foster less extreme views, making them more likely to support a more liberal candidate.

Just weeks ago, Obama’s Midwestern strategy was aimed largely at another voting bloc — independents. This group was expected to define the 2008 election, particularly with a maverick match-up between Obama and McCain. But. McCain’s choice of Palin has so shaken up the scene that evangelicals may once again emerge as the deciding vote.

In 2004, many observers had expected a less-energized evangelical vote. President George W. Bush, however, won more than 10 percent more of the evangelical vote in 2004 than he did in 2000, according the non-partisan Pew Research Center.

The question now is how much of the vote Obama will siphon off from McCain. It’s difficult to know exactly how the internal divisions of evangelicals break.

At services on Sunday, Kroon noted the difficulty of trying to understand who someone is — whether its Jesus or your hometown mayor.

“Look at us struggle,” Kroon said.