If the definition of a liberal is a person who won’t take his own side in a fight, Adam Ebbin and Kaye Kory, Democrats who represent Virginia’s 49th and 38th districts in the commonwealth’s House of Delegates, should have their pictures next to the word in Webster’s.

Ebbin, a homosexual Jew, invited Johari Abdul-Malik, a Muslim cleric, to deliver the opening prayer at the state General Assembly on March 11.  Kory, a white woman, cosponsored the invitation.  Many of Abdul-Malik’s coreligionists, if not Abdul-Malik himself, would like to see Ebbin’s head severed with a scimitar.  And they would want Kory locked up at home, draped head-to-toe in a suffocating burqa.  Apparently, neither gets it.

For those who don’t follow the activities of Muslims in what is now called Northern Virginiastan, Abdul-Malik hails from the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia.  Dar Al-Hijrah is known as the “9/11 mosque,” because two of the September 11 hijackers worshiped there.  So did Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Muslim “psychiatrist” who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood in November.

For his part, Abdul-Malik defended Dar Al-Hijrah congregant Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the man sentenced to life in prison for plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush.  When the authorities collared Abu Ali, Abdul-Malik unbosomed the typical hysterics for the New York Times: “Our whole community is under siege.  They don’t see this as a case of criminality.  They see it as a civil rights case.  As a frontal attack on their community.”

Abdul-Malik continued the caterwauling for Ali Al-Timimi, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2003 for inciting jihad against the U.S. government.  The problem?  Al-Timimi and his pals “have discovered they are not free to speak their minds.  And if our opinions are out of vogue in the current climate, we feel we are all at risk.”

Paul Sperry, author of Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington (in which Dar Al-Hij­rah is prominently featured) has reported that Abdul-Malik has said that sabotage is acceptable and that Islam will reign supreme in the United States.

Citing Abdul-Malik’s radicalism, opponents tried to keep him from praying at the General Assembly.  Jim Lafferty, head of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force, held a press conference the day of the prayer.  He urged members of the General Assembly either to rescind the invitation or to boycott the prayer.  Said Lafferty, “This lends an aura of respectability to someone who doesn’t deserve it.  This man has cheered on people who want to kill the United States president.”

Lafferty and others were ignored and accused of the usual.  Ebbin contributed to the ignorance: “I haven’t seen any substantiated reason to ask him not to come.”  That left the accusation to the imam himself.  Reported the Roanoke Times: “‘[R]acism still lives in the Old Dominion . . . But at the same time, there’s a new Dominion.  That’s what we’re going to show people.’”  Some of us liked the Old Dominion, but in any event no one protested Abdul-Malik, whose real name is Winslow Seale, because he is black.  They protested because he is a Muslim who defends terrorists.

So Abdul-Malik burbled his prayer to the “Divine and Creative force Known by many names”:

Let our legacy past

Propel us to enlightened future

Give us the strength

to go beyond tolerance to understanding

Where there is hate

Let us show love

Where there is fear

Let us find faith

Virginia’s General Assembly is the oldest continuously operating elected legislature in the western hemisphere.  As Lafferty noted on the Virginia conservatives page of TCUNation.com,“The State Capitol in Richmond is one of the most historic buildings in America.  It has echoed with the debates over the Revolutionary War and the War Between the States.  Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech there—‘Give me liberty or give me death!’  Abdul-Malik has the latter in mind for free Americans.”

Mr. Lafferty hasn’t got the message: He now lives in the New Dominion.