Radio Djs Pull Stunt In Mosque
Religious leaders called Thursday for hate crime charges against three radio station disc jockeys who barged into a mosque as part of a stunt staged in response to a Muslim basketball star’s refusal to stand for the national anthem.
KBPI’s Joey Teehan, Dean Myers and Roger Beaty walked into the Colorado Islamic Center on Tuesday morning playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on a trumpet and bugle. Teehan was wearing a turban and a T-shirt featuring Denver Nuggets star Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.
The men laughed when they were asked to stop the music and leave the mosque, and they attempted to interview two worshipers during the live broadcast, which also was rebroadcast.
“This act was designed to motivate racial, ethnic and religious hatred,” said Mohammed Bashir, a representative of the Colorado Muslim Society, which issued a statement condemning the announcers’ actions.
Sister Peg Maloney of the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver called the stunt “a desecration of our own national anthem.”
The stunt apparently was triggered by Abdul-Rauf’s refusal to stand for the anthem before National Basketball Association games. After the league suspended the player for a game, he agreed to stand and pray silently.
As for the three disc jockeys, they were suspended indefinitely without pay for what KBPI manager Jack Evans called “some very poor judgment.”
Evans said earlier the stunt was “an ill-conceived attempt at humor” as part of the “Torture Tuesday” segment, in which Teehan has done things such as ski naked and sit in bowls of Froot Loops.
At a news conference Thursday at the mosque just outside Denver, religious leaders demanded that the disc jockeys be fired and prosecuted for religious hate crimes and trespassing.
Colorado Muslim Society President Mohamad Jodeh said the men wore shoes into the mosque, violating a strict Muslim prohibition, and also violated the prayer hall’s prohibition against music by playing their instruments so loudly that witnesses thought they had taken over the public address system.