Prayer
vigil held at Indiana campus for American held by Islamic State
Send a link to a friend
[October 09, 2014]
By Susan Guyett
INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - More than 200
people, many wearing white as a sign of peace, gathered on an Indiana
university campus on Wednesday to pray for an American humanitarian
worker held hostage by Islamic State militants.
|
Abdul-Rahman Kassig, formerly known as Peter Kassig, 26, was
threatened in a video issued last week by Islamic State militants
that purported to show the beheading of British aid worker Alan
Henning, 47.
Kassig had been a student at Butler University in Indianapolis,
where nearly 250 people gathered in prayer with his friends and his
parents, who did not speak to the crowd.
Many in the audience wore white as a sign of peace as speakers
talked of Kassig's humanitarian efforts and the plight of those he
was helping Syria before his capture.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Oct/09/images/ads/current/napa_bch1-3108.png)
During the vigil, Hazem Bata, the executive director of the Islamic
Center of North America, asked Kassig's captors to have mercy on him
"and be warned that God also said he who kills a soul unjustly will
be as if he killed all humankind."
Kassig's parents have said through a spokesperson that their son was
doing humanitarian work through an organization he founded to treat
refugees from Syria when he was taken captive on Oct. 1, 2013.
Kassig converted to Islam while in captivity and has adopted the
name Abdul-Rahman, the family spokesperson said.
[to top of second column] |
![](../images/ads/current/richardson_lda_040113.png)
Henning's beheading, condemned by British Prime Minister David
Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama, was the fourth such killing
of a Westerner by Islamic State, following the deaths of two U.S.
journalists and another British aid worker.
(Editing by Mary Wisniewski, Brendan O'Brien and Eric Walsh)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Oct/09/images/ads/current/rohlfs_lda_051513.png) |