"Keeping the Peace" by Arresting (Non-Violent) Christians

If you are a Muslim Arab-American with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood planning to build a mega-mosque overlooking what was once the smoking hole of Ground Zero, New York, where 19 Muslims murdered 3,000 innocent civilians, the city fathers and mothers will strew flowers in your path and call everyone opposed to that idea a "bigot." In fact, the Chief of Police will go out of his way to assure everyone that you are not a security threat.

However, if you are a Christian Arab-American with ties to an Evangelical Church planning to hand out copies of the Gospel of John printed in Arabic at an "Arab Festival" in Dearborn, Michigan, you can expect to be arrested, and the Chief of Police will go out of his way to assure everyone that you are an impediment to "keeping the peace."

Dearborn used to part of the United States, where freedom of speech and religion were protected under the U.S. Constitution. Now Dearborn is part of the Muslim world, where freedom of speech and religion are rigorously denied under Sharia law, which mandates that non-Muslims, as second-class citizens, are forbidden to proselytize to Muslims.

Muslims around the world are quite diligent about enforcing this aspect of Sharia law. How about the time 60 Moroccan security officers raided a Bible study group near Marrakech, arrested and held 18 Moroccans, including infants and children, and deported the American citizen who was present. Or when Iranian authorities imprisoned and tortured an Assyrian pastor they suspected of "converting Muslims." Or when a mob of 20 Muslims savagely beat two young Christians in Fulgazi, Bangladesh, for showing a "Jesus film." Occurrences like these--and much worse--are, sadly, commonplace throughout the Muslim world.

Here's something that happened in Dearborn, Michigan, last year at this time:

This year at the "Arab" Festival, the police again arrested two of these young Christians and two others. When the police released them, the next morning, they held onto the Christians' cameras, apparently because they do not want to display proof that the Christians were not in fact disturbing the peace, at least as it is defined in the United States and not in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, or Sudan. A Sudanese Christian, Pastor George Saeig, escaped arrest only with the help of a temporary restraining order issued by a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

From the Thomas More Law Center:

Arrested on charges of Breach of the Peace are: Negeen Mayel, Dr. Nabeel Qureshi, Paul Rezkalla, and David Wood. Mayel, an eighteen year old female, whose parents emigrated from Afghanistan and [who is] a recent convert from Islam to Christianity, was also charged with failure to obey a police officer’s orders. She was approximately 100 feet away and videotaping a discussion with some Muslims when her camera was seized.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, “These Christian missionaries were exercising their Constitutional rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion, but apparently the Constitution carries little weight in Dearborn, where the Muslim population seems to dominate the political apparatus. It’s apparent that these arrests were a retaliatory action over the embarrassing video of the strong arm tactics used last year by Festival Security Guards [above]. This time, the first thing police officers did before making the arrests was to confiscate the video cameras in order to prevent a recording of what was actually happening.”

Thompson continued, “Contrary to the comments made by Police Chief Ron Haddad, our Constitution does not allow police to ban the right of free speech just because there are some hecklers.  Not all police officers approve of the way their department treated these Christians.”

These four young Christians are not eager to give up their Constitutional rights. Here is part of the video they made:

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