Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
For the second year in a row civil libertarians have accused the Dearborn Police Department of violating the First Amendment by arresting Christian missionaries talking and handing out literature to predominately Muslim attendees of the Dearborn International Arab Festival.
Prior to the event, one Christian ministry filed a federal lawsuit challenging rules that forbid the handing out of literature outside of a designated area near the entrance of the festival after they had encountered problems with the police in 2009. The district court rejected a request for a preliminary injunction against those rules, but the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and granted a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the enforcement of those rules.
A second ministry, Acts 17 Apologetics, attended the event to hand out literature and personally witness to festival goers with a goal of converting Muslims to Christianity. But before long the Dearborn Police Department arrested four members of the group -- two that were speaking to people and handing out fliers and two that were videotaping them doing so.
They were charged with breach of the peace and disobeying the order of a police officer. The police report claimed that one of the missionaries, a former Muslim convert named Nabeel Qureshi, was "screaming into the crowd" and said that they had to be arrested "to gain control of the situation and avoid a possible riotous crowd." It continues:
Negeen Mayel, Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood and Paul Rezkalla's actions caused a crowd to gather and become agitated. The weather conditions, hot and humid temperatures, fueled an already agitated crowd. This was evident by the crowds' yelling profanities and repeated calls to security and police on the behavior of Mayel, Qureshi, Wood and Rezkalla. When uniformed officers were present Qureshi was yelling into the crowd, further inciting the crowd.
Police seized the video of the events that were made by members of the group and held it for several weeks, finally releasing it last week. The ministry released a Youtube clip with the footage of Qureshi's arrest and what preceded it.
That video does not show Qureshi screaming into a crowd or inciting people, it shows him calmly answering questions from a group of young people at the festival and having a civil discussion with them when the police pushed through the group, handcuffed him and led him away.
Two days later, the four missionaries returned to the festival but stayed outside the grounds on a public sidewalk to hand out literature. Within minutes the Dearborn police arrive. They did not arrest the missionaries this time, but they told them that they had to move at least five blocks away from the festival site in order to hand out literature. One officer also forced one of the group to stop videotaping what was going on, putting his hand over the lens.
The ministry also released a Youtube video of those events, again showing no confrontations, no yelling or screaming, just two people peacefully handing out pamphlets to those walking by who wanted to take them.
The four missionaries were arraigned in state court on July 12. They are being represented by the Thomas More Law Center, the Christian legal group founded by pizza magnate Tom Monaghan. Richard Thompson, president of the organization, said in a press release:
"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. 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."
Dearborn Mayor John B. O'Reilly Jr. released a statement on the city's website on July 9, accusing the missionaries of deliberately manufacturing their arrest for publicity. He reiterated the charge in the police report that the defendants were "aggressively engaging passers-by in confrontational debate."
But the Thomas More Law Center is not alone in arguing that engaging in debate in a public place is not only not illegal, it is explicitly protected by the Constitution. The ACLU, a frequent adversary of the TMLC, agrees that the arrests appear to be a violation of the First Amendment.
Michael Steinberg, the legal director for the ACLU of Michigan, told the Messenger via email, "Based solely on the videotape, it appears that the man encouraging others to convert to Christianity was engaged in speech protected by the First Amendment. The videotape suggests that the man who was arrested was not harassing the people with whom he was speaking, nor was he inciting a riot; rather, he was engaged in the type of free exchange of ideas about religion that is valued in a free society. The man's message may not have been popular at this particular festival, but the Constitution protects unpopular speech as well as popular speech."
Steinberg also says that what happened on Sunday, June 20 -- when the same missionaries were shooed off a public sidewalk and told they had to be at least five blocks away to hand out literature -- looks like an abuse of authority as well.
"If it was being distributed on public streets outside the area reserved for the festival," he said, "then it was protected First Amendment activity because public streets are quintessential public forums where protection of freedom of speech is strongest."
He also noted that "videotaping police officers in public - especially when documenting perceived police misconduct - is activity protected by the Constitution."
Dan Ray, a professor of constitutional law at Cooley Law School in Ann Arbor, agrees. "If any local authority told the religious group that it could only distribute its literature five blocks away," he said, "that's a clear First Amendment violation." As a legal question, he said, this was "not even a close call."
Politics
Comments
Evidently the courts in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are supporting the rights of police to arrest anyone videotaping them based on wiretap laws. See http://gizmodo.com/5553765/are-cameras-the-new-guns. Hopefully, that will be challenged very soon.
Posted by: Alan B. | July 23, 2010 10:09 AM
Since when is incitement to riot protected speech?Shall these fantics also have the right to yell fire in crowded theater if they do it in the name of Jesus?
Personaly I think that these fools thould thank the cops for saving their sorry asses from the very violence which they deliberatly provoked.
Posted by: Paen | July 23, 2010 10:32 AM
Personaly I think that these fools thould thank the cops for saving their sorry asses from the very violence which they deliberatly provoked.
Spoken like a true progressive.
Posted by: John | July 23, 2010 10:34 AM
You gotta be careful with this one Ed, especially with believing the allegedly carefully-edited and misleadingly-introduced videos produced by Acts17.
1. The City of Dearborn appears to have a detailed and well-thought out policy on balancing first amendment speech vs. crowd control, including knowledge/citation of the relevant court decisions. They didn't come up with this yesterday, ArabFest is a 300,000-person event.
2. Acts17 had pretty clearly got more than just witnessing on their agenda there. Last year they titled their youtube video "Sharia Law in the U.S." and their schtick seems to be to depict Islam as anti-American and attempt to provoke incidents which support this culture war. They play to the right-wing echo chamber's fears about a Muslim takeover in the U.S. This sort of thing is bigoted and cynical and could easily incite fights, especially since Acts17 targeted the same festival last year and was well-known for doing so.
2a. Speaking of Acts17, if you read their website and watch their videos, at the very least they come off as smug s.o.b.s. When they are challenged on their tactics they start quoting the Bible on things like Jesus tossing moneylenders out of the temple and similarly edgy passages. It's totally their right, but it's not hard to see that they know how to push buttons that would enrage a Muslim, and they consider it their duty to push these buttons. And while it may be their right in general, it is much more debatable if it is their right in a huge crowded festival.
3. Many of the other Christian evangelists in Dearborn and at Arab Festival (a) evangelized without any problems and (b) specifically complained about Acts17's provocative activities. E.g. Josh McDowell, a famous conservative evangelical.
4. Former evangelical friends/defenders of Acts17 are in disarray as the evidence has come in:
http://www.thinkingchristian.net/2010/07/the-dearborn-four-and-the-rule-of-law/
http://www.thinkingchristian.net/2010/07/correction/
5. The Thomas More Law Center is supporting Acts17, and making similarly dubious claims about Muslims "dominating" Dearborn (TMLC's main problem: they believe their clients!). It might not be open-minded of me, but in my book if TMLC supports something then that side is almost certainly wrong ;-).
Anyway, I suppose it will all come down to testimony in the court case, as it should, but for the moment I would say it's "case not proven" for Acts17's claim to have had their first amendment rights violated.
Posted by: Nick (Matzke) | July 23, 2010 10:41 AM
As I understand it, the only video we've seen so far are clips released by the ministry? Then it's certainly possible they only released the bits that make them look good, conveniently leaving out the parts where they were misbehaving. For that matter, they could just as easily turned the video camera off for those parts. In the absence of any conflicting video (either seized by the police, or shot by bystanders), there’s no reason to believe they did. Just pointing out that edited video shot by one side with a clear agenda isn’t necessarily 100% compelling.
Posted by: WScott | July 23, 2010 10:48 AM
City of Dearborn's response:
http://www.cityofdearborn.org/government/city-services/public-information/latest-news/441-arab-fest-response
My sense of it is that city of Dearborn, and its officials have exercised a lot of emotional restraint, given how they have been targeted in the right-wing crazy-o-sphere, depicted as supporting Sharia law (holy moly that's offensive!), an enclave of terrorists, etc. They have a pretty detailed and well-thought out understanding of religious tolerance, constitutional rights, and the like. They were ready for something like Acts17 and the police seem to have been well-aware of the Constitutional issues involved.
Short version: it looks like a case of professional people-who-know-their business and the law vs. crazy hateful fundamentalists who think that just because they feel something strongly, it must be true. This doesn't guarantee who is right, but it's an indication. So I wouldn't buy Acts17's version of it, including the videos, without some corroboration from someone with a cooler head -- and I have yet to see anyone who was there, Muslim, Christian, or government, support Acts17's version of events.
Posted by: Nick (Matzke) | July 23, 2010 10:58 AM
@3 John these idiots went looking for a fight so that they could slander 1 billion fellow human beings.Furthermore there is no rule preventing a progressive from thinking that the cops might actualy do something right once in a while.
Posted by: Paen | July 23, 2010 11:07 AM
Hopefully someone took and will come forward with some independent video of the events. Barring that, maybe next year some of the other proselytizers will think of taping any disruptive behavior for use in their own defense (i.e. "See City of Dearborn, we don't need to be banned, its only those bad apples who need to be.")
Posted by: eric | July 23, 2010 11:22 AM
I don't think either side really seems to have the moral high ground here. I think the police are clearly in the wrong for putting stopping the missionaries from filming during the second incident. Of course, that particular method of abuse of authority seems to be more and more popular with the police these days.
And telling them they had to be at least five blocks from the event to hand out pamplets, if true, is definately overstepping their constituational authority.
Of course, the disclaimer in my last sentence may be the most important part. "If true..." The whole thing smells a little fishy. (Oh, that was a horrible pun, I know.) I share a lot of the questions brought up by other commenters. Why is it that only Acts 17 seems to have had a problem with police? What exactly are Acts 17's tactics, if other christian missionaries that I consider insane object to them? If Acts 17's claims are true, why not release the uncut video then, proving their version of events? And considering the TRO issued by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, I would think that Deerborn would be going out of their way to not violate anyones rights. Deerborn seems to not be backing down, and it just seems, to me, that if Acts 17's version of events were true, Deerborn would be backpedaling like mad.
None of this is proof that Acts 17 is lying, or that their rights were not violated. It just raises interesting questions as to which version of the events is closer to reality. Looks like something to keep watching for future developments.
Posted by: Foster Disbelief | July 23, 2010 11:28 AM
Take the word "putting" from the first paragraph in comment number 9, and flush it down the memory hole.
And yes, I realise I misspelled "Constitutional." I really need to start hitting the preview button before the post button.
Posted by: Foster Disbelief | July 23, 2010 11:36 AM
I think it's horrific they would arrest these missionaries.
The Muslims at the festival should have the right to point and laugh at them like everyone else does.
Posted by: LtStorm | July 23, 2010 11:45 AM
I didn't know that Dearborn was a "See City" within a bishopric. :-) Sorry, but the lack of a comma can really change the context of the sentence, in an especially ironic way considering the context of this post.
bishopric: the territorial jurisdiction of a bishop.
See City: the seat within the territorial jurisdiction of a bishop, usually the city in which his cathedral is located.
AFAIK, the city of Dearborn falls under the Archbishopric of Detroit, and the city doesn't have its own bishop (although near-by Dearborn Heights does).
Posted by: mercurianferret | July 23, 2010 11:55 AM
The fundie guy in the video said the reason they were there was because they wanted to see if things were better than last year. I guess that goes to show you that even fundies can lie once and a while. Not very often though, I'm sure. I believe every word of the fundie side of the story because wacko fundies don't lie very often, and they talk to invisible people all the time.
Posted by: 386sx | July 23, 2010 12:04 PM
Poor bastards are stuck with the TMLC for their defense? With that sort of track record, I think I'd prefer to represent myself. Never hire a bodyguard with holes in his shoes.
Posted by: Dan L. | July 23, 2010 12:06 PM
Paen wrote:
Incitement to riot? Are you kidding? They said things that were undoubtedly unpopular to most of the crowd, but that is not, by any sane legal definition, an incitement to riot. That is precisely the kind of speech that the First Amendment was intended to protect; popular speech rarely needs such protection. Would you feel the same way if environmentalists protested at an oil company shareholders meeting? Or if anti-war activists did the same thing at a Memorial Day event? The mere fact that what they said was unpopular with the crowd is not a reason to censor them; it is a reason to protect them from the crowd.
Nick-
I know quite well that Acts 17 Apologetics are hypocritical assholes. I know that they are quite likely to put their own spin on things. But there are some elements of this that do not rely on their word. The fact that the police told them they had to be at least 5 blocks away from the festival in order to hand out literature is clearly a violation of the first amendment. As Dan Ray, who comments here frequently, said, that's not even a close call. That's exactly the kind of "free speech zone" nonsense we all blasted when the Bush administration did it (and the mayor's reply you cited above even uses that exact language). There are also several clear inaccuracies in the mayor's response. I didn't rely just on the TMLC here (for obvious reasons, I'm just not stupid enough to do that); I spoke to the ACLU and to a civil libertarian con law prof and they all agreed.
I have no doubt that Acts 17 went there hoping for exactly this to happen because it feeds their persecution complex. And their hypocrisy is proven by their opposition to the Manhattan mosque. But the First Amendment is not negotiable, in my view. It protects assholes too.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | July 23, 2010 12:26 PM
Paen wrote "these idiots went looking for a fight so that they could slander 1 billion fellow human beings."
Aren't you slandering them by calling them idiots? Or should I say stooping to their level.
Your use of the word "slander" is highly subjective because some people would consider any barbed criticism to be a slander. Criticizing someone's religion is slander. Every major religion(or worldview) pressupoes that the others are wrong. So what's wrong with people saying so provided they're civil about it?
Posted by: Bill in NC | July 23, 2010 1:06 PM
The Dearborn Police pre-emptively arrested a woman taping quietly from some yards away so that she could not gainsay assertions that Nabeel was "inciting to riot".
The whole thing was a conspiracy to violate the First Amendment from the get-go. We probably have some insider in the Dearborn PD to thank for safeguarding the recordings, because it is very hard to see how members of that conspiracy could be so incompetent as to leave them intact while the cameras were held for weeks.
Incidentally, Muslims consider any prosyletizing or criticism of the "prophet" to be a capital crime. So is apostasy, of which Nabeel and Negeen are both "guilty".
I'm sure Acts 17 are fundie assclowns. So is the TMLC, but when "progressive" society hands itself over to those whose idea of "progress" is Sharia, the TMLC deserves credit for being on the right side of things.
Posted by: Cynical | July 23, 2010 1:59 PM
I still dunno. It's quite complex what happened where & when.
1. The city says there is a general ban on passing out billets inside the festival. This applies to everyone -- people selling stuff, religious evangelists, everyone. Outside the festival, fine. What are the limits of the festival? A judgment call. It may or may not be constitutional, but in any case the policy wasn't targetted at Acts17. In any case, Acts17 wasn't arrested for doing this.
2. They were arrested for violations involving crowd control. Even if you want Acts17's own videos, by the time the arrests come along, the crowds are getting larger and larger. I would estimate the crowd was *at least* 50 and perhaps more. Again, this is a judgment call, but if the cops are able to argue the crowd was rapidly expanding, blocking free flow of traffic, heading off what was looking like an accumulation of people with hot tempers, they will be able to say (a) that's why we had zones and booths established for this sort of thing in the first place, and (b) we were acting in the interests of public safety. Unless Acts17 can prove that the policy itself was unconstitutional, or that the police were acting outside of policy to inhibit Acts17 specifically, then the city will have a good case I bet.
Posted by: Nick (Matzke) | July 23, 2010 2:23 PM
And this:
...is just the sort of nasty religious bigotry that Acts17 relies on for its ideology, support, etc. Sharia doesn't mean what you think in many parts of Islam, American Muslims in general are like all other Americans and have no interest in imposing Taliban-style Sharia, rather they just want to be left in peace, and in any case there is 0 evidence that Dearborn and its predominantly midwestern Christian whitebread mayor and police force have ever done anything vaguely interpretable as bringing Sharia to the U.S.
We've had enough post-9/11 idiocy bashing American Muslims. IMHO.
Posted by: Nick (Matzke) | July 23, 2010 2:32 PM
Tell me, Nick, how many Dearborn imams are known for being champions of religious freedom, or gay rights, or condemning Hamas for murdering civilians? A few names would go a long way to ameliorate "islamophobia".
Posted by: Cynical | July 23, 2010 2:55 PM
Tell me, Cynical, how many Rochester Hills priests are known for being champions of religious freedom, or gay rights, or condemning the Vatican for aiding in the cover-up of child rape around the world? A few names would go a long way to ameliorate "cathlophobia".
The problem is not Islam; the problem is religious fundamentalism. Acts17 is just as much a blight on society as any Islamic fundamentalist group you might find in Dearborn. Of course, as Ed says, they both have the right to speak about their religions in the public square.
Posted by: GreyRogue | July 23, 2010 3:07 PM
Cynical "Tell me, Nick, how many Dearborn imams are known for being champions of religious freedom, or gay rights, or condemning Hamas for murdering civilians? A few names would go a long way to ameliorate 'islamophobia'."
That's easy. They're the ones that never get on camera. Non-scary Muslims don't make for good TV (the same way that your neighbour who is not an axe murderer never gets interviewed).
I assume the Christian variant of that is why Pat Robertson, Bill Donohue, et al are on TV so much.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | July 23, 2010 3:12 PM
Cynical, #20: A few names would go a long way to ameliorate "islamophobia".
It's been my actual, real life experience that providing examples of Muslims that advocate tolerance for others and are in favor of the values of Western liberal democracy do nothing to ameliorate Islamophobia. My actual, real life experience is that the Islamophobes just say that they aren't true Muslims, or that they aren't sincere in their face, or they are only pretending that they don't really have an agenda to keep blind people off of buses.
Posted by: Chiroptera | July 23, 2010 3:28 PM
Ah, memories! Reminds me of how dissenting opinions were respected during the last regime. Of course, the dissenters got a LOT closer this time, but still...
Posted by: JoeBuddha | July 23, 2010 3:39 PM
But where are their leaders, Chiroptera? Where is the Muslim equivalent of the Clergy Letter Project? Why is Science Friday not as much in the mosques as it is on NPR?
Posted by: Cynical | July 23, 2010 3:43 PM
Nick Matzke wrote:
No, the limits of the festival are not a judgment call. The boundaries of the festival were clearly marked and known in advance and there was an entrance you had to go through to get into it; everything outside of that is outside the festival. The idea that you had to be at least 5 blocks away from it in order to hand out literature on a public sidewalk is, as Dan Ray said, "not even a close call" as a First Amendment violation. Public sidewalks are quintessential public forums for the handing out of literature. The ACLU handles dozens, perhaps hundreds, of cases virtually identical to that every year where the police tell people they can't picket or protest or hand out literature on public streets. What's the difference here other than that the victims were Christians?
No they don't. First, the restrictions inside the festival involved only handing out literature; they were not handing out literature on June 18 when they were arrested, they were just talking to people. And in the pre-festival legal challenge, the city's argument for why the leafleting restrictions were not a violation is because people were still allowed to walk around and talk to people. So even the police acknowledge that there was a right to walk around and proselytize verbally to people anywhere in the festival.
As for the crowd control argument, how is that possibly grounds for arrest? You have the right to walk around and talk to people at the festival unless too many people want to listen to you and gather around, then you're breaking the law? That's obviously untenable. Getting attention is not against the law, nor has it ever been considered grounds for taking away someone's freedom of speech.
Ask yourself this question, Nick (and I ask it quite sincerely, with the full understanding that you know I have all the respect in the world for you): Would you be making the same argument if, for example, someone went to a Christian festival and walked around talking to people about the truth of evolution and a large crowd gathered around them to argue about it? Or if someone went to a military rally and walked around asking people how they could support wars when so many innocent people died, prompting lots of people to take an interest in what they had to say and gather around to challenge them? Saying controversial things and getting people upset so they challenge you is not illegal, it is, in fact, exactly what the First Amendment was written to protect. We do not arrest people because they make others angry by expressing unpopular views. It is the expression of unpopular views that is most in need of protection.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | July 23, 2010 3:43 PM
Cynical, I'd say "Google it yourself", but I googled the innocuous "moderate muslim leader" and got an oh-my-god quantity of FUD. So, instead, I'll say "Google it yourself, but mind the FUD".
Posted by: Modusoperandi | July 23, 2010 3:55 PM
Cynical, #25: But where are their leaders, Chiroptera?
Well, there's one building a community center a few blocks from ground zero in New York.
Posted by: Chiroptera | July 23, 2010 3:57 PM
Modusoperandi:
If you can't even give me a few names (which ought to cut through the FUD), your suggestion is worth exactly nothing. As long as you've got a window open, I suggest searching for "Saudi hate literature mosques", which yields plenty of meaty hits.Chiroptera:
Do you mean Faisal Abdul Rauf, who refuses to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization and has promoted Hizb ut Tahrir? Who claims that the 51 Park Place building will be financed by American muslims but whose biggest donation in 2009 was from Qatar, a prime source of money for terrorists?
You will have to look elsewhere for your "moderates" and "pluralists".
Posted by: Cynical | July 23, 2010 4:34 PM
Cynical, the whole damn post is about a peaceful annual gathering of 300,000 muslims which may or may not have been disrupted by a few christian proselytizers.
Three. Hundred. Thousand. Given that the event itself doesn't convince you of their moderate nature, I am frankly skeptical of your claim that a petition or letter project would change your mind.
Posted by: eric | July 23, 2010 5:02 PM
How in the name of Ghu could a handful of prosyletizers of any stripe disrupt a gathering of 300,000 without so much as amplified sound? Bomb vests would be effective, but they are favored by the religion prominent among the 300k, not the 4.
Posted by: Cynical | July 23, 2010 5:37 PM
Nick @18,
OK, I'll take that bet. How much?
Posted by: James Hanley | July 23, 2010 6:34 PM
Cynical wrote:
If anyone demanded that I condemn Hamas, I wouldn't comply either. It's my prerogative to share my views when, where and how I see fit to proceed in life in the ways that I think are best. The last thing I would do is comply with demands from self-appointed moral arbiters engaged in Sean Hannity-esque testing of my values.
The story you linked to makes it clear that Rauf has an approach to building bridges between people that is well within the bounds of serious conflict resolution work.
I don't know the man, but my first impression is that he has a maturity and wisdom that is apparently beyond your ken.
Posted by: Dr X | July 23, 2010 7:05 PM
So in the name of "peace building", he refuses to condemn the deliberate murder of Israeli civilians and ask for Hamas to stop it.
Not much of a "peace", unless you mean the peace of death.
Posted by: Cynical | July 23, 2010 10:24 PM
Nick, what Ed said (far better that I could have).
Seriously they arrest the guy for attracting 50 people's attention at a festival attended by up to 300,000 (your number)?
Even if there was some issue with blocking the walkway, could they not have tried asking him to relocate to somewhere else on the fairgrounds more amenable to having a small audience?
Their only option was immediate arrest?
They should have just monitored the situation to make sure it stayed peaceful (that's why they call them 'peace officers'), and let him preach his nonsense.
Posted by: Troy Britain | July 23, 2010 10:43 PM
Argh! "...Than I could have." I do that a lot (write "that" when I meant "than"), there must be some crossed synapses in my skull.
Posted by: Troy Britain | July 24, 2010 3:31 AM
If a reporter asked you, would you be willing to condemn the U.S. military as murderers and rapists?
Posted by: DaveL | July 24, 2010 6:45 AM
without touching on the main question here i would like to point out something that happens quite a bit: when arrests are video-taped, the events described in police reports have a marked tendency to diverge from events as shown on the camera. i recall the republican convention held in new york a few years back--lots of arrests of protesters, and in some staggering majority of them the cases were thrown out because the arrest reports didn't match the videos.
Posted by: andrew | July 24, 2010 12:17 PM
Exactly. That's not how he wants to approach the problem. There is no shortage of people on both sides engaging in condemnation and it's gotten them absolutely nowhere. Adding his voice to the rest will get in the way of creating a center where people from a variety of backgrounds can step outside the usual patterns of mutual condemnation and get to know each other.
I work out at a YMCA in what is probably one of the more thoroughly integrated neighborhoods in the US. There is no racial, religious or ethnic majority. There are white, black, Asian, Hindu, Christian, Orthodox Jew, and Islamic people living in the same neighborhood and the Y is a genuine community center where people of all backgrounds mix quite comfortably. Relations are very friendly and I've developed genuine friendships with people from a variety of backgrounds.
If someone approached our director and asked her to condemn Hamas, or condemn Israel or Pakistan, I am absolutely certain that she would not. Condemnation is not the mission of the YMCA. All are welcome and made to feel at home, without bringing the anger and resentments of the outside world into our community center. I think this is a very good thing. It's far more helpful than standing on opposite sides of the street screaming murderer at one another.
Of course, no one subjects our YMCA director to wingnut moral tests. She's free to do her job without being subjected to wingnut accusations that she's a radical because moral condemnation isn't part of her job description.
Posted by: Dr X | July 24, 2010 12:56 PM
Nabeel Qureshi was never a Muslim to begin with, he was an Ahmadi! Please watch our YouTube video for more information on this lying charade! You can see more on our channel and examine his xenophobic and islamophobic agenda! :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSDR2aWegrM
Posted by: Kufr-to-Kufr | July 25, 2010 6:11 AM
PLEASE READ:
Nabeel Qureshi was never a Muslim to begin with, he was an Ahmadi! Please watch our YouTube video for more information on this lying charade! You can see more on our channel and examine his xenophobic and islamophobic agenda! :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSDR2aWegrM
Posted by: Kufr-to-Kufr | July 25, 2010 6:13 AM
Hmmm... I love the smell of 'No True MuslimTM' in the morning... :) - Dingo
----
Good to see idiocy is an equal opportunity employer!
Posted by: DingoJack | July 25, 2010 8:59 AM
Kufr-to-Kufr: The Ahmaddis claim to be Muslims. Who are you to say they aren't?
Posted by: Mike Crichton | July 26, 2010 1:41 AM
So I guess Qureshi thought some dude was the super duper messiah of all humanity the greatest person who has ever lived in existence since the dawn of time throughout the entire universe, but then later on he found out that some other dude was really the super duper messiah of all humanity the greatest person who has ever lived in existence since the dawn of time throughout the entire universe. Opps! I hate it when that happens!
Posted by: 386sx | July 26, 2010 1:59 AM
Hi guys, sorry I dropped this...
I basically agree with you on the political civil liberties part of this discussion, I am just not convinced that the facts are oh-so-clear in this particular case.
E.g.
1. We don't actually know what the actual geographical limits on distribution of fliers were. Was it really literally 5 blocks from the festival? All we know is that Acts17 produced a video claiming this and doing the walk in dramatic fashion (and the walk didn't look like a true 5-block walk to me).
2. I have been to a number of mass events -- San Francisco parades, football games, etc. It is almost routine to have religious missionaries/preachers etc. shouting at people with megaphones, or quietly handing out literature, or holding signs, or whatever. I don't know the details, but as far as I can tell these kinds of things often appear to be restricted to particular zones -- usually you see a bunch of these people together.
Maybe this kind of regulation is unconstitutional, too, but (a) I don't hear the ACLU complaining about it and there are plenty of vigorous ACLU people out in California, and (b) it seems to be common and I assume it's been litigated e.g. in the court cases the city cited. It might not be that much different than regulating e.g. where merchants are allowed to sell stuff.
3. Finally, there might actually be an actual legal difference in what the cops are supposed to do if (a) someone is expressing religious views and only attracting a few people, vs. (b) a large, emotional, hostile crowd is gathering around the person, the person has a past history of being inflammatory and provoking a group of people in the past, has received previous warnings, etc. It is making a pretty bold assumption about the facts if one assumes that there was no prior interaction with the cops other than what is on the videos.
For all we know the cops "asked nicely", informed Acts17 of the crowd control policies, etc., many times during the festival before the arrest. On at least one other Acts17 video, a video that Acts17 put up to show their good behavior, (Acts17 hasn't put up the complete raw footage either, I wonder why not???) there is cop just standing there watching the interaction, not doing any arresting or oppressing or anything nefarious.
The fact that the city is pressing charges and is bringing it to court indicates to me that some attorneys somewhere think their case isn't totally hopeless and a gigantic waste of money, which is what it would be if everything you guys have assumed is true is actually true.
Anyway, there are situations that are clear violations, and then there are cases where you have allegations of violations from sources that are less-than-reliable, either because of dishonesty, or lack of knowledge or (in this case) emotional religious fervor and a culture-warrior attitude. When these allegations are opposed by professionals that appear to mostly have their legal and policy #@*% together, I'm going to exercise some skepticism about the allegations.
(Part of the background on this is that I debated this previously on the Thinking Christian blog, and watch the opinions of the conservative evangelicals there change from an initial "Acts17 are heros who had their rights violated by Sharia-enforcing toadies of the Muslims in Dearborn!" sentiment to something more sour, and finally negative -- apparently a major influence was them talking to other evangelists who were at ArabFest 2010, who didn't support Acts17's version of events. Someone somewhere even said the initial complaint to the police against Acts17 came from a Christian missionary. I suppose it's possible that this is all a conspiracy by certain Christian missionaries to X- out the competition that Acts17 represents, but that idea is getting to be way more complicated than the idea that maybe the police were basically right on the crowd-control issue.)
All this is a long way of saying -- we don't really know enough in this case, let's wait for the courts and the testimony, that's what they are for.
Posted by: Nick (Matzke) | July 26, 2010 4:07 PM