Friday Protest Draws All Kinds

DU has been unable to confirm a comment reportedly overheard outside the U.S. Courthouse Friday by Dawud Walid to Free Press reporter, Nirajo Warikoo: “Be sure to mention I was waving an American flag.”

There was a protest rally Friday where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was being arraigned at the U.S. Courthouse. It was led by Dearborn attorney Majed Moughni, and intended to disassociate Islam from terrorism.

“We are here to send a message,” Moughni said. “We won’t let anyone hijack our religion.” (“Muslim, Nigerian leaders rally against terrorism”):

Chanting “No more terrorism,” about 150 Muslim and Nigerian protesters waved U.S. flags as they rallied in the cold outside the federal courthouse during a hearing for the suspect accused of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day.

“Muslims here to tell you: Go to hell,” read a sign held by Majed Rizki, 48, of Dearborn. “It was a sin against humanity, against civilization,” Rizki said of the attempted attack.

“Islam is not a terrorist religion,” Bilal Amen, 27, vice chair of the Islamic Institute of Knowledge in Dearborn, said while holding an American flag. “Islam is a peaceful religion.”

Amen and others said they were concerned that the Muslim suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab, was giving the wrong image of Islam.

So far I have no reason not to take Moughni and his core group at their word. But the thing is: anyone can show up at a public protest.

For instance, some of the area’s other Muslim leaders, like the head of CAIR-Michigan, Dawud Walid, held their own press conference earlier. I suppose they just wanted to hitch a ride on the free attention, because the only point of the press conference seemed to be to reiterate the “community’s” strong feelings that paying close attention to Muslim travelers is no way to detect traveling Muslim suicide bombers.

Walid gave the helpful illustration that President Obama, (“whose middle name is Hussein,” interjects the Free Press, I think for the very first time), would be a victim of profiling based on his name.

Notably, the Free Press’s Niraj Warikoo also mentions in his article that Walid was later seen outside the courthouse, “waving a U.S. flag.”

I guess that clarification is necessary because Walid’s a loyal member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has its own flag.

Speaking of profiling, there were two or three Nigerian attorneys present in the courtroom on Friday, including at least one female. They were mobbed by a pack of rabid reporters, with some protesters mixed in, as they tried to exit the building after the hearing. An Iraqi-American Muslim named Dave Alwatan, 36, was in the mix.

At one point, Alwatan shouted at a woman leaving the courthouse he thought was the mother of the suspect.

“Shame on you!” he shouted as TV cameras rolled. “Shame on you for how you raise your kids.”

It’s unclear if the woman was the suspect’s mother.

Well, she wasn’t the suspect’s mother. DU has been unable to confirm reports that CAIR immediately drafted a letter to Alwatan condemning him for his egregious act of profiling the Nigerian lady. After all, just because Farouk’s mother is a Nigerian, doesn’t mean all Nigerian women are Farouk’s mother. Or something like that.

And come to think of it, it’s a good thing President Obama wasn’t around. Someone might have profiled him as Abdulmutallab’s father.