Arab Christians Denied Free Speech at Dearborn's Arab Festival

We’re disappointed to see that the Dearborn Police Department’s approach to freedom of expression during this weekend’s 14th annual Dear­born Arab International Festival has been, to put it nicely, thumbless. (“Christian group sues over access to Dearborn’s Arab festival”).

As a result, Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center had to request a temporary restraining order on Wednesday from a federal district judge to keep Dearborn police from restricting the 90 volunteers to a single corner while the rest of the 250,000-300,000 festival-goers can roam freely.

Pastor George Saieg, of Arabic Christian Perspective, and 90 or so volunteers, were planning to return to the festival, as they’ve done for several years, to “walk . . through the festival’s four- to five-block area passing out literature promoting Christianity over Islam.” There’s never been any trouble because of ACP’s presence. I’m told that lots of other Christian groups attend the festival to evangelize each year, as well. According to Saieg, most of the festival-goers accept the literature gladly.

Saieg made the mistake of contacting Dearborn police to say how-de-do and inquire about the exact location of the festival. Next time he should just use Google it and leave the po-po out of it.

Dearborn P.D.'s Sergeant Jeff Mrowka took the call and said he’d get back to him, and then didn’t get back to him--never a good sign. Saieg had to call again, and--long story short-- Sergeant Jeff Mrowka told Saieg he and his 90-strong group would be restricted to a single street corner.

This would completely hinder ACP’s preference for mingling with festival-goers on the public sidewalks. It also violates the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom to exercise one’s religion.

Saieg explained this to Mrowka, but it made no impression. According to Saieg’s motion for a temporary restraining order, Mrowka replied “by stating that political parties and protesters are limited to a specific area.” Never mind that ACP are neither protesters nor a political party. When was the last time you won an argument with a cop?

Personally, I don’t think this is an example of a conspiracy between the Dearborn police and the imams to protect Dearborn’s Muslim Arabs from crusaders. I think it’s more likely an example of one-dimensional police thinking combined with the garden-variety flight reflex government officials and managers the world over practice to avoid making decisions. In this case, it would have taken all of 30 seconds to figure out that Saieg was right, and the police couldn’t just order festival volunteers that they could only talk about Jesus on one corner on east Dearborn.

Unfortunately, that was 30 seconds Mrowka's superiors at the Dearborn P.D.--Commander Joe Doulette and Chief Ronald Haddad didn’t think they had to spare, so shame on them.

Saieg made his mistake, too. He should never have called and told the police what he was up to, even though it was perfectly legal. In fact, he shouldn’t have called and told the police especially because it was perfectly legal, and ACP had done their evangelizing successfully for several years without any problems. For some policemen, if they think you’re asking permission to do something, they think it’s their duty to say no.

If you’re curious and not otherwise occupied, this will all be hashed out in the courtroom of Judge Nancy G. Edmunds tomorrow, Thursday, at 11:00 a.m. in the federal courthouse on Lafayette.

Church-State Alert

For those of you who see yourselves as principled champions of the church/state “wall of separation”--by which I mean you think the Catholic Church should keep quiet about euthanasia and human embryo research, you think evangelical Protestants ought to keep quiet about homosexual “marriage,” and anyone of any faith, or no faith at all, like Nat Hentoff, should shut the hell up about abortion--I wonder if you have the same principled reaction to the church-state partnership formed between U.S. Congress members and liberal churches in the “Family Unity” tour now criss-crossing the country.

According to tour organizers, the tour’s objects include activities frankly religious:

“The Family Unity Campaign will consist of community meetings, prayer vigils and rallies across the country for thousands of U.S. citizens whose families have been separated or risk being torn apart by our nation's current immigration mess.” (If you don’t think a prayer vigil is a religious activity, try suggesting one for your kid's class at your next PTA meeting. If you're really a troublemaker, suggest a prayer vigil for the troops).

Take a look at the Family Unity tour schedule, and you’ll notice the venues all have something in common, namely they’re all in churches, (or Temples, or Iglesias, or Tabernaculos).

The Family Unity circus train just stopped in Detroit (not literally, of course, because there’s no train station in Detroit. Saaaay---maybe that's why Detroit's circuses never seems to leave town?):

More than 1,200 people, including three members of Congress, Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr. and a dozen members of the clergy supported calls for immigration reform Friday, with some saying that escalated enforcement against illegal residents is shattering families and neighborhoods across Metro Detroit. . . .The event, at the Greater Apostolic Faith Temple, is part of a 20-city tour organized by the members of Congress, grassroots organizations and a battery of faith groups to document the harm they say is caused by the failure of immigration reform and the coincident, increased enforcement. (“Conyers rips deportations”).

The talking point verb of choice meant to to accompany the tour is “rip,” as in “rip families apart.”

Speaking for the government side of this church-state partnership were John Conyers, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, and Illinois Congressman, Democrat Luis V. Gutierrez, leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Congressman Conyers, continuing his side role as Prosecutor General of the United States swore he would hunt down and punish immigration agents responsible for increased enforcement, and then maybe investigate. The article didn't report whether he swore to do this "As God is my witness."

The Family Unity “Ripapalooza” kicked off notably in San Francisco, where abortion hawk and “ardent Catholic” Nancy Pelosi got lots of attention from her address--preached from the sanctuary of a Catholic Church--in which she denounced the deportation of illegal immigrants as “un-American.”:

She said, "Taking parents from their children ... that's un-American."

Now for those of you who are confused by the things Nancy says, (in spite of that endearing tic of hers of repeating everything . . . of repeating everything), I’ll try to clarify:

While she is defintely denouncing ripping parents from children as un-American, she is definitely not saying that ripping a child from its mother is un-American, because saying that, of course, might chill someone’s right to choose. And it also would contradict Nancy's “ardent” Catholicism. Her ardent Catholicism.

(For those of you on the watch for irony, note in the video over Nancy's shoulder the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe--recognized by Catholics, ardent and otherwise, as Patroness of the Americas, and Protectress of the Unborn, and an object of particular devotion to Latin American Catholics--looking on silently as Nancy chatters out of her depthless ignorance about the dignity and divine spark in “every person. . .every person is worthy of respect.”

Query: Does going after some divinely sparked person with the express purpose of separating said person from her closest “family” member by means of a suction tube, a curette, or George Tiller’s hands, qualify as a “raid”?

"STOP THE RAIDS! STOP THE RAIDS!"

Anyway, as I’ve been mentioning a lot lately, while those of us on one side of a great deal of important national controversies are routinely shouted down by the Left as the “Taliban” and “theocrats” for presuming to allow our religious beliefs to inform our political ideas, the fact of Congressmen burning up taxpayer funds playing patty-cake with useful idiot clergy is just fine.

Apparently the distinguishing factor is that, as long as the useful idiots practice “God’s politics”: written by the Lord's finger and delivered as the 2008 Democratic Platform, the wall of separation can be dispensed with.

Minnesota ACLU Gets Religion

This is one time the ACLU is on the right side of things.

The Minnesota ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit against the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, “named for the Muslim general who conquered medieval Spain,” the taxpayer-funded charter school operating as a private Muslim religious school. (“ACLU to sue Twin Cities charter school that caters to Muslims”).

You can read the Complaint here.

Besides requiring Islamic dress, serving halal food in the cafeteria, scheduling prayers during class times, and arranging the bus schedule so that students more or less have to attend Islamic religious classes at the end of each schoolday, “the school has issued a handbook instructing staff to not discuss what goes on at the school.” Charles Samuelson, state ACLU executive director, points out that “’You cannot have a broad secrecy oath’ in a school funded with public dollars.’”

Samuelson said the school has used some government aid money to pay rent to holding companies, which then funneled it to the Muslim American Society of Minnesota and Minnesota Education Trust, a group the ACLU says is a non-profit that also promotes Islam.

The MAS is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. As we have noted here time and again, the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood includes “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” And the school’s sponsor, Islamic Relief—USA, is a subsidiary of Islamic Relief Worldwide, which the Israeli government has identified as providing support and relief to Hamas.

According to Katherine Kersten, who broke this story early last year:

TIZA’s strong religious connections date from its founding in 2003. Its co-founders, Zaman and Hesham Hussein, were both imams, or Muslim religious leaders, as well as leaders of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS-MN).

Since then, they have played dual roles: Zaman as TIZA’s principal and the current vice-president of MAS-MN, and Hussein as TIZA’s school board chair and president of MAS-MN until his death in a car accident in Saudi Arabia in January.

TIZA shares MAS-MN’s headquarters building, along with a mosque.

MAS-MN came to Minnesotans’ attention in 2006, when it issued a “fatwa,” warning Muslim taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that transporting passengers with alcohol in their baggage is a violation of Islamic law.

According to Kersten, and representatives of the ACLU, TIZA officials were evasive and squirrely about claiming to be in compliance with all state laws, when they clearly weren’t. They also dragged their feet when asked to make changes.

If this were a private religious school, none of this would matter to us. For that matter, I'm personally not that enamored with the current regime where voluntary religious activity and expression is completely eliminated from public schools.

Nonetheless, and in large part because of groups like the ACLU, that is the strict standard that everyone else—especially the majority Christian population—have been forced to accept. A double standard can’t be applied just for Muslims.

This isn’t just a misunderstanding. These scalawags knew perfectly well they were flouting the law, and taking taxpayer money to spread and finance Islam, to boot. I’m thinking they also had a pretty good idea that since they were Muslim there would be a “fear factor” preventing state authorities from taking too much notice. In other words, the whole thing followed standard operating procedure for people imposing creeping shariah.

The ACLU has applied a much, much lower standard when making cases against Christians. At least in this case, when the abuse was egregious enough, ACLU-MN did the right thing. I’m not sure ACLU-MI ever would.

Double Standards: A Case Study

Examples of double standards don't get any better than this.

On the very day the Detroit News finally ran a story, on page 1B, about the UM-Dearborn’s plans to install “foot washing stations” costing as much as $100,000 to facilitate its Muslim students’ ritual prayers, (“College's foot bath plans spark backlash”), on page 3B was reported how a few miles away a high school Bible club has been denied the request to be treated even like other clubs in the school district. (“Student group sues district for right to start Bible club”). The one article literally lay atop the other.

Here’s what’s been reported about the high-schoolers:

Student group sues district for right to start Bible club

High-schoolers want same privileges as other clubs; officials say they must keep church and state separate.

Shawn D. Lewis / The Detroit News

FARMINGTON -- A student group that wants to establish a Bible club is suing the Farmington Public School District, claiming the district is denying students their rights.
Aaron Grider, a sophomore at Farmington High School, and the student group ALIVE have filed a lawsuit against the school district in U.S. District Court, seeking the same privileges other clubs are afforded, including meeting during school hours, meetings announced over the public address system, and inclusion, with the other clubs, in the yearbook.

There are no religious clubs in the district, which says a Bible club would violate the district's policy to keep church and state separate. The lawsuit said the denial is based on the group's religious purpose, viewpoint and content of its speech and meetings. Edward White, a lawyer with the Thomas More Law Center, a national Christian advocacy group, said the school is violating the federal Equal Access Act.

"You don't need any other religious clubs on the campus for this club to exist," White said. "According to the federal Equal Access Act, if the district allows any noncurriculum clubs, like the chess club or Students Against Drunk Driving, then it must allow other clubs the same rights."

David Ruhland, assistant superintendent of human resources and legal services, said that the district has been trying to work with the group.

"The district regrets that the students of ALIVE, through their legal counsel the Thomas More Law Center, have chosen to file a lawsuit rather than to resolve the issues within the district process afforded to them," Ruhland said.

So are we all clear on this, now? If you’re a Bible club asking nothing more than to meet on school grounds, and otherwise be treated like the chess club or the French club, and you don't demand either money spent on you or to have school facilities redesigned to ease your religious mission, the answer is n-o spells No! The Farmington School District says that’s way too close to endorsing religion. What do you think this is, a theocracy?

But if you’re a Muslim student who feels he must follow a religious prayer ritual five times a day that includes washing his feet, then it’s only reasonable for a public college administration to shell out $100,000 to renovate rest rooms and install purpose-built baths to solve that problem for you. That's no endorsement, just “a lovely touch of appreciation for a prayer ritual that's just a little different than what most of us are used to.”

Local ACLU spokeswoman Rana Elmir, almost certainly filing her nails as she spoke, defended the foot baths as serving a “secular purpose” because nonMuslims can use them. This statement not only makes no sense at all, but has nothing to do with the actual legal standards that need to be applied to these things. Back in pre-Madelyn Murray O'Hair America, any nonChristian pupil at P.S. 32 could join in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. But that didn’t mean school prayer was a secular activity, nor did equal participation protect school prayer from winding up banned as a violation of the Establishment Clause.

And while the Muslim students at UM-Dearborn had their “lovely touch of appreciation for a prayer ritual” handed to them without a struggle by an administration bending over backwards, (and otherwards), to assist a minority of students on their personal jihad, the poor Farmington high-schoolers had to get lawyers and file suit in order to force their school district to even listen.

Fortunately, the Thomas More Law Center is handling the Farmington suit, so we can hope the kids probably won’t have to ante up their own college educations to pay the legal costs.

We don’t know yet if anyone plans to take on UM-Dearborn by means of a similar lawsuit. I’m really hoping someone would. The sandaled march across country of the wudu baths has gone unchecked too long, in spite of substantial legal rulings that have found less egregious endorsements of a single religion unconstitutional. So far the foot bath champions likethe Muslim Student Association pushing them all over the country have not faced the challenge of a test case: a test they are not well placed to win.

By no means did the foot baths that are even now gurgling away in Minneapolis, Chicago, and other American colleges get there because they first passed anything like the strict Constitutional muster that the Baby Jesus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer have been flunking for years.

No, the baths are there because weak-kneed college administrators, too slow to escape out the window when Muslim activists were approaching, did the next best thing by just agreeing to whatever they thought would make them go away again.

The Muslim Student Association and these colleges have counted on an absence of any legal challenge that would force them to actually explain how spending public money to sponsor a single religion's distinctive ritual is not an unlawful endorsement. The goofy comments we've heard lately from the spokesmen, the clerical staff, and the gal at the ACLU who happened to pick up the phone are the kinds of lazy blather you get when no one is really worried enough to make an effort.

That kind of stuff usually stops when a judge with a gavel, and a lawyer at the other table with some grit in his eye, start insisting on being part of the fun.

Let's hope something like that finally happens here.

(Photo: BBC).