As previously mentioned, I’m not a Christian. Christian evangelizers generally annoy me. That said, just because something is annoying is no reason to make it illegal… and we *do* ahve this thing called a “Constitution.” And for the most part, while my non-Christian-ness might (and often has) gotten me dirty looks and nasty words, it’s been since grade school that anyone has decided that violence was an appropriate response to the concept.
But Dearborn, Michigan, seems to be taking a different view on the subject. It is of course important to keep in mind the biases of the sources of information here, but the basic facts are this:
4 missionaries arrested at Dearborn festival
Four Christian missionaries trying to convert Muslims were arrested and jailed Friday for disorderly conduct at the Arab festival in Dearborn, police said.
“We did make four arrests for disorderly conduct,” Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad said Saturday. “They did cause a stir.”
And here is the website of the missionionaries. The descriptions of the events do not indicate that the missionaries were acting in an illegal manner (again, though, consider the source).
It cannot be said that we were arrested for causing a disturbance, because we did not approach anyone, rather everyone with whom we spoke first approached us. It cannot be said that we were harassing anyone, because the moment anyone said “stop talking to me”, we would stop talking to them. And it cannot be said that we were spreading hate speech, because we said virtually nothing about Islam at all. On the contrary, we repeatedly affirmed our love for all Muslims. Whenever I was asked “Why would you love me?” I said “Because Jesus loves you, and he told me to love you.”
No hating, no disturbing, no harassing… It remains only to be concluded that we were arrested simply for being Christian Preachers at the Arab Festival in Dearborn.
It could of course be that the missionaries were acting like pushy jackasses, in which case a “disorderly conduct” arrest might be warranted. But it seems just as likely that events transpired more or less as described… and the disorderliness came from those opposed to the missionaries. “Disorderly conduct” is a nicely vague accusation, and “They did cause a stir” even more so.
Now, consider this hypothetical… a “European Festival” in, say, Peoria, Illinois. Someone shows up with a bunch of Muslim handouts, and calmly and peacefully wanders around handing out leaflets and talking to people. Would there be violence? Possible, though it seems unlikely. But it seems that in Dearborn, “Arab” equals “Muslim.” Ask yourselves this, if any dirty hippies are reading this, does violence seem to follow Islam? In which case, at an “Arab festival” in a region that has seen a massive influx of Muslim immigrants, would it be just possible that the cops arrested the Christians not because *they* were disorderly, but because the crowd was?
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Oh, and on a completley different subject. Are you feeling that you don’t have enough bloody videos in your day? Well, have I got the answer for you! There is a holiday in Islam called Ashura, the recognition of the day that Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of Mohammad, was killed in 680 CE. For the Shi’a Muslims, Ashura oftentimes means the practice of zanjeer… whipping themselves to a bloody pulp with whips, and the extra-fun practice of taking knives and cutting the tops of heads of themselves and children so that blood goes fricken everywhere. What’s not to like?
Well, here ya go, some videos of people whipping themselves bloody for Ashura:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk9-WdPPzr8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kej_3QO-sD0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6T2hfwH_E
… and so on. This is a seven part series of videos. What’s extra fun: this was in New York City.
13 Responses to “Apparently Christianity is illegal in Dearborn”
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Growing up in Connecticut, I knew a lot of folks of Lebanese and Syrian descent who were Christian (some Catholic, some Eastern Orthodox). Not sure that means much of anything, but it is good for those cementheads out there to remember that being Arab doesn’t always mean one is Muslim.
> being Arab doesn’t always mean one is Muslim.
Tell that to the Arab Muslims. Non-Muslim Arabs seem to piss ’em off. Note that there *used* to be a whole lot of Christian Lebanese actually in Lebanon. Not so much anymore.
Oh I hear you. People tend to forget how secular Lebanon was before it became a Syrian/Hezbollah vassal state.
I keep hearing Islam is the religion of peace and harmony. If that’s true, there seem to be damn few real Muslims visible.
My gut feeling about the arrests is that the cops — hell, government at all levels — is scared of the violence Muslims have given us in the past and promise to visit upon non-believers in the future.
Perhaps the time has come, once again, for the legal system to recognize that some *types* persons are dangerous.
There is actually more to the story, if it is what I am thinking it is. Last year, some people decided to visit the arab festival in Dearborn with video cameras. They wanted to ask questions. Virtually everyone they talked to said, “No video camera.” They complied. At some point they were accused of being christian evangelists (they were not) and escorted off the premises by the local security (distinct from the police).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEPod-hxD7g
I have reason to believe that the group who got escorted off the premises last year was the same group who got arrested this year. I don’t know whether they were preaching this year. They certainly weren’t preaching last year if their video from last year is any indication. I haven’t watched this video yet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FXDAaiT6os
I did watch the 2009 video. You can judge for yourselves.
Firsthand account of the arrestees. Apparently they were preching this year. Why? Best guess is to expose hypocrisy, since they weren’t preaching last year.
http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2010/06/arrested-for-being-christian-preachers.html
Look at it this way; Saxons would have gone over a lot better if they hadn’t showed up at that dinner party with those big knives hidden inside in their boots.
That looked a bit out of line even by the somewhat “flexible” morality of the time. 🙂
On the other hand, wasn’t Robin Hood supposed to be a Saxon?
He obviously was 110 % okay, no matter what Glenn Beck says.
Pat
What on Earth are you talking about?
It’s Pat. Sometimes he goes off the rails, and it’s difficult to figure out just what the hell’s going on.
It is well past the point at which all non-Muslims should act exactly like Muslims. Burn cars and shops, drag people into the streets and beat them senseless, commit mass rapes and stone people to death, all for no other reason than they want to. These are the activities which Muslims by the millions participate in every single day all over the world, and it is time to give them their ration of sh*t right back in their hate filled faces.
I have doubts about the efficacy of that.
Having western people behave like murdrous jackasses leads to western people *becoming* murderous jackasses. However, this problem goes away when retaliation is carried out as clinically and impersonally as possible. Hense my prior suggestion for the Gaza problem: Israelies withdraw all blockades, let ’em arm up, wait for ’em to start lobbing rockets, then bulldoze ’em into the sea (or Egypt).
I told a friend of mine about this. His employer has offices all over, and the word in his company is that it’s really “Dearbornistan.”
You have to see some of the oddball stuff the Kurds do sometime; including eating light bulbs and pouring acid on themselves.
My all-time favorite crazed religious ceremony was Saddam Hussein’s elite commandos eating a raw wolf carcass by crawling around on the floor on all fours and gnawing on it, something that would look over-the-top by even Klingon standards. 😀