Lawyer to Hold Rally for Christian Missionaries
A Muslim attorney from Dearborn plans to hold a rally on Monday to express support for the four Christian missionaries arrested last month for allegedly disturbing the peace at an Arab festival.
Majed Moughni said the rights of the four Christians were violated when police arrested them on July 19 during the Arab International Festival, one of the biggest gathering of Arab-Americans in the U.S. The missionaries claim that Islam promotes violence and want to convert Muslims to Christianity.
“They should never have been arrested,” said Moughni, who is Arab-American and Muslim. “They have a constitutional right to freedom of speech and religion.”
Moughni said that the rights of the missionaries should be respected even if people disagree with their views or aggressive tactics.
“It’s like the KKK walking into an African-American festival,” Moughni said. “You can’t arrest them just because” you disagree with their views.
Two of the people who were arrested, Nabeel Qureshi of Virginia and David Wood of New York City, are the creators of websites that repeatedly attack Islam and tell Muslims to convert to Christianity. They produced a video last year about the festival that has drawn close to 2 million views on You Tube. City officials and Dearborn residents say the video was selectively edited to unfairly portray Dearborn in a negative light.
But supporters of the men say the video shows them being harassed by security at the festival.
Moughi was the organizer of the anti-terrorism rally in January outside the federal courthouse in Detroit during a hearing for the Christmas Day bomber. After organizing the rally, Moughni received a death threat from a Muslim man in Europe linked to a plot to kill a cartoonist who drew Islam’s prophet, Mohammed.
Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly Jr. has criticized Qureshi and Wood, saying they “promote hatred and lies.” O’Reilly Jr. pointed out that there are several other Christian groups at the festival every year who hand out literature and have never had any problems. He said the two men were trying to deliberately provoke a reaction to capture on video in order to later raise money for their group.
The Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian group based in Ann Arbor, is representing the missionaries who were arrested. Robert Muise, an attorney with the center, said the men are innocent and were unfairly targeted because they were Christian.
Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press