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Order of the Dragon Cancels Dearborn Protest, Condemns Quran-Burning Pastor
Leaders of the Michigan-based Order of the Dragon announced Saturday that they have canceled their planned April 22 protest slated to be held outside of the Islamic Center of America. Quran-burning Florida Pastor Terry Jones, however, is still expected to make an appearance.
Order of the Dragon President Frank Fiorello and Vice President Jammie Bothwell met with local religious leaders Saturday morning, but said that they had already decided before that meeting to cancel the protest, which would have been held on Good Friday.
Public outcry began not when the Order announced their protest over what they believed was evidence of “creeping Sharia” Islamic law, but when Jones announced that he would be joining them in Dearborn that day.
Jones, who preaches at a small church in Gainesville, Fla., is most widely known for his attacks on the Quran, which escalated in March when he publicly burned the Muslim holy book.
Fiorello explained Saturday that the Order’s decision to allow Jones to join them was made before he burned the Quran. After the act, the group took steps to distance themselves from the pastor–including publicly denouncing him.
“He’s a little off his rocker,” Fiorello said of Jones. “My honest opinion is that he’s going to hate gays, he’s going to hate Jews, he’s going to hate Muslims, he’s going to hate anybody until somebody realizes what he’s saying and they focus on it, then he’s going to do it all the more.”
Attention, he added, is not the purpose of the Order’s actions. Instead, the 15-member group’s mission–as stated on their website–is “to come together as a community, help protect the traditional rights of Americans … (and) protect our country from the rise of radical Islam and the implementation of Sharia law.”
Fiorello said he never believed Sharia was happening in Dearborn, but that his group saw inklings of it that concerned them. Examples, he said, included the fact that Fordson High School football players practice at night during Ramadan, due to the fact that Muslim players must fast during the day.
“I don’t think Sharia law has been implemented here or anywhere else,” Fiorello said. “I’m just worried about the future.”
Michael Hovey, coordinator for the Department of Parish Life and Services at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, said that one of the goals of Saturday’s meeting between religious leaders and the Order was to quell their fears of Sharia in Dearborn.
“I think they appreciated what we were contributing to help them understand that some of the things they read as being imposed were, in fact, chosen as creative ways to be tolerant of each other’s traditions,” Hovey said of their talk about the Fordson football issue. “It’s just like how we would let Jewish students take off of school during the high holy days.”
Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly said he was happy to host the discussion between the Order and religious leaders in Dearborn, and hopes that it made progress to dispel rumors that Sharia law is happening in the city.
“(Religions leaders) were willing to come to have this honest dialogue and to see if they could assure (Fiorello) that his concerns about Dearborn are not really well-founded,” O’Reilly said. “Muslims in Dearborn are not disruptive and they’re part of the faith community.”
O’Reilly said he believes that much of the hubbub over Islamic law taking precedent over state or federal law is based not in truth, but in fear.
“With Sharia law, what’s really at the heart of it is that people are afraid of Muslims,” he said.
In Dearborn, he added, the integration of faiths isn’t an issue–until outside voices make it so, such as with recent comments from Texas Rep. Leo Berman, who cited what he believed to be evidence of Sharia law in Dearborn–something he said he “heard on the radio.”
“What concerns me is these people who are doing this have no knowledge of Dearborn,” O’Reilly said. “They’re ill informed about our community.”
Meetings like the one on Saturday, he added, help to educate others about what’s really happening in Dearborn.
Both religious leaders and Order of the Dragon leaders agreed that the discussion was fruitful. The religious community saw it as an opportunity to educate, while Fiorello and Bothwell saw it as a step to ensuring that the constitutional law stays in tact.
“Now that we have a dialogue going,” Bothwell said, “we can start moving along to make sure that America stays the way it is and that our constitution doesn’t get superseded by anything else.”
The next step for both religious leaders and the city is to deal with Pastor Jones.
The InterFaith Leadership Council of Detroit is planning to hold a meeting of religious leaders the day before Jones’ visit in order to send a unified message condemning his actions and his message.
Jessica Carreras
Dearborn Patch