A state representative plans to support four missionaries who plead not guilty today during an initial court hearing following their arrests at a recent Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan.
UPDATED: 7/12/2010 1:45 PM
Four missionaries arrested at an Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan, have been arraigned.
The missionaries have appeared each year of the Annual Arab International Festival, but this year police moved in and arrested them and confiscated a camera from one member was using to film the arrests. Detroit television station WXYZ was on hand for the arraignment and talked to one of the accused, Nabeel Qureshi.
"Our policy...as we were going through the festival [was] to allow the people to approach us," he explains. "So we did not approach anyone to avoid charges of harassing."
All four are charged with disturbing the peace, but 18-year-old Nageen Mayel, a recent convert from Islam to Christianity, was also charged with refusing to obey a police officer's order to stop filming. "I was scared," she told WXYZ-TV. "There was no reason for them to approach me, so my immediate reaction was fear of the unknown and why they were doing it."
All four missionaries plead not guilty today. They are represented by Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, who points to the Constitution.
"If people are offended by the fact that they were preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to Muslims and trying to convert Muslims -- well, guess what, we have a First Amendment," Muise points out. "This is a free society. It's not a police state."
As the four apparently head to trial, the Law Center is preparing a civil suit to be filed against the city.
Original story appears below ...
Regardless of the final outcome of this case,
what is most clearly indicated by the arrest of the four Christians?
Original story:
A state representative plans to support four missionaries who are facing an initial court hearing following their arrests at a recent Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan. The four were passing out leaflets about Christianity in Dearborn, which has a large Muslim population. One of the missionaries was engaging in peaceful conversation with several Muslim youths, while the other three were videotaping the dialogue before they were all arrested on June 18.
Since their activities were carried out peacefully, State Representative Tom McMillin believes the missionaries were falsely arrested. Their cameras were seized, but police have refused to view the footage of their arrest or release a detailed report on the incident.
"I wonder if they're trying to craft a police report knowing that these videos show that nothing was done wrong," McMillin suggests. "And the illegal confiscation of the videos, I mean it really appears to be a lot of injustice. Now I could be surprised. Maybe they'll drop the charges and realize that the Constitution applies in Dearborn as well."
Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), tells OneNewsnow the missionaries' free-speech rights were violated, and he contends that no criminal laws were broken.
"The next step, in what I call the enforcement of sharia law in Dearborn, Michigan, is the arraignment that is going to take place in the Dearborn District Court," he explains.
Representative McMillin plans to attend today's arraignment, but Thompson feels that one aspect of the case is already very clear. "This is the first step in a series of steps that the city of Dearborn is taking to placate the large Moslem population that they have there, and they don't mind stepping on the constitutional rights of Christians to do that," he notes.
The TMLC president assures that his firm will vigorously fight for the missionaries' constitutional rights. As a part of that process, a lawsuit will be filed against the city in protest of what he refers to as their "illegal arrests" and for their equipment being confiscated. Meanwhile, McMillin will see what happens at the hearing.
"If they go forward with this charade and actually try and trump up charges, I certainly will be by the sides of the defendants," he assures. "I certainly will not sit silent."
He hopes to draw a line in the sand against the efforts of those in Dearborn who want to squelch the free-speech rights of Christians who disagree with Islam.
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