Posted on 04/01/2011 8:41:29 PM PDT by GonzoII
DEARBORN, Mich. — First, the Catholic-run Thomas More Law Center won acquittals for four evangelical Protestant missionaries jailed for disturbing the peace at an Arab festival in Dearborn, Mich., last year.
Now, the center has sued the city of Dearborn, its mayor, chief of police and 17 police officers, along with the American Arab Chamber of Commerce on the missionaries’ behalf.
“We’re all Catholics at the center,” said Thomas More’s chief trial counsel, Robert Muise. “But most of our clients are Protestants, because they tend to be more aggressive in asserting their First Amendment rights.”
That’s for sure. At times, as many as 40 evangelical missionaries have descended on Dearborn, which has the largest concentration of Arabs in the United States, for its annual Michigan International Arab Festival, usually without incident. That changed in 2009, said Muise, when a new regime at City Hall established a ban on street preaching at the event. Instead, missionaries were allowed to rent booths on the perimeter of the festival, and a small free-speech zone was set up within it.
Thomas More challenged the regulation’s constitutionality in a case that has not yet been tried, but it managed to secure an emergency injunction against the rule just in time for last year’s festival, starting June 18.
Dearborn police took another tack, arresting the four evangelists from Acts 17 Apologetics, a group dedicated to preaching to Muslims, and charging them with disturbing the peace and failing to obey a police officer.
“This is stealth jihad,” Muise said. “It’s sharia in America” — a reference to the law in Muslim countries against Christians preaching to Muslims.
The video footage of the arrests, said Muise, clearly shows that the missionaries spoke calmly and said nothing provocative.
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
First, the Catholic-run Thomas More Law Center won acquittals for four evangelical Protestant missionaries jailed for disturbing the peace at an Arab festival in Dearborn, Mich., last year.
So, now they can to. The message should now be clear to the local jerks who arrested them in the first place.
I bet the exact same thing happens at the next Arab Festival in Dearborn.
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