Hizbollah enforcing sharia law at Dearborn Islamist festival?

More details on previous posts (story) on the Arab / Muslim festival in Dearborn, Michigan. Where apparently Hizbollah terrorists and/or supporters were hired for security (watch videos). This update from FrontPage Magazine.

Under well-established law, a street or a park is considered to be a “traditional public forum.”  These are places, which, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, “by long tradition or by government fiat have been devoted to assembly and debate” and where “the rights of the state to limit expressive activity are sharply circumscribed.”

Streets and parks, according to our high court, have always been “held in trust for the use of the public, and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.”  In these “quintessential public forums,”  the public’s speech rights are expected to be resolutely protected.  A government regulation can limit it only to serve a compelling state interest, and it must be drafted narrowly to achieve that end. Government may also enforce regulations of the time, place, and manner of expression so long as they are “content-neutral,” are narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and leave open ample alternative channels of communication.

These requirements would seem to substantially cramp government’s power to muzzle those wishing to enjoy the freedom of expression and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment in public streets and parks.  But in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, a judge agreed with the city that the constraints placed on ACP were reasonable time, place and manner restrictions.  The group of some 90 volunteers, traveling from every corner of the nation, would be ordered to stay away from the open street and public sidewalks of the festival but allowed to distribute their material around the corners, far from the event.  In other words, everyone but ACP was welcome at the festival, and since the city did not seek to curb the activities of any other individual or group, only ACP’s speech rights were affected by the court’s ruling.

The testimony at the TRO hearing provided by the police chief verified that ACP had not been responsible for causing public disturbances in prior visits.  And no other security or safety issues were mentioned at the TRO hearing.

The festival offered to allow ACP to set up a booth, but insisted that its members remain at the booth and not distribute their material at any other location.  This was a shrewd move by the festival organizers.  At first, their offer seemed like a reasonable “alternative channel of communication” in which ACP could reach just as many, if not more, festival gatherers.

But after being offered two locations to pitch their tent, ACP was moved from its first choice in the center of the Festival near the police tent to a distant outpost, where the group handed out little more than a few hundred packets of material.

Elsewhere at the festival, and unknown to the Dearborn Police Department, were other Christians peddling their own material.  Pat Rojas was one of them.  Hounded by the festival’s private security patrol, he and another evangelical Christian were taken from the sidewalk to the security tent, where they were detained and harassed before being physically ejected from the festival, driven out in a security vehicle, and ordered not to return.  According to Rojas, “Hezbollah” was tattooed on their arms.

“One security guard tried to initiate a fight with us by saying all Christian Americans are losers, that our credit cards are all charged up, that our wives have left us, that  our children hate us, and that we are all financially broke,”  a frustrated Rojas told me.  “Another guard took my ID and refused to return it.  My life was threatened.”

The lawsuit filed by my firm and Rob Muise of the Thomas More Law Center will shine a light on the grave injustice ACP, Rojas and others experienced in Dearborn.  It asks whether Dearborn is a city of tolerant people and fair-minded public officials, or Dearbornistan, a center of dhimmitude where Christians are unwelcome.

This police crackdown, on behalf of the U.S. Muslim minority, poses a serious challenge to our constitutional freedom.  More than 250 years ago, James Madison, the father of the First Amendment, witnessed an imprisoned Baptist minister preaching from his jailhouse window.  Just 23-years-old at the time, he noted that approximately “5 or 6 well meaning men” were in jail in a nearby county “for publishing their religious sentiments which in the main are very orthodox.”

“I have neither patience to hear, talk, or think of anything relative to this matter,” he wrote a friend, “for I have squabbled and scolded, abused and ridiculed, so long about it to little purpose, that I am without common patience. So I must beg you to pity me, and pray for liberty of conscience to all.”

The disturbing situation in Dearborn is a vivid reminder of Madison’s frustration and the need to preserve the protections for religious groups especially.  After all, the First Amendment was specifically adopted for their protection, and only incidentally protects street performers.

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