Friends Jailed for Sharing Christ in Michigan
- Friends Jailed for Sharing Christ in Michigan
- “Obviously intending to make a scene”
- The Dearborn Four and the Rule of Law
- Dearborn and the Love of Christ Under Pressure
Yesterday I found out friends of mine had been detained and cited for sharing the gospel in Dearborn, Michigan. I’ve shared some meals with Nabeel Qureshi, and I spoke at an apologetics conference he organized. I’ve had some shorter conversations with David Wood, who was also taken away from there in handcuffs. David has been featured and has commented on this blog. (I do not know Negeen and Paul Rezkalla, who were also detained.)
Their cameras were confiscated for a time. What were they doing to deserve this? They were sharing the love of Jesus Christ at an Arab ethnic festival. The first YouTube video I saw on it when I checked in this morning called them liars, saying they went there to stir things up, and they were more interested in creating a scene than in preaching the gospel. This video tries to support this with a few out-of-context, unreferenced quotes from David Wood. I can assure you emphatically David and Nabeel’s heart really is to share the good news of Jesus Christ. So what did they do to deserve a night in jail?
I haven’t spoken with them yet, so I’m trying to sort it all out from news sources and from testimony on their blog.
They tell us here they handed out no printed materials, they approached no one, they spoke only with people who approached them. They went out of their way to avoid even the appearance of being disruptive. I’ve seen no evidence in other news sources to contradict any of this. They had “amicable” conversations and “made friends” with many there. The police took them away just as they were closing up another such amicable discussion. They told the officers they had video to show they had done nothing provocative, and asked them to sit down and watch it with them, but the police refused to look at the evidence.
It’s important to note that this was not a Muslim festival. It was not a religious event. It was an ethnic festival,
put on by the American Arab Chamber of Commerce, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), and the city of Dearborn, … sponsored in part by Ford Motor Co. and AT&T.
Apparently public funds were used to help produce this event.
Others were also sharing the gospel in Dearborn. Josh McDowell, a well-known Christian apologist (with whom I have also worked), was one of them. I know his relationship with Muslims tends to be warm and friendly. I cannot speculate on what Nabeel and his group did differently from Josh and other Christians, to cause them to be picked up and hauled away. I do know of two background factors that probably contributed.
First, Nabeel is a former Muslim, which makes his presence there as a Christian unwelcome. Islam does not look at all kindly upon its members converting to other religions.
Second, there was history from the same festival last year. Nabeel and David were there having polite conversations at a booth set up for visitors to ask questions about Islam. They were interrupted, ejected by security, and repeatedly assaulted by security personnel and bystanders. This was caught on camera by Mary Jo Sharp, who was also assaulted. Their video of this event has been viewed almost two million times. They are well known in Dearborn.
Did they go there just to cause trouble? Nabeel has no need for more trouble. It’s enough for him just to be a Christian convert from Islam. Did they go there, as one blogger has said, to get attention, to feed their own egos? Again, there are easier ways to do that. David and Nabeel have plenty of opportunities already to speak, write, and debate. Do you suppose they were hoping they could use this to become famous and perhaps draw bigger honorariums? Then I should also tell you that when Nabeel came to Christ he was a medical student. He received his M.D. Then he went to California to earn yet another degree, this one in Christian philosophy and apologetics. Now he is the youth pastor at a medium-sized Baptist church in Chesapeake, Virginia. Do you think he’s in that for the money?
They went to Dearborn to share the love of Christ. Yes, they knew their mere presence there would be provocative, but there is no law against returning to a public event where it’s widely known you were mistreated the last time you were there. Ryft at Aristophrenium made this observation last night (my emphasis):
We have to remember what the issues are here, and not get distracted by irrelevancies. This is not about one religion versus another. This is not about religion at all. What the issues are here is upholding the fundamental rule of law and protecting the rights and freedoms of Americans that are enshrined in the Constitution of the United States…. The City of Dearborn had instituted a ban against handing out Christian material near the festival, empowering the police to make arrests. So the Thomas More Law Center filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Saieg, challenging the constitutionality of the restriction. Federal District Court Judge Paul Borman for the Eastern District of Michigan, after a year of litigating the matter, sustained Dearborn’s ban. (In response the Thomas More Law Center immediately filed an emergency motion, which the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals granted on Friday; citing from Elrod v. Burns, the three-judge panel noted in their decision, “The loss of a First Amendment right, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”)
… This is about the rights and freedoms of Americans as guaranteed by their Constitution, the rights and freedoms of Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood to attend the very public Arab Festival with video cameras, to pass out Christian material if they wish to do so, to speak to Muslims there who approach them and ask about their Christian faith, without fear of being arrested. If the festival was a private function or being held on private party, that would be a different matter. But this is a public event on public property.
I have to admit I’m not sure Nabeel and David have taken the most effective approach to sharing Christ’s love with Muslims. I’m not saying there was anything wrong with the way they interacted with anyone at the festival. They were having amicable conversations; there’s nothing wrong with that, and very much that’s good. I’m talking about their YouTube presence since last year. That hasn’t built any bridges.
And yet, and yet… there’s something else going on here. It’s not about evangelism with Muslims. It’s about America’s freedoms being supplanted by a foreign sort of repressiveness. A Michigan city declared it illegal to distribute Christian (only Christian, mind you) material in its public spaces. It took an appeals court to restore First Amendment sanity. These friends of mine were forcibly ejected (last year) and detained (this year) at a public ethnic festival in a public place just because they were representing Christianity there. It’s important for us to know this is going on.
One of the blogs I read this morning asked, “Would Christians let a Muslim preach at a Christian festival?” Well, this was not a Muslim festival in the first place, nor was there anything private about it. In the second place, I can answer this question from experience. I was at a Christian conference where a Jehovah’s Witness came and started street preaching before us. It was in a semi-public space; we were having a picnic outside our conference hall at Colorado State University. We were on grounds that would normally be considered public but had been reserved for our use on this occasion.
Now, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ doctrine is probably just about as distant from historic Christianity as Islam is, so the situation was quite similar in that sense. How did we respond? Did we call the cops? No. I tapped a friend on a shoulder and together we went to the man. I asked, “May we pray with you?” He answered, “Sure.” All three of us bowed our heads together as we prayed for him. When we finished he thanked us. We didn’t ask him to stop preaching; we knew that was his right, and we weren’t threatened by him in any way. He left after we prayed, by his own choice.
That’s my answer to that blogger’s question: We met the outsider not with police intervention or physical assault, not with any sense of fear or threat, but with a personal and caring encounter. Isn’t that what anybody ought to be able to expect?
Just out of curiosity, did your friend or the other people witnessing there use megaphones or “you’re going to hell for being X”-type signs? For some reason I’ve come across a lot of that lately (I guess since I’ve gone to some parades and football games and big colleges etc.).
In those settings, everyone just ignores it, free speech and all that (and I think they typically have protest permits), but I (and many other people, I’m sure) find it rude, tasteless and annoying. It is pretty easy to see how tactics like that could provoke a real ruckus if the target audience was largely Muslim.
Anyway, it’s an important distinction between just standing there talking to people, and blasting people with a megaphone and signs. And something disruptive like that might require a protest permit to not be considered disturbing the peace, perhaps legitimately for all I know (I Am Not A Lawyer). So can you clarify which of these took place? Thanks.
I watched one of the videos, nothing about signs or megaphones.
But watching David Wood et al in action, I gotta say they look like they are more interested in provoking people on camera and portraying Islam as un-American and similar demeaning and stereotyping-of-Muslims behavior than they are in calm witnessing.
A comment from another person who was there — apparently another Christian missionary — commenting on the AnsweringMuslims blog you linked to:
http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2010/06/arrested-for-being-christian-preachers.html
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Spiffy the Basset said…
This is a complete and total lie and David and Nabeel should be ashamed of themselves. Tonight, just as last night, there were dozens of Christians and former muslims at the festival witnessing to muslims. None of them had problems with people. None of the other several dozen “Christian preachers” were arrested. Lies, lies, and more lies.
The same happened last night. I saw Nabeel and David showboating and trying to cause a scene and know they were not only expecting to be arrested, but to some degree, trying to get arrested.
They care more about their hatred for islam than their love for muslims. I have evangelized in many continents and in places far more hostile than the dearborn festival, but can say with experience that they did not at all suffer for the cross, they suffered for their egos.
June 19, 2010 10:52 PM
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Not a good sign for your friends…although whether or not they have a constitutional right to insensitively stereotype members of a community to their faces, in a way that reasonable people should know would lead to a disturbance, is a different question which makes be glad I’m not on the Sixth Circuit.
Nick, doesn’t Spiffy’s extreme language in this comment make you wonder about his objectivity?
I don’t know why but comments and pingbacks were turned off for this post for a while. One article that should have showed up as a pingback is this one from Aristophrenium.
The name Jesus is SO feared by those who hate Christianity–mentioning it is worse than profanity to atheists.
Nick’s comments betray a deep seated fear: “…but I (and many other people, I’m sure) find it rude, tasteless and annoying” based on the genetic fallacy: not once did Nick consider whether what was said by Nabeel (who likely knows more than most of us about Islam) might be true on its own merits. For Nick it can’t be true simply because Nabeel is a Christian… worse, he’s a convert from Islam. (The parallel of atheist hatred aimed a Anthony Flew is only one of very many examples.)
I woke up to Fernando Ortega’s “Give Me Jesus” this morning and realized just how threatening peace ordered to the truth, justice ordered to the truth, right and wrong ordered to the truth, and beauty ordered to truth are to some people.
Truth. What a concept…
Nick,
I have to wonder if we have watched the same videos.
(1) It was not the people that Nabeel and David were trying to provoke. It was the unconstitutional ban against free speech the city enacted that they were provoking. (Pastor George Saieg has been likewise provoking that same ban, which he has been fighting since last year. The Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Saieg, is now likewise representing Nabeel et al, since it is all the same fight.) The City of Dearborn enacted, and U.S. District Court Judge Paul Borman (for the Eastern District of Michigan) upheld, a ban against “leafleting on certain streets” and permitted “the distribution of literature only from approved booths and information tables”—a clear violation of the Constitution. An appeal is heading to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and is a no-brainer.
(2) Nabeel and David were not portraying Islam as un-American. They were portraying their treatment by the Arab Festival security guards as un-American, and portraying the ban against free speech as un-American, and portraying the illegal activities of the Dearborn police as un-American, etc. To say that American citizens are prohibited from proselytizing and distributing non-Muslim religious literature at the annual Arab Festival and for five blocks around it on pain of being arrested smacks of Sharia, and is by all counts un-American. It is a gross error to conflate their political arguments against the Arab Festival and the City of Dearborn with their theological arguments against Islam.
(3) And to defeat the credibility you thought Spiffy’s remarks had:
(a) The other Christian ministries at the Arab Festival sharing their faith were neither assaulted by security nor taken into police custody because they remained at their designated booths and tables, enjoying their freedom of speech where the city and federal court limited it to. But that is the very nature of the fight that pastor George Saieg and the Acts 17 Apologetics team are engaged in; they are refusing to sit quietly while their rights and freedoms are stripped away by city and state officials, even if their fellow brothers are content to do so. The other Christians at the festival did not get into trouble because they were willing to play by the rules. But then some Christians, such as George Saieg, Nabeel Qureshi, and David Wood, refuse to abide by rules that violate the fundamental rights and freedoms that millions of Americans have shed blood to secure over the last two centuries. Those who played possum will in the end thank those who didn’t.
(b) On the one hand we have the vituperative hearsay of “Spiffy the Basset” attacking the character of Nabeel et al, while on the other hand we have starkly unbiased video evidence of what actually took place. You may toss in your lot with the unscrupulous and illegitimately personal attacks of Spiffy, if you like. The more reserved and responsible of us will toss in our lot with the unbiased view of the camera and the testimony of Nabeel and David who make their statements knowing all too well what the footage on the cameras will testify. Just as the footage of their experience last year proved the lies and physical assaults of the security guards, so too will video evidence prove more reliable than the excoriating attacks of their critics this year.
[...] example, someone named Nick—over at Tom Gilson’s Thinking Christian—thought that the opinion of “Spiffy the Basset” had some credibility. Spiffy let loose with [...]
Nick pulls another Matzke.
“Nick pulls another Matzke.”
What? Not replying when the thread was closed? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was open again until just now.
“The name Jesus is SO feared by those who hate Christianity–mentioning it is worse than profanity to atheists.
Nick’s comments betray a deep seated fear: “…but I (and many other people, I’m sure) find it rude, tasteless and annoying” based on the genetic fallacy”
Eh? The topic was not the truth of their gospel message, the topic was whether or not constitutional rights were violated and whether or not David Wood & co. were (a) really just politely minding their own business and being shut down in draconian fashion by sharia-enforcing, constitution-subverting security guards, or (b) whether they were engaging in a culture war at an arab cultural festival by trying to provoke a disturbance, getting harried/nervous/annoyed/marginally trained/my-job-is-to-keep-the-peace-precisely-because-of-potential-for-possible-Muslim-vs-non-Muslim-conflict-at-this-festival security guards to tell them to leave, and then claiming oppression for the benefit of their own donors and supporters and fans who like to portray Amercian Muslims as extremists and un-American.
“For Nick it can’t be true simply because Nabeel is a Christian… worse, he’s a convert from Islam. (The parallel of atheist hatred aimed a Anthony Flew is only one of very many examples.)”
Wait, am I discredited because I’m a fan of atheism, or a fan of Islam? It’s so hard to keep track.
My only points in jumping into this thread were that:
(a) initially I observed that there is such a thing as “sharing Christ” in a way that is sufficiently disruptive that it is legitimate for the government to place some regulations on it. E.g., if you want to use a megaphone and shout and wave offensive signs around, you have to be in a designated protest area. I have seen this kind of regulation at parades and football games in places as diverse as San Francisco and Atlanta, Georgia, and I have seen this kind of regulation applied to protests of all sorts. It’s not Sharia law or a Muslim thing or an anti-Christian thing. Such regulations might or might not be constitutional, I assume the topic has been well-litigated and the courts have decided such regulations are reasonable, although I bet the details matter a lot.
(b) However, David Wood et al. weren’t using megaphones or distributing literature. So perhaps the above restrictions shouldn’t apply. On the other hand, it sure looks to me from those videos and their rhetoric that they were looking to provoke a disturbance. And other people, apparently not just Muslims but even other Christian missionaries, got the same impression. We might be right or wrong, but just dismissing all of us as being biased ain’t credible, we are from 3 mutually opposed metaphysical camps.
And anyway, if the activities really weren’t polite personal conversations, but instead provocative and disturbance-causing, well then, reasonable regulations might apply to this situation like they apply to other disturbance-causing free speech. In which case your constitutional complaints fall apart.
And, even if you are correct that the guards’ actions were unconstitutional, you would have to establish that their actions were applying the official policy for the public event. If the guards overstepped their bounds because they made a mistake (apparently in one of those videos one of the guards thought one of the preachers was distributing literature outside of the designated area), or because they thought things were heading in a direction that might cause a fight, or whatever, well then, that’s unfortunate, but it would have to be fixed by better training of the guards, not by changing the official policy.
“The other Christians at the festival did not get into trouble because they were willing to play by the rules.”
Why aren’t they complaining of all the oppression apparently happening of Christians, but actually just of David Wood et al.?
Maybe they realize that freedom of speech means that everyone gets freedom of speech, not just Christians. So everyone can have a booth on equal terms. Everyone can distribute religious literature, but everyone has a right to not be constantly harassed by preachers as well, so religious literature distribution happens in a designated area. Etc.
I don’t have a firm opinion on whether (a) my understanding of the regulations is correct — I’m just gleaning from the blogs & videos, or (b) whether e.g. the ACLU would approve of the regulations. But from what I’ve seen, it looks pretty standard and reasonable.
If your real position is that there should be no restrictions whatsoever on preaching/sharing the gospel, not even for practical reasons or for reasons of keeping a cultural festival from turning into a huge fracas of religious argumentation — well then, that’s fine, argue for that position. But be sure to follow out the legal implications — e.g. preachers with megaphones at concerts in the park, anyone? — and don’t pretend that it is obvious that David Wood & co. were purely innocent non-disturbance-causing gospel-sharers. That might be true, but it’s not obvious, especially since other preachers were apparently there, apparently did share the Gospel without causing disturbance, and apparently were even critical of the David Wood et al. group for having ulterior motives and tactics.
The fact that other blogs seem to be confirming this, and that TC himself said in the opening post that the evangelism tactics of David Wood & co. might not be agreeable to everyone, also raise suspicion.
Anyway, I don’t know any more about this than what’s on the blogs/videos. But your guys’ case is not made manifest by what you’ve presented, and jumping on me for bias or whatever doesn’t improve your case.
Well hey, on the other hand, based on this video, there is a five-block exclusion zone around the Arabic festival for handing out literature.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smw9QuH1xkA
That does sound extreme to me. Call the ACLU, they have a long record of challenging exactly such policies, even on behalf of religious conservatives. And I daresay they are a bit better at it that the Thomas More Law Center.
On the other hand, it’s pretty dang hard to argue that Sharia law is behind this policy, when the nasty enforcers of the law were…a bunch of classic upper-midwestern white cops in sunglasses. The policy may have been motivated by city officials nervous about fights or religious strife in their city. That doesn’t make it constitutional, but it is a long ways from Sharia…
I guess this guy is just as biased and unreasonable as “Spiffy”:
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The Rev. Haytham Abi Haydar, a Christian evangelical convert from Islam with Arabic Alliance Church in Dearborn, said that a Christian group called Acts 17 Apologetics caused the problems at this year’s Arab festival.
“They put cameras in their faces and were very antagonistic,” Abi Haydar said of the group that produced the controversial video that has drawn almost 1.4 million views on YouTube.
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Why should I believe you guys and not Haydar?
Here’s a bunch more from Haydar. Again, why should I believe you and not him?
http://mnnonline.org/article/14394
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Sometimes, the manner in which the conversation begins is confrontational. Wood explains, “If we’re in a discussion with a Muslim, we might say, ‘What do you believe about Surah 9:29 which commands you to fight and subjugate and oppress up? Do you believe that, or have you reinterpreted that verse?’”
The group had three people filming Acts 17′s activity this year since they have run into hostility in the past when posing such questions. In the event that a confrontation turned into trouble, Acts 17 wanted to be able to prove their innocence. However, police confiscated the groups’ cameras and haven’t returned them. Still, eyewitnesses caught the situation on video and posted some footage of the arrests on the ministry’s blog.
Wood says the whole scenario changes things for their ministry. “As of right now, this poses massive problems, because if we were to show up in an area and try to talk to Muslims, they’re going to see us as people who are trouble-makers.”
So will Acts 17 discontinue their ministriy? Wood says, “No. If anything, we’re even more determined not to submit to threats and intimidation.”
His stalwart approach has earned criticism from others representing Christ in the same venue. Wood says, “The main problem, as far as other Christians who have complained about us is concerned, is that they don’t know what happened.”
However, a Dearborn pastor says that’s not the case.
Pastor Haytham Abi-Haydar has been attending the Arab International Festival since 1999, even having been allowed to have a booth at the event. “The community has been very good to us. They never denied us a request. From my perspective, we’ve never had any incidents.”
According to Abi-Haydar, Act 17 challenged Muslims in the crowd. Those challenges seemed to invite a crowd. Abi-Haydar says, “If he thinks that’s how to reach out to people and that’s how to dialogue with people, I think they are endangering their own lives for no reason.”
Wood and his organization were asked by many evangelical groups to change their tactics. Abi-Haydar says, “Why can’t he go around with no cameras, no intimidating people and ask questions and build relationships with the community and sharing Christ? Why is that difficult?”
Abi-Haydar says when Wood was arrested, he was challenging a young Muslim man. The young man was screaming at him. Police asked Woods and his group to disburse. But Abi-Haydar says they didn’t. “I know for one fact: if I was the police, I am responsible for the security of the community there and for the security [of Acts 17 Apologetics]. For their own security, I would have forced them to leave the area. And if they would have rejected it, I would have arrested them myself.”
It’s not about large groups forming, says Abi-Haydar. “It’s about too many people yelling at each other. Is that [a good] witness?”
Some believe this kind of confrontation is just making the nominal Muslims more radical. Abi-Haydar says a loving approach to outreach and evangelism is needed in order to reach them with the Gospel.
Despite the controversy surrounding this event, Abi-Haydar says God is working in the Muslim community of Dearborn. “We have people from Muslim backgrounds. Every year we have new faces. A lot of people are coming to Christ. So, God is at work.”
In the meantime, Abi-Haydar is asking Christians to pray for their work in Dearborn and pray that through their witness, many more people would come to know Christ.
Haydar –> Abi-Haydar
Nick,
There are two questions here. One is whether their approach to the crowd there was the most effective evangelism. I have already said I’m not sure about that. It’s not clear to me that it is.
The second question is whether the police (not guards but police) were enforcing an unconstitutional regulation against Christian activity. This one comes down to whether Nabeel and David were actually being disruptive. When the videos are released (and why haven’t they been so far?) we’ll be able to assess that, each of us for ourselves. David and Nabeel indicate high confidence the videos will show they were in the right. That would be an odd position to take if it weren’t true.
As for other motives they might have had there (especially fund-raising), note that Nabeel is (as I said above) an M.D. working in a church, and obviously not in it for the money. Note also that they are not asking for funds.
I wasn’t suggesting they were trying to raise money at ArabFest. Rather, creating a scene, getting “martyred”, etc., are a great way to get online publicity and donations for a ministry or other nonprofit. I guess they got a million+ hits for the video last year. So maybe this year they were playing for the online audience, and thus being obnoxious with respect to the local situation. Maybe. I’ll withhold judgment and just note that Christians who were there are in disagreement.
Do you really like that much to deal in evidence-free theorizing? It’s fine to withhold judgment, but really, there isn’t anything there for you to withhold judgment about.