Dearborn, USA - The four Christian missionaries charged with disturbing the peace for preaching at the Dearborn International Arab Festival were vindicated on Friday, with one of the four found guilty of failing to comply with a police order and all four acquitted on the main charge of disturbing the peace. The Detroit Free Press reports.
The mayor of Dearborn still seems confused:
Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly Jr. said Friday night that he respects the decision, but the missionaries were anti-Muslim bigots pulling a publicity stunt to gain attention on YouTube in order to raise money.
A video the group posted last year about their encounters at the festival has had almost 2 million views. The group solicits money on its Web site when it travels to Dearborn, claiming the city is a hotbed of Islamic radicalism.
“It’s really about a hatred of Muslims,” O’Reilly said. “That is what the whole heart of this is. … Their idea is that there is no place for Muslims in America. They fail to understand the Constitution.”
I would suggest that their lack of understanding of the Constitution only mirrors his own. He’s right that the missionary group that was arrested are virulently anti-Muslims and that they regularly engage in rhetorical demonization of all Muslims. They can quite fairly be accused of bigotry.
But bigotry is not against the law in this country and the police cannot arrest people for holding discussions with other people, which is all that they were doing when they were taken into custody. If failing to understand the constitution was grounds for arrest, Mayor O’Reilly would be sharing a cell with the people he’s criticizing.