No Sharia law in the U.S. yet, but its effect is being felt
Monday, February 14, 2011 - Naked Public Square by Eugene J. Koprowski
February 14, 2011 — Michigan courts are litigating an appeal that may determine if Sharia law, a strict Islamic law as interpreted by Mullahs since the early Middle Ages, can have force in modern America.
Negeen Mayel, an 18-year-old woman whose parents fled to the U.S. from Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and who subsequently converted to Christianity, was filming fellow Christians preaching the Gospel of Jesus to Muslims attending the June 18, 2010 Arab International Festival.
Students read Islamic law texts at Jamia Dar-ul-Uloom madrassa in Lahore, Pakistan. (Photo: The Washington Times)
Ms. Mayel, along with fellow missionaries Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood and Paul Rezkalla, were originally charged with "Breach of Peace," for which the group was acquitted. However, Ms. Mayel was also charged with
"Failure to obey a police officer" when she refused to turn off her video camera.
There are approximately eight million Muslims in the U.S. today, making them America’s second largest faith group after Christianity. Dearborn, Michigan is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the US. With an estimated population of 98,000, Dearborn has over 30,000 residents who practice Islam. The Dearborn area is colloquially known as the "Muslim Capital of America."
To put in context the influence of Michigan's Muslim residents, consider that in 2008 the City Council of neighboring Hamtramck, Michigan, voted unanimously and over the protests of hundreds of demonstrators to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer five times per day over the city’s own civil defense loudspeakers. The call to prayer was broadcast from the Al-Islah Islamic Center.
According to attorney David Muise at the Thomas More Law Center, a non-profit law firm that represents clients in cases where the law and religion are in conflict, Mayel was arrested by the Dearborn City Police. They placed the young woman, who stands barely five feet tall, into a jail cell overnight.
Her arrest, supporters allege, was in response to a local Muslim resident protesting that
she was violating "Sharia Law," by assisting in the attempted conversion of a Muslim. Non-Muslims are known as “infidels” in the Islamic culture and conversion is a crime.
“City officials take official action solely to please this significant voting bloc. In this case, police effectively replaced our Constitutional guarantees of Free Speech with Sharia law, which forbids Christians to proselytize Muslims,” an employee of the Thomas More Law Center wrote in an email raising funds for Mayel's legal defense.
Appeal Filed Last Week
Muise and his colleagues filed an appeal last week on Mayel's behalf.
According to her lawyers, after Mayel was arrested she was swiftly imprisoned without being told why.
“Negeen spent the night in jail terrified—without even knowing what the ‘charges’ against her were,” according to the Thomas More e-mail.
Astonishingly, note the lawyers,
the arresting officer acknowledged at her trial that Mayel committed no crime by filming.
“Nevertheless, Negeen was charged and convicted by a Dearborn jury for not turning off her video camera when directed to do so by the Dearborn police officer,” the lawyers write in their e-mail.
This astonishing civil rights violation has made national news. Judge Andrew Napolitano covered it on his show on Fox News recently.
Napolitano called the arrest religious “oppression” of young American woman for engaging in her free speech rights in the public square. The festival was open and free to the public and no admission fee was charged.
“We were there to share the Gospel and we were filming our conversations,” said Mayel on the air. “We were talking about Jesus and Islam.”
Robert Muise, Mayel’s attorney, said the police violated Mayel’s First Amendment rights to free speech and her right to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure, under the Fourth Amendment.
“She was engaging in constitutionally protected activity,” said Muise, in an interview with Napolitano on Fox. “The city of Dearborn has the largest Muslim population anywhere in the country. Its officials bow to their [Muslim] desires. You have Christian missionaries whose only crime is to go to a Muslim festival and preach the Gospel.”
Muise said Muslim hecklers were yelling curse words at Mayel and three other “peaceful Christian missionaries.”
No doubt the young lady has an excellent case that her civil rights were violated. But the more troubling question is why city officials, police and the prosecutor included, would knowingly go to trial with so reckless and irresponsible a case, given America’s long-standing protections for freedom of speech.
If police are going to use public order and disorderly conduct statutes as a pretext to enforce Sharia law, there are going to be serious conflicts in our urban areas in the coming years and an even more threatening assault on our culture, whose laws guarantee freedom of speech and prohibit government establishment of religion.
For more information on this and related issues, go to,
http://www.younggunsconservatives.org or e-mail
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