Michigan Muslim Exception to the First Amendment

I have had this tab open for a while waiting to get a chance to read it and post. It is a good summation of the issue of Terry Jones and selective enforcement of law in terms of Islam and free speech.

From National Review:

By Nina Shea
Pastor Terry Jones and Assistant Pastor Wayne Sapp may be leaders of an obscure and failing micro-church, the Dove World Outreach Center, in Gainesville, Florida, but they are world class blasphemers against Islam. Earlier this month they applied for a permit to continue their public and provocative criticism of Islam — which this time was not to burn a Koran but to “peacefully … protest sharia and jihad” in front of the largest mosque in the United States, in the most Muslim area of the country. Not only was their protest, planned for last Friday, blocked by court order, but they were convicted by Michigan’s 19th District Court of being likely to breach the peace.

In March, the two pastors stirred international controversy and, in Afghanistan, lethal violence, by staging a Koran burning. On Friday, April 22, they had planned a two-man demonstration to protest “sharia and jihad” during the weekly prayer service outside the the Shiite Islamic Center of America, in Dearborn, Michigan. News of their application for a protest permit prompted at least four serious death threats against them from “metro Detroiters,” according to the police chief.  They were told by authorities they would have to cover the costs of a massive security effort for their protest, amounting to $46,000.  They refused and were promptly prosecuted on the afternoon of the 22nd. They were found guilty of intending to disturb the peace, ordered by the court to stay away from the Dearborn mosque for the next three years, and briefly jailed for refusing to pay the “peace bond,” to ensure there would be no public disturbance — a bond that the prosecutor had requested to be set at $46,000 but which the court had reduced to $1. It appears that the jury, judge, prosecutor and police chief, all feared that the planned protest would set off local Muslim riots or other violent actions.

Pastor Jones and Sapp are unsympathetic figures. Their anti-Muslim antics over the past seven months, when they first threatened to burn the Islamic holy book, have seemed designed as much to grab media attention for themselves as to deliberately insult Muslims.  But the First Amendment’s broad protections for free speech have been defined by court cases revolving around all manner of  unpopular speech and bigotry— from Ku Klux Klan leaders, Nazis, other racists and, most recently, anti-gay activists in a case involving protests at the funerals of fallen American soldiers.  Islam would be given deferential treatment if this decision is allowed to stand.

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About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

7 Replies to “Michigan Muslim Exception to the First Amendment”

  1. Maybe convicting Pastor Jones of being “Likely” to do something means we can now arrest Muslims for being “likely” jihadists? That’s not what the court intended but if they have approved convictions based on likelihood, why stop with this man?

  2. Travesty, but I just met in Vancouver this week, the owner of the small restaurant where Guy Earl performed and was charged by the hrc, kangaroo courts, not only him, but the owner of the restaurant was ordered to pay 7 thousand, however, his lawyer costs to date, which he will never recover, are 25,000 Meanwhile he intends to fight this outrageous verdict further in a real court and of course it will cost a small fortune, While the lesbian couple have broken up over the incident, and the main lunatic lesbian who persued this fake and disgusting claim was awarded over 20 thousand
    Will Harper please please please stop this left communistic fascist nonsense
    Yesterday in the prairies, I shopped and commented to the many head covered women in the shops, ‘hey, great they got that bastard eh? that pig bin laden, and guess what? Not one nod of agreement, in fact, what a shock, I got dirty looks, angry gestures, etc, all of the above, I couldn’t find any islamic men to comment to, but surely, I would have been chased, sworn at, threatened, as I was when I tried to go into the prayer room at the edmonton international airport
    I should have gone to a shopping center or walmarts or zellers, where they all hang out to mark their presence

  3. Does Jones have the right under the US Constitution to express his views in his own country, no matter what he thinks? It would appear that the answer is no. It is now illegal to speak your mind in the United States of America if doing so may cause insult to others. That’s the new US Constitution. I thought they had to have a big meeting to change that kind of thing, but apparently it can be done on the fly, with no muss and no fuss. Are we going to sit around reminiscing about the old days when you could say what you were thinking without posting a peace bond? I can’t believe this. The Yanks just gave up their holy first amendment without as much as a peep. They just all said, “Whatever”, and it’s a done deal, the precedent is now set. Unbelievable. And now that Obama has shown the birth certificate and shot bin Laden, I guess it’s going to be another four years in the same direction.

  4. The left has been attacking the Constitution for a long time, they did this under the guise of trying to reinterpret the Second Amendment. For decades I have been telling people that if they can change the meaning of the Second Amendment by reinterpretation they can change the entire Constitution removing all of our rights. I am now being proven right and the majority of the people are so use to losing rights they are saying nothing.

  5. “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Citizen (106BC–43BC)

  6. Give one very important legal victory to the enemy.

    Should the Supreme Court uphold this idiotic ruling, then you can expect more lawsuits from Muslim groups all over the country to halt proper criticism of the ideology.

    This is how the west will be lost: through legal means, not military or ideological means. Despite the philosophical underpinnings of legal rulings, the courts are now too preoccupied with preventing Muslim riots and Muslim attacks like 9/11 to even consider upholding the Constitution or Bill of Rights. They are too worried about losing voters through mass-sacrifice by angry Muslims to even care about such “trivial” matters.

    So what does the CiC think of all this? What does the federal government think?

    If the latest “non-statements” are any indication, they approve.

    Plato once said (and I am paraphrasing here): I assume by your silence that you approve.

    The massive silence coming from the Justice Department in Washington and other centers of power seems to be a collective and massive nod of approval on this matter.

    The appeasement of Islam and its doctrines continues apace in this maddening and frustrating war against it.

  7. The three most important rights in the Bill of Rights are the Right of Free Speech, the Right of religous freedom and the Right of the ordinary people to be armed to protect the other rights. The left has been attack the right to be armed and are now starting on the right of free speech. We either fight or we we lose all of our rights and our freedom.