I am not sure what Tim Guthrie thinks ‘exonerated’ means, nor what Peter Lumpkins thinks ‘vindicated’ means, but the four Christians of Acts 17 Apologetics are definitely providing a very clear and frank example that Guthrie and Lumpkins could both learn from. Their video cameras and equipment, with their footage intact, were at long last returned to them by the Dearborn Police Department. It is at least embarrassing, if not almost hysterical, how completely erroneous the police, the mayor, and the Muslim and Christian critics have all been about the conduct of the Acts 17 Apologetics team. Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood, Paul Rezkalla, and Negeen Mayel were truly vindicated by the video evidence.

The official police report said that Qureshi was “screaming into the crowd” while the officers were present and, since the crowd had increased in agitation, the police officers handcuffed the four members of Acts 17 Apologetics and took them to the command post in order to “gain control of the situation and avoid a possible riotous crowd,” who were “yelling profanities” and calling security and police on the behavior of the four. The police arrived to find Qureshi “yelling” into the crowd and “inciting” them.

Here is the riot-causing troublemaker Nabeel Qureshi:

As you can see in the video, the crowd “increased in numbers” from about nine people up to around fourteen. And unless my hearing is somehow impervious, there was not a single person “yelling profanities” nor was Qureshi “screaming” or “yelling” into the crowd. And contrary to the Muslim and Christian critics, Qureshi was not denigrating Islam or insulting Muslims. His message was answering questions about Christianity and the gospel to people who first asked him. (I also want you to observe how graciously and calmly Qureshi defused the initially antagonistic questions, answering them in a manner that brought no reproach to the name of Christ. I have learned so much from Qureshi about how to share the gospel with people.)

But notice something even more interesting. Both David Wood and Paul Rezkalla were not doing anything but recording the experience on video. Not only that, but no one in the crowd was addressing either Wood or Rezkalla. All the conversation was centered on Qureshi alone, while the other two simply filmed. Remember, all four members of the Acts 17 Apologetics team were arrested for disturbing the peace. In what universe does video recording disturb the peace? In other words, what cause did the police have for arresting Wood and Rezkalla?

As mystifying as that is, it defies all sense and reason that Negeen Mayel was arrested along with them. In the video above, to the right of Qureshi you can see a tent in which various booths are set up. On the other side of that tent, perhaps sixty feet away from Qureshi, Wood, and Rezkalla, is the young Mayel also video recording them. And worse still, nothing had even happened yet. As you can see in the footage, Qureshi, Wood, and Rezkalla were simply walking around at this point; i.e., the so-called large and agitated crowd had not even formed around the gentlemen yet. According to Wood, Mayel was arrested about fifteen minutes prior to the others being arrested. Again, all four were arrested for disturbing the peace. And Mayel was simply standing there, filming. She was not engaging anyone, nobody was talking to her, etc.

It is illegal to simply stand there and film at the Dearborn Arab International Festival? How is that liable for disturbing the peace? There was no crowd around the other three gentlemen yet, and nobody was paying any attention to Mayel. Exactly what was the “criminal complaint” lodged against them that had the police begin arresting them, starting with Mayel? It cannot be some large, agitated crowd incited by the screaming and yelling of Qureshi, because he was not addressing any crowd yet. (And even when he was speaking to them, he was neither screaming or yelling.) So in the film above we can see Qureshi, Wood, and Rezkalla walking among the booths in the tent talking amongst themselves (about fifteen minutes prior to the events in the previous video) with Mayel outside the tent recording them on video. The police approach her, inform her of a criminal complaint, illegally confiscate her video camera and handcuff her, and begin arresting the rest of the Acts 17 Apologetics team.

For what?

Wood, Mayel, and Rezkalla were simply video recording. There was no crowd around them. Qureshi was neither leafleting nor attacking anyone; after praying with a fellow Christian, a small crowd gathered around him and started asking him questions. He answered them calmly and graciously, defusing the initially antagonistic questions down to where more substantive questions were being asked and answered. And in the background the police can be seen forcibly confiscating Wood’s video camera, which he was still holding high in his hand. Then they arrested Qureshi, taking his microphone. Then they arrested Rezkalla, confiscating his video camera. And these arrests began with Mayel fifteen minutes prior, due to some obscure “criminal complaint.”

With evidence like this, the accusations against them have to strain credibility to the breaking point. I challenge anyone to review the above footage and find something for which the Acts 17 Apologetics team can be legally or ethically liable. I may be speaking for more than just myself when I say that imagined suspicions are no substitute for clear video evidence.

On a related note, state Representative Tom McMillin issued a statement today that the events in Dearborn surrounding the Acts 17 Apologetics team has indeed garnered the interest of the state Attorney General Michael Cox. McMillin said that he was contacted today by the Attorney General’s office and assured that the developments of the Arab Festival incidents are being monitored by their office, that they are “very interested in seeing how the litigation unfolds” and “they’ve been in discussions with the defendants’ attorneys and it’s definitely on their radar screen.” McMillin said that whether it is by “the skills of the Thomas More Law Center or eventually the state Attorney General Mike Cox, [the] errant public officials in Dearborn will be held accountable for the apparent illegal activity that they engaged in when suppressing the four Christians’ freedom of speech.”

Today was the arraignment of the four Acts 17 Apologetics members who were arrested last month in Dearborn, Michigan. They are all being charged with a misdemeanor offense for disturbing the peace; Nabeel Qureshi, 29, David Wood, 34, Paul Rezkalla, 18, and Negeen Mayel, 18 (who is facing an additional charge of disobeying a police officer) face fines of up to $500 each and up to 93 days in jail. Their attorney Robert Muise with the Thomas More Law Center entered a plea of “not guilty,” and noted that they will file a lawsuit against the City of Dearborn in federal court. They are all free on bond and will return to court on 3 August 2010 for a motion hearing, and the trial is set for 20 September 2010. Additionally, the Dearborn city attorney told them that their videos and cameras would be returned this week.

Click here for additional report from Jim Kiertzner of Local 4 News.

Update: 1 July 2010, 22:40 Pacific

Representative Tom McMillin (R-Rochester Hills) is asking that the Attorney General’s Office investigate the incident involving the 18 June 2010 arrest. McMillin sponsored a resolution along with state representatives Paul Scott, Brian Calley, Kim Meltzer, and Dave Agema and submitted it 1 July 2010; the next scheduled session day where it can be read into the record is 21 July 2010.

“Both the Constitution of Michigan and the United States guarantee the right of every person to enjoy free speech and practice their religion freely, just as these men were doing,” he said. “Those rights can’t be just pushed aside for political correctness or to accommodate certain circumstances or locations.” McMillin agreed to attend their arraignment as a show of solidarity. “These men should not be punished for exercising their inalienable rights,” he said, noting also on his Facebook page that he will be quite disappointed if the Attorney General “doesn’t immediately investigate this serious injustice of this basic freedom of speech granted in our state’s Constitution.”

As reported by Micki Steele of The Detroit News, Senior Trial Counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, Robert Muise, has said that the four Acts 17 Apologetics members who were arrested 18 June 2010 at the Arab International Festival—Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood, Paul Rezkalla, and Negeen Mayel—will appear before the 19th District Court in Dearborn, MI, on 12 July 2010. They will plead “not guilty” and request a jury trial. Steele also noted that Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad has declined to comment on the case, and that phone calls to American Arab Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Fay Beydoun were not returned.

19th District Court
16077 Michigan Ave.
Dearborn, MI, 48126
(313) 943-2060

When it comes to a ‘hostile audience’ situation (emphasis mine),

the Court once sustained a conviction for disorderly conduct of one who refused police demands to cease speaking after his speech seemingly stirred numbers of his listeners to mutterings and threatened disorders. But this case has been significantly limited by cases which hold protected the peaceful expression of views which stirs people to anger because of the content of the expression, or perhaps because of the manner in which it is conveyed, and that breach of the peace and disorderly conduct statutes may not be used to curb such expression.

• For more information and relevant case law, see “Fighting Words and Other Threats to the Peace,” from Annotated Constitution (2000) by Congressional Research Service.

Again the value of video footage simply cannot be understated. On Sunday evening the weekend of their arrest, after being released on bail, David Wood and Paul Rezkalla returned to the Arab Festival in Dearborn, MI, to conduct something of an experiment (along with a friend, Antonio Santana). Instead of going inside the festival, they stood outside of it and distributed pamphlets of the Gospel of John in Arabic and English. The video of the experience is incredible.

For three individuals standing on a public street handing out religious pamphlets in an American city, the Dearborn Police Department responded in under five minutes with a total of eight uniformed officers and arrested them. This is the assault on the rights and freedoms of Americans that is taking place in Dearborn, Michigan. Every year for three days in June, pursuant to a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Borman, the protections of the First Amendment are suspended within the Arab International Festival and its “outer perimeter” which, as we can tell from David’s experience here, apparently constitutes a five-block “buffer zone.” So anywhere within that five-block perimeter and the festival itself, the rights and freedoms of Americans is curtailed.

According to the Thomas More Law Center, who announced today that they are going to represent the four members of the Acts 17 Apologetics team (Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood, Paul Rezkallah, and Negeen Mayel), these videos depict what looks like Sharia law being enforced in Dearborn; as David noted in the above video, under Sharia law non-Muslims are prohibited from proselytizing under pain of death, which includes the distribution of non-Muslim religious literature. Although neither the city of Dearborn nor the state of Michigan is under Muslim rule, the remarkable miscarriage of justice carried out by the city in enacting the ban, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in upholding it, certainly caters to the spirit of Sharia law. But far more importantly, it simply defies the Constitution of the United States.

Be careful of the dragon you’re awakening.

And to all those who are attacking the characters of Nabeel and David, suggesting that they must have been doing something to deserve being arrested since other Christian ministries were at the festival sharing their faith without getting into trouble, please be responsible and inform yourself of all the relevant facts first. The other Christians were not assaulted by security or 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. That is the very nature of the fight that pastor George Saieg and the Acts 17 Apologetics team are engaged in, with the help of legal representation from the Thomas More Law Center; 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.

On a very loosely related note, did you know that Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad was recently appointed to serve on the Homeland Security Advisory Council? Yeah, me neither. I just discovered that interesting bit of news this afternoon, thanks to the staff writer Sean Delaney of the Press & Guide newspaper in Dearborn (“Chief Haddad on national security board,” 3 May 2010). According to statements from Haddad, the city and its police department have established “several similar advisory committees to facilitate communication between different cultural and religious groups, as well as various groups and organizations throughout the city.” And he goes on to say, “We are engaging the community in a way that’s never been done before.” He’s got that right.

What I found deeply troubling, in light of the recent events in Dearborn, was Haddad’s closing comment. After describing it as an honor and privilege to serve on such a board in Washington, he described the task as “extremely important and a high degree of responsibility because we have to come up with a program that serves the country as well as the City of Dearborn” (emphasis mine). Right, and Americans want what Dearborn and its police are doing with facilitating “communication between different cultural and religious groups” to have an influence on how Homeland Security is advised.

That dragon better wake up soon.

The story of the Acts 17 Apologetics team, Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood (including Negeen and Paul Rezkalla), being arrested at the 2010 Arab Festival this weekend in Dearborn, Michigan, is exploding not only across the blogosphere but is also getting picked up by other media sources, such as news programs and radio talk shows. With that sort of exposure you just know it is going to elicit responses from their critics. It is for this reason that everyone, Nabeel and David especially, can appreciate the value of their having filmed the experience.

For 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 some very strong words attacking the character of Nabeel and David, calling them liars and claiming that they were “showboating” and “trying to cause a scene,” suggesting that they were “trying to get arrested” (which is not only fallacious but Gilson had already obviated this sort of response within his article itself). So herein lies the value of video footage: the scathing opinion of Spiffy can be compared against starkly unbiased video evidence, averting the tedium of this person’s word against that person’s. (Provided that the footage on their cameras is not coincidentally damaged or deleted while in possession of the Dearborn Police Department.) 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 vituperative attacks of their critics this year. Clearly that is one of the very reasons they brought video cameras with them and had them rolling the entire time. So go ahead and toss in your lot with the unscrupulous and illegitimately personal attacks of Spiffy, Nick. 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 very well what the footage on the cameras will expose.

On a related note and something I found quite remarkable? There was supposed to be a second formal debate between Dr. James White, from Alpha & Omega Ministries, and Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Awal, from the Zaitun Dawah Institute, this evening at the Center for Religious Debate in Romulus, MI (info)—but it got cancelled, and I doubt you could ever guess why. Evidently the mosque that was hosting Sheikh Awal demanded that he pull out of that debate because of David Wood’s arrest Friday evening! If you’re struggling to grasp the connection between these two things, you are not alone. It is difficult to say what the connection could be, other than they are both apologists and participants in The Great Debate Series over last weekend. But even if we assumed that David Wood did something highly illegal, what has that to do with Dr. White? Why is that mosque equating the two men? As Dr. White noted,

I pointed out to Sheikh Awal that Sheikh Zakir Naik has been banned from the UK for saying that all Muslims need to be terrorists. So, should I hold him accountable for everything Zakir Naik says or does? If not, why not?

With consideration to how often American Muslims object to “being lumped together with others unfairly,” it was a very curious choice that mosque made, predicated on such a dubious connection.

Some more information about the arrest last night of Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood of Acts 17 Apologetics ministry at the Arab Festival in Dearborn, Michigan.

Due to their experience last year at the Arab Festival, Nabeel and David (along with two of their friends, Negeen and Paul Rezkalla) were very careful and thoughtful about their behavior and activities this year—not speaking to anyone unless approached, not carrying any Christian pamphlets, walking away the moment anyone asked them to stop talking to them, refusing to comment about Islam, etc. And, of course, they filmed their entire experience on multiple cameras, in order to ensure that no lies would be able to survive scrutiny.

And “lies” is precisely the reason they were arrested, according to Nabeel, who said the police told them they were being arrested for “breaching the peace.” From what Nabeel was able to gather, one of the festival volunteers accused the Acts 17 Apologetics team of surrounding him, preventing him from walking away. “This is as blatantly false as an accusation can get,” Nabeel said, as the video footage will vindicate. But uniformed officers arrested the team, led them away in handcuffs to shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” and placed them in jail overnight, Nabeel said.

According to Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad, all four were arrested for disorderly conduct and later released on bail.

• Nabeel Qureshi. “Acts 17 in Dearborn jail,” AnsweringMuslims.com.
• David Wood. “Arrested for being Christian preachers,” AnsweringMuslims.com.
• Niraj Warikoo. “4 missionaries arrested at Dearborn festival,” Wayne County Free Press staff writer at Freep.com.

Read the rest of this entry

Last year, on 21 June 2009, Nabeel Qureshi and David Wood attended the Dearborn Arab Festival in Michigan—and they experienced “the religion of peace” first-hand. The video footage below is taken from that experience; the cameras were operated by David Wood and Mary Jo Sharp. Yeah, this was in the United States of America.

This year Nabeel and David returned to the Arab Festival and, for some reason I have not managed to find yet, they were arrested there. I have never issued a formal request like this before but this is so shocking—and in Michigan!—that many of us feel that it calls for a powerful intercessory response from the family of God. I am asking that all Christian staff and visitors of the Aristophrenium keep David Wood, Nabeel Qureshi, and their AnsweringMuslims.com ministry in your daily, earnest prayers.

When I uncover updates, I will post them here at the Aristophrenium.

(HT: #Prosapologian on IRC and RazorsKiss)