Daily Archives: July 12, 2010

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DEARBORN, Mich. -- Four Christian missionaries who were arrested at Dearborn's Arab American Festival were arraigned Monday on misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace.

Charged were Negeen Mayel, Dr. Nabeel Qureshi, Paul Rezkalla and David Wood Mayel, all members of a group called "Acts 17 Apologetics."

Negeen Mayel faces an additional charge of disobeying an officer.

They all pleaded not guilty.

The four were arrested on June 18 while handing out Christian literature and videotaping themselves.

The group said they were arrested over religion, but police insist that it's not true, and continue to stand behind their arrest. Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly defends his police department's arrest, saying he saw the video police confiscated from them and he believes the missionaries came into town to cause trouble.

Dearborn, MI has one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States...and (like most of the country) and these days it seems like if there is a question between Christians and "anybody else", the Christians are going to lose.

BUT...

I'm not sure if this is the case here.  There are certainly different accounts.

The four who were arrested were not the only Christians at the festival.

Groups were to get a permit and have a booth...most Christian groups did that.

These four evidently did not get a booth, but they did get a video camera.

There are quotes of them saying things like they had been threatened the year before, so they brought along the video camera...they were there expecting excitement.  This is not what missionaries should be after.

Here is a video from 2009:

I see aggression on both sides, I see the Christians being inflammatory.  I think that perhaps the arrest was justified, if they were breaking the rules.

Let the courts figure it out.

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On the other hand, here is a t-shirt that was confiscated from Arab students at a Dearborn high school

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blog update...as of 10:00 AM Sunday morning, I'm down to 983 uncategorized posts.

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On "The Private War in The Mind" from Reformation Theology

Yet there is a reality to spiritual warfare and it is something God certainly wants us to know about, or else He would not have revealed it to us in His Word. If we just stay with the Scripture, we will be on safe and sure ground. God wants us to understand the warfare, know our enemy and live a life free from his clutches.

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Hillbuzz on waking up Americans:

this paragraph is talking about why the Republicans don't seem to be all that interested in winning:

Maybe these men truly don’t know how to do that…but we think it’s more like the Washington Generals knowing they have a pretty good racket losing basketball games to the Globetrotters, so why start working harder and winning when the script their all following says they need to lose in the end (if they want to keep their cushy existence as the lovable losers).

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A good article on gay marriage by "The Gay Patriot"

If you feel a victim because the state doesn’t call your union what you want to call it, well, then you have really politicized your psyche.

He says that gay marriage (the union of 2 people) already exists, what they lack is state recognition.  If they went for the recognition of the union (without calling it "marriage"), they would have the rights of the state recognition of the union.

A commenter said,

Even for straights, a State marriage license is a thing created by State legislation (which I call a privilege); not a thing which morally precedes the State and exists apart from it (which I call a fundamental right).

Which is why, in certain circumstances, I would decline piece of paper that tells me that the state has given me permission to marry.

That's God's job, not the state's.

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