RIGHT SPEAK: Dark Days in Dearborn": Things Go from Bad to Worse – Surprise!

Dark Days in Dearborn:

Dark Days in Dearborn

Fifteen years ago, on March 7, 2010, Michigan Live (which bills itself as “Michigan’s #1 News Source”) ran an article by one Kim Schneider about the Islamization of Dearborn, Michigan, which she described as boasting “one of the largest Muslim communities outside the Middle East.”
Schneider wasn’t critical of this development; she was celebratory. Thanks to Dearborn’s Muslims, she proclaimed, the city was awash in “enticing shops, restaurants and bakeries that feature cases stacked high with baklava and fresh pitas” – not to mention “flatbread…made fresh to order in a roaring brick oven,” “platters overflow[ing] with creamy baby ghanoush, shawarma and kabobs,” and “pistachio and honey treats in various combinations and gorgeous pastries.” At the places selling these delicacies, observed Schneider with palpable delight, there were more signs in Arabic than in English. What a wonderfully exotic adventure – and in Michigan, of all places!

Schneider went on to promote Dearborn’s Arab American National Museum, which has “a soaring dome decorated with Arabic calligraphy,” and which, she wrote, seeks “to bring the voices and faces of Arab Americans to mainstream audiences and thereby dispel misconceptions about Arab Americans and other immigrant groups.” One of the exhibits at the museum, noted Schneider, highlighted “the Arab heritage of many well-known political and entertainment figures,” including Ralph Nader, Donna Shalala, Casey Kasem, and Helen Thomas, the longtime dean of the White House press corps. (One wonders if the exhibit was changed when Thomas, less than two months after Schneider’s article appeared, was forced to quit her job with the Hearst newspapers after saying that Israeli Jews should go “home” to Poland and Germany.)

Another exhibit at the museum juxtaposed two sets of images of Arabs. One set consisted of stills from movies and TV shows in which Arabs were shown committing acts of violence; the other contained “photos of everyday Arab Americans,” including “babies” and “grandmothers.” The implicit argument here was that the violence was an ugly and baseless stereotype. To be sure, Schneider did feel obliged to acknowledge that a terrorist attack had recently been committed in the skies over the Detroit area: on Christmas Day 2009. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian member of al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP) who was a passenger on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam, had attempted to explode the plane to bits as it prepared to land in Detroit. But rather than acknowledge the seriousness of jihadism and explain its centrality to Islam, the museum responded to the attack by “providing the back story of people of Yemen descent.” Obviously Schneider found this commendable.

Schneider also hailed the Islamic Center of America, which, she wrote, “welcomes anyone willing to learn about Islam and Muslims.” She and friend, she added, “were swept inside by a force of kindness as we stood outside,” and upon entering they were “greeted…warmly” by a guide who offered “a mini-sermon about how Abraham was the father of us all” before helping them fold “the provided scarves we were required to wear over our hair” – a symbol of subordination to men, needless to say, but Schneider didn’t say so.

The piece concluded with some words from the guide: “‘This is your house, too,’ he says. ‘This is not just our house.’ Schneider read those words as a welcome. In fact they were a warning. When Islam moves into new territory, the idea isn’t to live and let live. Islam is a faith of conquest whose adherents have been taught to regard infidel lands as “the House of War.” They’ve learned from the Koran that it’s their job to play nice with the infidels until their numbers reach a certain point – meanwhile crying “Islamophobia!” and “freedom of religion!” whenever anyone breathes a discouraging word about Islam – and thereafter to gradually turn up the pressure, making it clear that Muslims can’t coexist peacefully with infidels until the latter have either converted, submitted, or been unceremoniously butchered.

Fifteen years after Schneider’s billet doux to Islam, Dearborn has more Muslims than ever. And they’ve clearly dropped a lot of the cozy surface stuff that made Schneider so starry-eyed. As I wrote a couple of months ago, “just over half of the city’s population [is] of North African or Middle Eastern ancestry” – a statistic that (so far) no other municipality in no city can match. At a City Council meeting in September, Dearborn’s mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, reacted to a local Christian minister’s politely expressed concern about the renaming of two intersections in honor of a terrorist supporter by calling the minister a racist and telling him: “Although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here.” (Later, after realizing that he’d let the mask slip a bit too much a bit too early, the mayor apologized for his remark, saying – in an echo of the Islamic Center’s guide – that everyone is welcome in Dearborn.)
Mayor Hammond made headlines again earlier this month, when he dismissed complaints about mosques in Dearborn being allowed to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer at almost all hours of the day and night. On November 19, Mark Tapson reported on a longtime Dearborn resident who lives a quarter-mile from a mosque but who can still hear its call to prayer from inside her house, “sometimes as early as 5:30 a.m.” and as late as 10 p.m. She and other complainants have been dismissed by Hammond, who predictably cites “our constitutional rights to freedom of religion.” Of course Islam only cares about “constitutional rights” until it’s in a position to overthrow the Constitution and replace it with sharia --->READ MORE HERE.