Friday, November 11, 2011

Michigan Court Rules: Dearborn Judge Mark Somers Violated Constitutional Rights of Pastor Terry Jones

Whether you agree with Terry Jones or not, all Americans should support his Constitutional rights. You may not agree with burning books (I certainly don't), but you should agree with a person's right to burn them. Dearborn Judge Mark Somers (the same judge who tried to get us convicted of "breach of peace" after Nabeel dared speak to young Muslims at the 2010 Arab Festival) threw Jones in jail for attempting to hold a peaceful protest across the street from a Dearborn mosque. Whatever his intentions were, the reality is that Judge Somers enforced Sharia in the United States. Fortunately, a higher court has overturned his deplorable decision.

Michigan--On Thursday, Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Ziolkowski ruled that Jones' constitutional rights were violated when the Wayne County Prosecutor and Dearborn District Judge Mark W. Somers required Jones and his associate pastor, Wayne Sapp, to take out a "peace bond" in order to hold a demonstration against "radical elements of Islam and Sharia" outside the Islamic Center of America.

Ziolkowski overturned Somers' ruling in April on First Amendment grounds, said Jones' attorneys.

The Wayne County Circuit Court judge also reversed the District Court judge's order of a three-year injunction that ordered Jones to stay away from the vicinity of the Islamic Center of America, where he planned his rally against "radical Islam and Sharia."
Jones applauded the ruling.

"We are very pleased that the decision of Judge Somers to ban us from exercising our free speech rights was overturned yesterday," Jones said in a release today. "Justice has been done, and the most important part of the American system has been protected, our First Amendment." (Read more.)

9 comments:

simple_truth said...

I am so happy that this has been reversed for the sake of all Americans, even the American Muslims.

curly said...

I dislike Judge Mark Somers.

cheryl_maree said...

I can tell you this because I live hear in Michigan and not far from Dearborn. The muslims have taken over there in every aspect, and although denied by muslims sharia is there also. Now they are looking for new ground because Dearborn is muslim owned, Courts and all, and there new area here in Michigan it's in Canton.

Traeh said...

It's not about the right to burn books. It's about the right to burn one's own copies of books.

The Nazis violently confiscated libraries of books owned by others and burned those libraries in a demonstration of totalitarianism.

Jones was not proposing to burn other people's libraries and thus to clear the way for the monopoly of some government's fascist dogma; instead, what he wanted to do would have been like publicly burning his own personal copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf during the rise of the Nazis. Jones was asserting his right to be free of the totalitarian Qur'an in his own personal life. He was not saying thugs should prevent anyone else from ever reading it.

Jones was challenging the Qur'an's would-be brutal monopoly on truth; not trying to establish a monopoly of his own.

Jones' planned burning of his own copy of the Qur'an seemed intended to announce and insist upon his right to dissent from Qur'anic dogma (which says dissent is not permitted, and blasphemy is punishable by death). His action, I think, was meant as defiance of mob-like theocratic intimidation, and thus what Jones proposed (burning his own Qur'an) was utterly the opposite of an exhortation to mobs to start smashing the windows of Barnes & Nobles and start throwing other people's Qur'ans in a bonfire. Jones proposed action meant exactly the opposite of the the actions of the totalitarian book burners.

Unfortunately, it is easy to confuse what Jones wanted to do with what the totalitarian book burners do. That kind of confusion is dangerous. So, considered as rhetoric or persuasion, Jones' plan was of doubtful value.

Anonymous said...

David you know there was another big story in Detroit yesterday, TheCall held a all night prayer event at Ford field, and the media went totally dhimmi over it, you had a group of "ministers" all over the media and at occupy Detroit condemning this group and the event as islam-o-phobic and anti Gay. The media were acting as if a potential riot could jump off at any moment. here my blog post on it http://www.callingmuslims.com/2011/11/thecall-detroit-medias-tired-islam-o.html

donna60 said...

Terry Jones really is an American hero. I hope someday he gets the praise he deserves for his fearlessness, --even when he was abandoned by his friends.

Nimochka said...

Even though I think the Quran burning by Pastor Jones was NOT a great PR move but I disagree that it was this barbaric medieval act. I don't think there was anything inherently wrong with it if we discount the bad PR aspect of it! First of all as Traeh mentioned he only burned his own copy of the book. He didn't go around confiscating people's copies of the book and burning them.

Also the medieval act of book burning was designed to eradicate the books that were deemed heretical from the face of the earth! They gathered all the copies that they could get their hands on by force and piled them up and burned them in order for the book's content to vanish from public access for ever.

This is exactly what Muslims have done in the past on many occasion. for example Abd'l Latif of Baghdad (1162–1231) states that the library of Alexandria was destroyed by Amr Ibn al As, by the order of the Caliph Omar. A huge chunk of ancient knowledge and science went up in smokes as a result!

Caliph Omar was very fund of book burning in fact. I also have read in Persian annals of Arab conquest that Omar ordered the burning of libraries and archives in the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon after it was conquered by Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqqas in 637 AD.

I have read that Omar said that if the knowledge in their books is any good it is already in the Quran and therefore is redundant. But if what is in there is not in the Quran then for sure it is misleading and damnable and has to be burned. So to be on the safe side they burned it all! This saying of Omar might be an urban legend but very well represents the mentality of many Muslims!

Some of Islam's highest and most revered authorities like the "rightly-guided Caliphes" Omar and Othman were directly responsible for several occasions of book burning which wiped off some of the most precious ancient knowledge and history books from the face of the earth for ever! So Muslims of all people should not dare complain about Pastor Jones!!

Unlike the above mentioned cases of book burning Pastor Jones' burning of his one lousy copy of Quran did not endanger any of the information on its pages to vanish from public access for ever since there are literally millions of copies of Quran around the world!

What he did was a symbolic act of defiance to show how he thinks and feels about the content of Quran in a very demonstrative way. To tell the truth I think the content of Quran more than deserves to be burned since they are Satanic and one day it will burn in hell!

That's what all of the Media and many of the people on our side didn't catch. Yes it looked bad and reminded many of the Medieval church's book burnings and many on the Media were more than happy to jump on the occasion and turn it to an undeserved embarrassment for our side. But in fact his act had nothing in common with those previous historical book burnings in the medieval times! It was just an act of defiance and protest.

Anonymous said...

Update on the prayer event at Ford field in Detroit, you still have a group of "ministers" protesting outside, desperate for attention yelling at people entering that the event that its a "KKK meeting". So far the homophobic card, Islamophobic card and race card have all been invoked to demonize what I saw as a gathering of Christians of various races and economic classes praying for Detroit. The one good thing about this is we see clearly who the obedient dhimmi's willing to do Muslim dirty work are in S.E Michigan.

Ahmad Karkaba said...

judge Somers did the right thing by throwing that idiot pastor in jail and Somers possibly saved him from and ass whipping. The pastor should thank judge Somers. I speak for every Muslim when I say thank God we have a judge like Somers protecting our community in Dearborn and all us muslins give thanks to you judge Somers