Dearborn Rally, Forum Decry ISIS and Islamophobia
A pair of weekend events in Dearborn protested ISIS extremists and urged Michigan and other states to open their doors to Syrian refugees fleeing terrorists.
About 100 demonstrators who called themselves Dearborn Muslims Against Terrorism marched in the rain outside the Henry Ford Centennial Library Friday to protest militant ISIS forces waging civil wars in Syria and Iraq.
The demonstrators said it’s important for southeast Michigan Muslims to show their opposition to terror as the nation is gripped by what they called a wave of Islamophobia.
On Sunday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson headlined a panel on Syrian refugees, arguing that turning them away is contrary to American values and that governors who reject Syrian refugees “are playing on our fears,” The Detroit News reports.
“We must be on the right side of history,” Jackson said at the “All Lives Matter: Syrian Refugees in Peril” panel co-hosted by his RainbowPUSH coalition and the Arab-American Civil Rights League.
After the ISIS attacks in Paris and Beirut, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and several other U.S. governors said they were pausing plans to welcome Syrian refugees into their states.
The same week, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said the planned Syrian Village development in Pontiac posed an “imminent threat,” called on the mayor of Pontiac to halt the project and ordered county departments to disavow support for the project.
Panelists for the “All Lives Matter” event were U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit; U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn; Fayrouz Saad, director of the office of immigration affairs for the city of Detroit; Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab-American News; Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP; and Nabih Ayad, chairman of the Arab-American Civil Rights League.
“Refugees are subject to the strongest vetting that exists,” Conyers said. “The FBI, State Department, CIA, and Homeland Security all check them out. Any one of them can veto” a refugee’s entry.”
Dingell said denying entry to ISIS refugees is “allowing ISIS to win. …We will not let them take the soul of this country.”
Bankole Thompson, a Detroit News columnist who moderated the panel, said that in the wake of terrorist attacks, “all eyes are on Dearborn,” where about 40 percent of residents are Arab-Americans.
Siblani called on the media to shift its focus from Dearborn when covering terrorist acts committed in the name of Islam. Muslims who live in the community are afraid of being killed by ISIS, as were three Dearborn residents who died in the Beirut bombings, “and by those who think we are ISIS.”
“Every time something bad happens, the media doesn’t have to come take our pulse in Dearborn,” Siblani said. “Usually, it’s the wrong pulse. Can you give us a break?”
At Friday’s rally, Century 21 Realtor Rumzi Chammout, 47, of Dearborn, told the Free Press his family’s vacation was ruined by the Nov. 12 bombings in Beirut.
“So, we are the victims twice — by Islamophobia and ISIS,” Chammout said.
Saeed Khan, 48, of Rochester Hills, a lecturer in Islamic studies at Wayne State University, told the Free Press ISIS forces represent a small minority of Muslims worldwide, perhaps 30,000 out of 1.6 billion Muslims.
Source: patch.com