Following a heated city council meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, last week, a local pastor and other religious freedom advocates are accusing the Muslim-majority city council of favoring Islamic Sharia law over pursuing justice for Christian protestors who were attacked during a recent local event.
Dearborn, just west of Detroit, is one of Michigan’s largest cities, and has one of the largest concentrations of Arabs outside the Middle East, according to The Detroit News. The 2020 U.S. Census puts the majority-Arab population at about 54.5%. The city has five Muslim public prayers a day, in accordance with Sharia law, and boasts the largest mosque in North America.
The issue of Sharia law has become part of political rhetoric in recent years and last October was the target of legislation proposed by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) that would, in effect, ban Sharia law from the United States.
What happened at the city council meeting?
The issue came to a head in Dearborn during the Aug. 18 city council meeting, when Lorenzo Sewell, pastor of 180 Church in Detroit, demanded that Dearborn City Council members publicly denounce Sharia law. The meeting drew hundreds of people to Dearborn’s city offices, many waving flags and chanting “USA!” The tension-filled meeting, which resulted in 22 arrests, had to relocate to the Henry Ford Centennial Library, according to reporting from the News.
Sewell pointed to an incident earlier this month where self-described anti-Islamic activist Jake Lang had come to the city to protest Dearborn’s annual Arbaeen of Ashura march, which honors Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The march, the largest of its kind in the United States, drew 40,000 people.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Jerri Menges and originally published by Decision Magazine.
