The Patriot Post® · Dearbornistan Tests the Establishment Clause

The silence is deafening from the phony “Wall of Separation” crowd. And who can blame them? I mean, it was never about silencing religion per se. Rather, it was always about silencing one specific religion — Christianity.

But now that the Islamic Republic of Dearbornistan is being sued under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause for favoring Muslims and their Islamic holidays while trampling on the rights of Christians and Jews and their holidays, well, now the cat has their disingenuous Danbury Baptist tongues.

At issue is a lawsuit filed last week by the American Freedom Law Center on behalf of Dearborn resident Margot Cleveland, who also happens to be the senior legal correspondent at The Federalist. In an AFLC press release, Cleveland charges the once-proud but now thoroughly Islamized Detroit suburb with having “spent public funds and used City property to promote and celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan while refusing Cleveland’s repeated requests that the City extend the same recognition to Christian and Jewish holidays — and that Mayor Hammoud and other City officials retaliated against Cleveland for speaking out about the disparity.”

Not surprisingly, the Appropriated Press was quick to parrot Dearborn’s talking points. Its headline on Friday read, “Michigan city defends itself against accusations of favoring Muslim holidays over other faiths.”

“Accusations”? More like facts, and stubborn ones at that. Unless the mayor can come up with proof that he also used city funds to celebrate, say, Easter and Yom Kippur.

But the AP’s lead paragraph is really an incurious hoot: “The city of Dearborn responded Saturday to a lawsuit accusing it of celebrating Muslim holidays and ignoring religious holidays of other faiths by blaming attacks against it on its diversity and ‘welcoming nature.’”

So Dearborn has a “welcoming” nature, eh? I must say, it’s an interesting take on the word “welcoming” when the city’s mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, specifically told a Christian pastor and Dearborn resident just last year that he’s not welcome in his city. Indeed, Hammoud called the pastor, Ted Barham, a “bigot” and an “Islamophobe,” and added, “Although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here. And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city.”

You know, welcoming. This Hammoud guy is a real chutzpanik.

And the nerve of Barham, questioning the city’s decision to rename one of its streets after Dearborn-based Arab American News editor-in-chief Osama Siblani, who, as The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann writes, is “a longtime public supporter of the U.S.-designated Islamist terrorist organizations Hezbollah and Hamas, which have murdered Americans out of religious and nationalist hatred.”

Said AFLC cofounder and senior counsel Robert Muise, “The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that the government may not prefer one religion over another. The City of Dearborn spent taxpayer money to light up its streets and parks for Ramadan while stonewalling a resident who simply asked that Easter, Passover, and other Christian and Jewish holy days be treated the same way. That is a straightforward Establishment Clause violation, and the retaliation our client faced for speaking up about it only compounds the constitutional harm.”

This isn’t the first time Dearborn’s Islamic preference has run afoul of our Constitution, though. As AFLC cofounder and senior counsel David Yerushalmi put it, “Dearborn has been down this road before, and it has lost every time.”

Cleveland’s case cites three specific constitutional violations: the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause, and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

“I don’t have a problem with people of faith exercising their deeply held beliefs,” said Cleveland last week. “I have a problem with people supporting or excusing terrorism and antisemitism and establishing a religion and discriminating against people of other faiths.”

Did Dearborn favor one religion over another? It sure seems that way. It’ll be interesting to see how far this case goes, especially with the Supreme Court’s 1982 Larson v. Valente case looming as precedent.

According to the complaint, “Cleveland seeks a declaratory judgment that Defendants violated her constitutional rights; a permanent injunction enjoining Defendants’ policy of favoring Muslims and discriminating against Christians and Jews; nominal damages; and an award of attorneys’ fees and costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.”

Folks, you may not have an interest in Islam, but Islam definitely has an interest in you and your second-rate Christian and Jewish holidays.

My only complaint is that Cleveland didn’t go all in and sue the thobe off this guy.