Prosecutors want to prevent protest at Dearborn mosque

Pastor Terry Jones, the Florida minister who burned a Quran at his church a few weeks ago, sparking violent protests in Afghanistan, is planning to protest outside a famous mosque in Dearborn — and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office wants to stop him.

Concerned about a potential outbreak of violence, Wayne County prosecutors have filed a complaint in court that seeks to compel Florida pastor Terry Jones — who oversaw the burning of a Quran last month — not to rally outside an Islamic center in Dearborn this week.

Jones told the Free Press he intends to come to Dearborn this Friday with others to protest against sharia and jihad, Islamic ideas that he said threaten the U.S.

But Dearborn police and Wayne County prosecutors are trying to convince him that showing up at the Islamic Center of America would endanger his life and public peace. In the court filing, prosecutors and Dearborn police note that Jones has received numerous death threats and a $1.2 million bounty on his head by leaders of Jamaat-ud Dawa, a cover organization for the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

Filed Friday in 19th district court in Dearborn, prosecutors say that if Jones shows up outside the center, “the greatest danger is the likelihood of a riot ensuing complete with the discharge of firearms.”

And the AP reports that the judge has ordered Jones to appear in his court on Thursday to answer questions about the protest.

The court action seems unlikely to succeed in squashing the protest. The precedents for supporting free speech even in cases where the local residents are likely to be inflamed by the protest — most obviously the Supreme Court upholding the right of neo-Nazis to protest in Skokie, Illinois — are clear and compelling.

The right to assemble and protest are enshrined in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights for a reason. The solution to violent responses to free speech is to protect the speaker against those who would commit violence, not to do away with free speech under the threat of violence. Doing so only encourages violence as a means of squashing the rights of others, what legal experts call the “heckler’s veto.”