Greetings! Some of you by now have heard about the incident at the Dearborn Arabfest with David Wood and Nabeel Qureshi of www.answeringmuslims.com and myself (camerawoman). If not, here’s is a brief description of the events or you can read the article in The Texan here.
At the festival, there was a booth entitled “Islam: You Got Questions, We Got Answers” that was handing out a pamphlet with the title, “Islam’s War on Terror.” Nabeel wanted to ask a question about the pamphlet with reference to Surah 9:29 in the Qur’an and video tape the response to put on their blog. So we went to the booth and asked the question. The first reaction from the booth was to ask us to turn off the cameras. After Nabeel made a comment about their unwillingness to answer on video and questioned if this was deception, the gentleman with whom he was speaking agreed to be filmed. Shortly thereafter, the security guards for the festival (not Dearborn policemen) showed up at the booth and a woman associated with the security guards told me I had to turn off the camera several times. When I did not turn off the camera, she then proceeded to hit the camera, closing the LCD display window. Then she put her hand on the front of the camera. She asked me if I was no longer recording. I showed her on the display that it was not recording, but she did not believe me. So I turned the camera off.
Our encounter with the security guards did not end here. We had a much worse encounter later on, after verifying with police and security that we were well within our rights to videotape a response to the question. This time there was more hitting of our cameras, plus threats. David and Nabeel have not posted this video as of yet.
The encounter can be viewed in parts at David and Nabeel’s blog, www.answeringmuslims.com.
Scroll down to VideoBlog #3 for the first part.
You can also view a Muslim response to VideoBlog #3 at thefotfoundation.
Title, “Arabfest Invasion 2009 – Dearborn, USA”
Thanks,
MJ
Part of the Raw Footage is up! http://www.answeringmuslims.com
Hey I hope all is well,
I do have a concern as the lady (Mary-Jo) has linked a response by FOTFOUNDATION and labelled it as a response to the videos (plural)…but to be fair and honest I must correct her and state that FOTFOUNDATION was only responding to video #3 and not to the later video (Video#5).
We must be fair.
Video#5 is a video which contains unsavoury scenes and is not what Islam or Muslims are about.
I, as a Muslim, denounce heavy-handed tactics (which seem to have been employed by some Muslims) and I urge all Muslims to use scholarly argumentation to show Christians; that God is 1 and not 3,to show Christians that their form of Christianity is not what Jesus or any other Prophet taught (peace be on all Prophets)and to show Christians the Truth of Islam
May Allah guide us all.
ameen
Thank you for your comments, Yahya. You are correct in pointing out that the FOT foundation response is only to one video.
I, too, like the scholarly argumentation approach.
Grace and Peace,
MJ
Thanks for the response, MJ
You agree with me that the blog by FOT is ONLY a response to one video, that is good to know. We are on the same hill here.
However, in your blog you wrote:
You can also view a Muslim response to the videos at thefotfoundation. (ie you used the word 'videos' rather than video)
Please rectify this as it misrepresents FOT's response and it could lead people to the view that FOT is looking over the intimidation (as seen in the later videos)
So, I ask you to remove the link to FOT's blog or clarify which video (video3) his blog was concerning.
Thanks.
Peace
Yahya,
It has been changed.
MJ