''Despite the mainstream media's ignoring of these things, the reality remains that Christians are denied equal rights of free speech and freely exercising religion that other groups are enjoying. This amounts to denying religious equality to millions of Americans.''
In Dearborn, Michigan, where the local mosque's call to prayer is broadcast over the town by loudspeakers, a group of Christian evangelists were told that they could not pass out Bibles on the sidewalk during a festival. This is part of a growing national trend to disfavor Christian expression and traditional speech, and reflects a disturbing direction in public policy in America today.
The city of Dearborn hosts one of the largest per-capita Muslim populations in the United States. With many immigrants from the Middle East, Dearborn reflects the Islamic character of these residents. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that Dearborn is one of the few cities in this country where you can hear the Islamic calls to prayer from the local mosque all over the city, broadcast over loudspeakers.
However, this city has also seen a recent demonstration of religious intolerance against adherents of a different faith. A group of Arab Christians wanted to hand out copies of Christian literature on the sidewalks during the annual Dearborn Arab International Festival, which attracts over 100,000 people. The ministry group, Arab Christian Perspective, was denied permission to hand out material on the sidewalk and was told they could only do so from inside a small booth assigned to them by festival organizers. The group sued, and a federal judge has refused to grant their request to be able to offer information on the sidewalks.
This is only the latest example of such one-sided action. Four years ago, a federal judge in Indiana who has been nominated by President Barack Obama to the Seventh Circuit appeals court, David Hamilton, ordered that prayers in the Indiana statehouse could be offered to "Allah" but could not be offered in the name of "Jesus." (This suit was later dismissed by the Seventh Circuit, on which Judge Hamilton will now sit.)