Phoenix mosque

The BBC Arabic ran a report about the protest at the Phoenix mosque. It was not a big, overblown story, or their top story, but they went into some detail. But then again, most American news agencies, as far as I could tell, pretended that this never happened. So the BBC Arabic exceeded those agencies, at least.

It was Malak Jaafar who was at the helm:

They showed the people who don't like Muslims:

But they showed all the protesters who stood in support of Muslims and the mosque:

They showed arguments, and the police keeping the order:

They showed the views from above, where you can clearly see the two groups of protesters, and the police line keeping them apart:

And then, if you can believe, they even had the freaking first and second amendments to the US Constitution, translated and everything!

They were explaining how the first amendment guarantees freedom of religion, so of course the mosque is allowed to exist, and people should be free to worship without fear. And the second amendment, they explained, guarantees the right to bear arms. And they included the part: 'a militia is essential for a free people'.

But does that really make it legal for a bunch of armed people to surround a mosque and shriek maledictions at the people coming in for Friday prayer?

They showed a snippet of this man saying: No one should pray in fear.

They showed a snippet of the man who organized the protest, saying: I fought in Iraq, the US I came back to is not the same. I do this to protect my children. But I want the protest to be peaceful.

And finally, they showed a man from the Council for American Islamic Relations, who cautioned Muslims at the mosque not to engage or have a dialogue with the anti-Muslim protesters, because it did not seem apparent that would help anything.