Phoenix anti-Islam protest triggers counterattack: a stand against bigotry.

Interfaith leaders and community gather to support mosque. Protest the second in response to Texas shootings outside ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest

Anti-Islam protesters carrying American flags face off with supporters of an Islamic Community Center during a demonstration in Phoenix, Arizona on Friday. Photograph: Dave Cruz/AFP/Getty Images

Texas shooting: the group behind the Muhammad cartoon contest.

Some of the hundreds of protesters arriving at a Phoenix mosque on Friday evening to demonstrate their first amendment protections carried firearms, American flags and shouted expletives.

As the protesters arrived, they were met by hundreds of members of various religious and community groups, who had already gathered along the sidewalk opposite the entrance to the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix.
“I think this is the real story, not the bigotry,” said community center president Usama Shami, of those who offered support. “They’re standing against bigotry.”
Phoenix police had blocked off most streets in the residential area near the center, where the protest, its two sides separated by a two-way street lined with officers in riot gear, lasted nearly four hours.
Protesters argued back and forth in yells rarely conducive to constructive dialogue, and usually ending in criticisms of each other. The two sides of the street could agree on little more than what they believed had incited the day’s event.

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A protester known as Brother Dean holds up pages from the Koran, in front of supporters of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. Photograph: Dave Cruz/AFP/Getty Images

Jon Ritzheimer organized the protest, which came second to one held on 17 May at the same mosque which garnered far less public and social media attention. Both protests were staged in response to an attack at a similar event in Garland, Texas earlier this month, by gunmen known to have attended the Phoenix mosque a year previously.
On 3 May, a security guard was shot when the two men, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, opened fired with assault rifles outside a contest to draw cartoons of Muhammad. An on-duty police officer shot and killed both gunmen.
“I understand the fears and I understand the hostility,” said pastor Bob Hake of the nearby Orangewood Nazarene Church, on Friday. “I think there’s a better way to resolve those fears than intimidation and weapons and fear.”
In an interview on Thursday night with CNN, Ritzheimer compared himself to the the signers of the declaration of independence, in what he said was his attempt to expose Islam for the “truth of what is written in the Koran”. He said he did not want to “live in fear”.

An anti-Islam protester gestures. Photograph: Dave Cruz/AFP/Getty Images

On Friday, that sentiment was expressed by the anti-Islam protesters, who made frequent references to events brought on by the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State including American beheadings and deadly violence in Paris over the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s caricature portrayal of Muhammad.
Ritzheimer wore a bulletproof vest underneath a black T-shirt bearing the phrase “fuck Islam”. His choice was criticized on social media sites used to garner support for his opponents, and expressed by the protesters who showed up in droves.
“To the gentleman who started this movement, he’s a marine and if I had a chance tonight, I would the first one to stretch out my hand for his service to our country,” said Hake, “because he fought on the battlefield to defend the values and the beliefs of this nation”.

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But for this fight, Hake said, Ritzheimer had chosen the wrong weapons when he encouraged his protesters to bring firearms on the event’s Facebook page.
“This is not a battlefield, this a neighborhood,” Hake said.
The “Draw Muhammad” contest that also sparked substantial criticism and helped publicize Ritzheimer’s protest took place prior to the main event. The pre-rally held at a park about two miles south of the Phoenix mosque drew approximately 30 people, but only two participated in a brief drawing contest in which they tried their hands at caricatures of Muhammad.
John Hazelton had created three comic-like drawings the night before. Michael Don Francisco quickly drew several images of Muhammad with a snake’s body.
“A stupid cartoon: that’s what it came down to,” Ritzheimer said as he examined the drawings before naming both artists as winners.
Though people from both groups of protesters exerted verbal hostility at several points throughout the night, a Phoenix police spokesman said no arrests had been made by the time crowds finally dispersed.

theguardian.