Anti-Islam activists to go ahead with rally despite government ban

Wednesday 13 Apr 2016 - 12:43 Makkah mean time-6-7-1437

Armed anti-Muslim protestors stand across the street from a mosque during a demonstration in Richardson, Texas, on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo

Atlanta, U.S.A. (IINA) - James Stachowiak, founder and editor of “Freedom Fighter Radio,” sent a letter to the Georgia Building Authority (GBA) in February asking for a permit to hold a “United against Islam and Islamic immigration refugee rally” at Liberty Plaza in front of the state capitol, Think Progress news reported quoting the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But the Authority declined his request, but protest organizers have decided to convene along the public sidewalk in April 18 anyway with guns in tow.
“You are hereby notified that protest organizers have encouraged their participants to carry loaded long guns,” read a statement from capitol Police Director Lewis G. Young to law enforcement officials. “[The Georgia Department of Public Safety] is currently monitoring the threat risk and, together with GBA, is taking precautions to make Capitol Hill a safe environment.”
A group of armed, right-wing activists is planning a non-permitted anti-Islam rally in Atlanta, Georgia this weekend, where organizers say they will shred a Qur’an alongside pictures of President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other politicians.
From its side, the Georgia office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release calling for organizers to cancel the demonstration and put away their weapons.
“Hatred of Muslims and Islam stems from ignorance,” CAIR-GA Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement. “We encourage these protesters to put down their guns, cancel their unsanctioned rally, and meet with representatives of our state’s Muslim community for an open and frank discussion of their concerns.”
“As American Muslims, we do not begrudge our neighbors the right to publicly challenge us or our faith,” Mitchell added. “But as Americans, we should always debate each other in a civil, respectful and safe manner.”
The protest is the latest in an unprecedented surge of anti-Islam hatred that has swept the United States since the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, with Muslim Americans falling victim to an ever-growing number of shootings, attacks on their houses of worship, and Islamophobic demonstrations similar to what Stachowiak is planning in Georgia. Groups in Texas, which, like Georgia, is an open-carry state have taken to standing outside mosques wearing camouflage and brandishing loaded firearms.
Anti-Islam activists are often confronted with larger, more peaceful counter-protests, but tensions are beginning to run high: when an anti-Islam group tried to stage an armed protest of a predominantly African American Dallas mosque in early April, they were met with equally armed counter-protesters. Police reportedly stood between the two groups to help maintain the peace.
SM/IINA

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