Authorities in Wayne County attempted to keep calm and order between the two parties, as they tried to separate them — a difficult task considering the religious nature of the fighting at hand. The Detroit-Free Press has more about the festival and past drama that has unfolded there between Christians and Muslims:
The three-day festival is the largest public gathering of Arab-Americans in the U.S.; it has drawn Christian missionaries for years, but in 2009, some become more aggressive, leading to arrests and legal feuds. Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the U.S., many of them Muslim, making it a magnet for some Christian missionaries.The Bible Believers [one of the groups present among the protesters] also protested at last year’s Arab Festival, holding up both anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic signs and causing one Arab-American Muslim girl to cry.
As the Free-Press notes, there were also peaceful Christian protesters at the event. These individuals spoke kindly to the Muslim attendees and handed out flyers. One Christian woman work a shirt that read, “I [heart symbol] Muslims,” while handing out gospel pamphlets.
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