DEARBORN – Around 25 high school and college Arab American students stood alongside the road early Monday near the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn to counter-protest activists of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), who call Islam a “false religion.”

“We organized this because we’re sick and tired of the Westboro Baptist Church going around our country and spreading hate,” said Fordson High School student Rami Faraj.

After their protest in Dearborn, the three WBC activists went to Wayne State University where they spread hate messages about the Jewish faith by holding up picketing signs including one that read “God Hates Jews.”  Counter-protesters from Dearborn also planned on visiting WSU to speak out against the church’s hate messages there. The WBC was scheduled to speak to journalism students at Central Michigan University later that day about the First Amendment’s provisions on freedom of speech.

 According to protestor Diana Faraj, the students’ peaceful protest is what led WBC activists to end their demonstration early.  The protest was expected to run from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., but only lasted 20 minutes.  The students sung patriotic songs while Dearborn police officers were present. “Westboro Baptist Church activists are usually violent, although today they weren’t,” Faraj said.   

WBC has conducted 44,452 pickets in 796 cities and had originally planned to burn the Qur’an on the ninth anniversary of the Sep. 11  attacks against America.

The church has nationally been condemned as a hate group and is known for its stance against homosexuality, destroying the American flag and picketing at the funerals of soldiers.  In accordance to WBC beliefs, U.S. casualities in Afghanistan and Iraq are God’s punishment for homosexuality and abortion, which the WBC says are immoral. The counter-protesters from Dearborn raised money for the Yellow Ribbon Fund at the protest and plan on donating the proceeds in the WBC’s name.  The church also opposes Lutherans, Catholics and other religious denominations.

 The WBC is based out of Topeka, Kansas. Its members believe only certain people are per-ordained to reach Heaven. The church is led by Pastor Fred Phelps, whose hate messages got him banned from entering the United Kingdom.

No other Baptist organizations are known to be associated with the WBC, although it describes itself as possessing primitive Baptist and Calvinist ideals. The WBC and Phelps have been rejected by primitive Baptists.  

Students from the protest aren’t worried about the influence of the WBC’s hate messages.

“They are a joke, and that’s really what they’ve become and are known for. They’re just looking for a bad reaction. We reacted peacefully,” protestor Mohamad B. Idriss said.