Protesters support dad in fight against DHS [Michigan]

the Arab American News ^ | recently (not specified) | Khalil AlHajal

[ColdWarNavyVet_dirsup]

Protesters support dad in fight against DHS

By: Khalil AlHajal / The Arab American News

Taylor — Protesters picketed outside of the Western Wayne County Children and Family Services office on Friday, in an effort to bring attention to a federal lawsuit filed by a Jordanian American man in January.

Plaintiff Abraham Ben-Abbad filed the suit against the Michigan Department of Human Services claiming that officials have denied him court-ordered visitation rights with his daughter.

He also alleges that the Department has allowed his ex-wife to involve a local church in official decision-making processes, preventing the 13 year old girl from seeing her father and being exposed to her Muslim heritage.

Parents for Children, a group that advocates throughout the state for parents who have been stripped of custody of their children, organized the demonstration.

"We just want to get our message out… to let them know that we're not going away," said Parents for Children founder Dan Wilson.

The group claims to have influenced cases in the past by demonstrating in front of courthouses and offices in several Michigan counties.

Wilson said that Friday's protest was particularly dramatic because it involves "Muslims and Christians marching together for a cause."

Attorney Janet Frederick-Wilson, also of Parents for Children, said that the actions of government agents involved in the case were probably more motivated by money than by religious issues. The group claims that grants awarded to agencies and performance bonuses awarded to Children's Protection agents cause them to "twist facts and blow situations out of proportion."

"They target minorities because they often have the least resources to fight them with… and they take advantage of cases with divorce issues and domestic discord."

Ben-Abbad's ex-wife has accused him of abuse.

Islam Kayed, the child's stepmother, who picketed in freezing temperatures along with about 25 others from local mosques and Parents for Children, said that they would "do whatever it takes to get the point across."

"Her father loves her so much and we just want her to come home," she said about the girl.

Department of Human Services representatives haven't commented on the protest as of press time. In the past when asked about the lawsuit, a spokesperson has said that though she could not comment on the specifics of the litigation, "any issues of religious preference are taken seriously by the Department and by our Children's Services staff," and that agencies are required to take into account the religions of both parents of a child.

Ben-Abbad and others have also distributed flyers "warning" local Muslims about the involved church, the Dearborn Assembly of God, accusing its lead pastor, Trey Hancock, of engaging in manipulative, overzealous, youth-targeted missionary tactics.

Some at the demonstration gave detailed accounts of the Hancock family and church members "drawing in people in weak positions," and being "sneaky" about their intentions of converting Muslims.

Hancock has declined to comment on any of the allegations.

An acquaintance of Hancock who asked to be referred to only as Abu Wadea, defended the church and the Hancock family, saying that though the church conducts outreach programs and was established for the purpose of missionary work, the congregation is not disrespectful toward Islam and involves many Muslims in programs such as English classes without asking anything in return.

He also said that Hancock is not deceitful in his goals, that "he is a pastor and everybody knows it," and that he is upfront about wanting to spread his message.

Abu Wadea, a member of the Arabic Evangelical Alliance Church in Madison Heights, said that he takes offense to some having labeled the Dearborn Assembly of God as anti-Muslim.

"I'm not going to defend whatever the church did in this case but to blanket the whole church or the whole community is a whole different thing."

[ColdWarNavyVet_dirsup]

Muslim man (allegedly) beats wife, young children; threatens to kill wife; she seeks help from DHS, ends up converting to Christianity and getting help from local church; then this obviously deeply religious Muslim (by the bye, it's ok Quranically to abuse your wife and kids) is offended that our laws would seek to protect his chattel; so the Mass Media spin is that Pastor Hancock is conspiring to keep the abusers children from growing up Muslim. Their insanity and coddling of Islam continues...

[EBH]

By: Khalil AlHajal

[Darkwolf377]

Yeah, because Christians never beat their wives or children... ;)

[LaineyDee]

Reading this reminded me of a case where the Muslim father stabbed his daughter to death (honor killing) while the Mother held her down... all because the daughter had started dating. The whole thing was caught on tape because the FBI had tapped the phoneline when they suspected the father of illegal activities. But for that tape, the parents would have gotten away with murder.

[ColdWarNavyVet_dirsup]

the problem is, you missed the point...
mass media spins it as religion versus dealing with the facts on the ground. (like they justified serbs killing bosnians and albanians)
I know the people involved and the insanity of suits like this waste time, money, and distort what is happening.
yes, there is an element of religion, but it is on the pc-side of things instead of acknowledging reality.

[ColdWarNavyVet_dirsup]

yup, it's downtown Dearborn, Michigan where the town council passed legal standing for the imams to publically broadcast prayer calls, and the local Fordson high school principal Fuddy Duddy forces a student to convert back to Islam. Downtown America folks, coming to your community by virtue of PC and lack of rational thought.

The paper is run by Osama Siblani who loves to pose as an intellectual, he's interviewed by mass media as an authority on Middle Eastern affairs - should read his shtuff; his ex-wife Kay could tell you all about his 'balanced' views...

[Beckwith]

We got to Post #3 before the moral relativists jumped in.

[NucSubs]

Where does it say he beat her and the kids?

[OKIEDOC]

Attorney Janet Frederick-Wilson, also of Parents for Children, said that the actions of government agents involved in the case were probably more motivated by money than by religious issues. The group claims that grants awarded to agencies and performance bonuses awarded to Children's Protection agents cause them to "twist facts and blow situations out of proportion."

"They target minorities because they often have the least resources to fight them with… and they take advantage of cases with divorce issues and domestic discord."

REPLY:

I do not condone the violence many Arab men heap on their property..err..wives but the article has some real troublesome words for anyone who believes in a strong family.

Under most states the do gooding legislators have turned the schools, doctors, nurses, teachers aides, police, fire and any one else who comes in contact with children into mandated reporters.

To have a child taken away does not necessarily constant overly harsh physical abuse.

They only have to be at what the state calls at risk.

All it takes is say a teachers aide notices a child crying and seeing anything resembling a mark or red spot on the child and a report is filed with Child Protective Services.

CPS can then question the children and if they want to be mean or frivolous can call the police to come and forcibly take the children out of the home and the parents can do nothing but watch as they go out the door.

I despise Kalifornias laws as it has taken any logical reasoning out of dealing with children and parents.

Most parents when the CPS comes do not know their rights under the current law.


Good parents unknowingly let the CPS worker come into the home and why not.

They think that their job as a parent has been a good one.

The child is questioned while playing on the floor with crayons or some other toy and is asked all kinds of leading questions as to how they are punished and the family relationship.

Any thing more than a pat on the butt or a timeout and the children are gone and it's court time for everyone.

My neighbors who are both respected professionals went through this mess and nearly lost their children because they were both spanked on the butt with a ruler.

The two kids ages 7 and 8 got into a hitting fight one morning before school.

The teachers aide saw that the youngest child was crying and had a red spot on his face where the older sister had hit him.

The teachers aide then asked the child why he was crying.

The child did not answer and the aide then said did your father hit you in the face with his fist.

The child still upset would not answer but was clinching his fist.

The aide then called Child Protective Service and filed a report claiming the father had hit the child with his fist.

The CPS came to the house and while investigating the report determined that in the past year the father and mother had spanked the children twice using a 12 inch ruler.

The CPS worker walked out side for a few minutes and then came back into the house and accused the parents of abusing their children because under Kalifornia laws you can only spank the child on the butt using the hand.

Within a few minutes a patrol car pulled into the drive way and 10 minutes later the children were gone.

It took my neighbors nearly two weeks to get the children returned and several thousand dollars in four court appearances.

The younger child is now seeing a Psychiatrist and taking medicine for the trauma received by being forced away from his parents.

The behavior of both children in school has deteriorated since being taken from the home.

The parents saw an attorney to file a civil lawsuit but are still undecided as the law is on the side of who ever makes the report and the CPS.

I do not trust the CPS as they strong arm a lot of parent trying to rack up a quota of children taken out of the home.

There paycheck depends on splitting up families.

Just my lowly Red State Wannabe Opinion.

[Darkwolf377]

What did I say that was "moral relativist"-ic?

[expatguy]

You had a point to make? I missed it..

[Darkwolf377]

Your loss.

[jim35]

["Christians never beat their wives or children..."]

You won't find much support in the Christian community for wife-beating. It happens, but it's not given sanction by any Christian Church that I know of. Now tell me the same is true of mosques, and islam.

[barker]

Ben-Abbad's ex-wife has accused him of abuse.

It's in the article.

[x_plus_one]

Slavery is just around the corner in michigan - it's encouraged in the koran. The feds find more cases of involuntary servitude every year.

[sure_fine]

its happened

http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm

[2ndClassCitizen]

There are ten thousand muslims who believe it is their religious right to physically correct their wives behavior to every one Christian who believes that. Maybe there are no Christians who believe it.

There are Christians who are alcoholics also, but very few espouse alcoholism as their religion and go out and convert others from the pulpit.

But there are muslims who go out and espouse from their pulpit that beating women is ok.

[Beckwith]

Your kidding, right?

[Darkwolf377]

No--obviously you can't even show where this "moral equivalence" is, or you'd have done so by now.

The only moral equivalence one can get from my comment is that beating a wife and kids is wrong no matter the person's religion. I'm dying to see you claim that's "moral equivalence".

[Darkwolf377]

Maybe there are no Christians who believe it.

Maybe not.

You really think NO Christians beat their wives, in this mostly-Christian country? That for some bizarre statistical reason, most wife-beaters aren't Christian?

Please.

[Darkwolf377]

You won't find much support in the Christian community for wife-beating. It happens, but it's not given sanction by any Christian Church that I know of. Now tell me the same is true of mosques, and islam.

I'm sure the women being beaten by Christian men take comfort in that. "Hey, this doesn't hurt so bad, because the church doesn't approve!"

The distinction is a small one when we get down to the individual cases like this one.

People around here mention that Islam means "submission," yet seem to forget that the Bible says wives should be "submissive" to their husbands.

[tkathy]

There is no moral equivilence between Christianity and Islam whatsoever. The Christian community has long since ignored the old testament silliness.

[Larry Lucido]

I didn't think that was the original title.

"Protesters support dad in fight against DHS"

Not saying your editorial comment was wrong. Just pointing out that the headline was changed.

[Darkwolf377]

I know. I wasn't making any moral equivalence--that's what someone else accused me of.

[Larry Lucido]

You all need to lay off of Darkwolf. He has a point. While I personally DO start with a prejudice against the father, take out "muslim" and this thread immediately becomes a 500 post thread about father's rights.

[brent1a]

I live in a small cornfield town in mid-Illinois and Let me tell you, I thought all Christian churches support and teach "corrective punishment" of our wives and female children. I remember the other day when my daughter came home from the mall and she admitted that she had looked at a boy, in passing. I immediately beat her until she was unconscious. It was for her own good. I think all religions should convert to Shariah Law and we should abolish the Constitution because it just makes since. Islam has so much more Moral Aptitude than Islam anyway.

[Beckwith]

Well, somebody got it!

[YOUGOTIT]

Is that not part of his religion to beat and if he thinks it necessary to kill his children and wife? And who are the idiots that are supporting him are they also wife beaters and child molesters?

If he beat his wife why is he not in jail?

This stinks, but since he is a Muslim what do you think will happen? Me thinks nothing.

[EmilyGeiger]

I wonder how many death threats the youth minister has received.

[YOUGOTIT]

Or did he want to do his Clitoridectomy on the child?

[Hardastarboard]

After this incident, the answer to the incriminatory question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" will be "How dare you question my religious beliefs?".

[Sidebar Moderator]

Changing article headlines is forbidden.

[Beckwith]

For the morally equivalent among us, show me where any Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist religion has, not only an official position on beating wives but also the secondary status of women being just above slaves (remember, it's cool in Islam to keep slaves).

The exhortation to beat the disobedient wife is not an aberration, oddity, disjointed concept, or stand alone element, in Islam’s positioning of females, rather, the command to beat disobedient wives is founded upon a woman’s subservient / secondary status in Islam. You cannot separate the issue of wife beating apart from the context of her inferior position in the marriage relationship.

To fully comprehend the issue of Islamic wife beating her position with respect to her husband must be first understood. Wife beating is allowed because of the lower position she occupies. A person with a severe virus may run a high fever. While the fever can be quite a grave problem it is actually a symptom of another sickness at work. Wife beating is a symptom of the wife’s degraded status in Islam. Beyond the right of husbands to beat their disobedient wives, there is a deeper, more pernicious, disease at work. Wife beating is merely the bad fruit of a bad root. Once this element is understood the rationale behind Muhammad’s command to beat disobedient wives comes into focus and fits in its proper place.

When I first began to study the topic, I did not realize that an Islamic marriage is not equivalent to a Christian marriage. Its rules, roles, and requirements are quite different. In a Christian marriage, the husband is given the role as head of the household, and the wife is expected to submit to the husband’s leadership. However, she is his equal in terms of social and religious status; she is not inferior to him. In Islam, the husband is the custodian of his wife. She is considered to be in-between slave and free. The woman is managed and controlled. The relationship between a married woman and her husband is similar to the relationship between parents and children. Parents have a responsible custody of their children and expect their obedience. When children are disobedient they are disciplined and sometimes spanked. Muhammad’s viewpoint of women was that they lack self-control, and thus for their own good, and societies’ good, they must be subordinate to their husbands. They must obey. Although an adult women is more mature and capable than a child she is still not equal to a man; thus is subject to him. Islam teaches that men are superior to women. When a man gives his bride a dowry, he is accredited the right to manage his wife. By accepting his dowry, a woman is giving her husband the right to her regulation.

http://www.answering-islam.de/Main/Silas/wife-beating.htm

No question, there are Christian men who beat their wives but they don't do it at the urging of the Bible.

[ClaireSolt]

Anything that brings attention to the unregulated abuses of CPS is good. I was complaining about how they were harassing three professional families on my street in the 80's in MO. An elderly sociologist replied, "That's nothing. My grandson had a pimple bust on his butt, and...." A pharmacist took his four adopted children and moved to the country to get away from it. A lawyer I used to protect my son was literally appalled by social workers who knew no restraints.

[wintertime]

Ben-Abbad and others have also distributed flyers "warning" local Muslims about the involved church, the Dearborn Assembly of God, accusing its lead pastor, Trey Hancock, of engaging in manipulative, overzealous, youth-targeted missionary tactics.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Warning? Really?

So..what's the warning? Go near that Christian Church and have your head cut off?

[Mad Dawg]

I am no fan of DHS abuses and all. But I do think there's a difference between a behavior I do in spite of my religion and "cultural values" and behavior I do with t he approval of my religion and "cultural values". Presumably some Xtian spouse or child abusers would be amenable to counseling or whatever else it took to ge tthem to change their behavior, while some Muslims would insist not only that there is nothing wrong with the behavior but that it is their right, nay, their duty!

You all need to lay off of Darkwolf. He has a point.

Let him make it then. What is it?

[NucSubs]

Yes, I see that. What I don't see is what the original title of this thread was...namely that he BEAT his wife AND KIDS.

[calex59]

Some Christians beat their wives and children. MOST of them don't. Many non Christians and non muslims beat their children. However, Muslims not only beat their children and wives it is in their koran that they have every right to beat them. The new testament doesn't embrace spousal and child abuse last time I looked.

This is a case of wife and child beating. This POS should not have access to his children, I don't care what religion the SOB subscribes to!

[Kieri]

MI social work ping

[2ndClassCitizen]

All Christians accept the fact that they are sinners.

I never stated that there are no wife beating Christians.

islam promotes physical correction of women by their husbands, it is inherent in the koran. Christianity does not advocate physical vbiolence against women.

I remember talking with a muslim woman who had come from Africa, she told me about her husband hitting her and what her duties were. I told her this is America, and oh by the way, buy a gun and use it if he hits you again.

[zook]

"and the local Fordson high school principal Fuddy Duddy forces a student to convert back to Islam."

Could you please provide a link or some details about this? I'm from Dearborn and a former teacher at FHS and I'd love to hear about it.

[zook]

Well, I also do recall hearing some extremist Christian preachers advocating a little wife beating from time to time. Not that that in any way equates the two religions.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Note the weak-minded always available to aid Evil showing up to run their mouths.

[justshutupandtakeit]

"There paycheck depends on splitting up families." Bull. "Their" paycheck does not. Splitting up families is that last thing "They" want.

[2ndClassCitizen]

I know you are not being argumentative, but I don't recall any extremist Christian ministers advocating wife beating.

I would question if they were cult leaders like Jim Jones or actual Christians.

[zook]

And I can't name any, but over my 50-plus years I believe I have hear one or two apply the "spare the rod" rule to wives. I didn't mean to suggest it was common, by any means.

[Tokra]

yup, it's downtown Dearborn, Michigan where the town council passed legal standing for the imams to publically broadcast prayer calls.

Sorry, it was Hamtramck where a judge ruled that the mosque could use electronically amplified broadcast calls for prayer.

Hamtramck is truly an ethnic melting pot - it is a small city surrounded on all sides by Detroit with a population of 22,000 which includes: (in descending order of %)

Poles, Blacks, Yugoslavians, Yemenis, Asian Indians, Arabs, Bangladeshi, Ukrainians, Germans, Albanians, Irish, Italians, Russians, Basque, English, French, Lebanese, Pakistani, Scottish, Macedonians, Mexicans and Chaldeans.

A veritable United Nations.

As you can imagine, the restaurants and shops in Hamtramck are like no where else in the world.

On top of all this - Hamtramck also has a reputation for having some of the best nightclubs in the US - at least for "New Wave/Alternative/Punk" music.

[jettester]

'yet seem to forget that the Bible says wives should be "submissive" to their husbands'

The Bible says no such thing as you've written...but, then I looked at your tagline and realized you'd never understand the truth of Scriptures anyway.

[AppyPappy]

You are trying too hard to excuse bad behavior. Islam does not frown on wife-beating. Christianity does frown on wife-beating.

That's all you need to know.

[Shimmer128]

What you're writing here just doesn't sound like you, to me. From your statement in post #3 and first to last, you do sound argumentative to me. And I too thought you were bringing up Christians to mark some moral relevance.

Not like your usual FR self. Just my opinion.