Is it Dearbornistan?

Hating on Muslims seems to be very popular these days among the politically conservative set, as in the controversy over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque." And one of the objects of that hate seems to be the alleged creeping influence of sharia.

Sharia is the sacred law of Islam, although there are different interpretations of that law within different schools of Islamic thought. However, just as Christian beliefs have an impact on American laws, sharia influences the legal systems of most predominantly Muslim countries.

A lot of that hating comes to Dearborn, since that city has one of the largest, most concentrated, populations of Arabic people outside the Middle East. Of Dearborn's 100,000 residents, about 30,000 are Arabic or of Arabic descent. Some 60 percent — about 20,000 people — of them are Muslim; the rest are mostly Christian. Since hating on Muslims is so in vogue, Dearborn is catching attention from near and far.

For instance, recently Sharron Angle, a Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, said: "Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not sharia law. And I don't know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States."

Whoa! There was no comment from Frankford, which ceased to exist during the 1970s, but Dearborn Mayor John O'Reilly emphatically denies being under sharia, according to an open letter he wrote to Angle, in which he invited her to see how aw-shucks, American-as-apple-pie the city is. After all, Dearborn has the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village and a satellite campus of the University of Michigan. Indeed, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have given speeches there. And, here's the clincher, he said that many Muslims in Dearborn "participate in Christian holiday activities."

O'Reilly, apparently a foolish puppet of the jihadists, pointed out that Dearborn was just misunderstood. "I don't blame you entirely for misunderstanding Dearborn," he wrote. "The international, national and even regional media haven't always painted an accurate picture of Dearborn. ... We are often used to provide visual accompaniment to global news items, even if they are unconnected to our community."

See, it was just a big misunderstanding. I called over to O'Reilly's office to see if he could elaborate on the subject but Department of Public Information Director Mary Laundroche told me they were sticking by the letter as what O'Reilly has to say on the subject.

What if Angle did come to Dearborn? What would she see? Well if she'd shown up last Friday she could have seen gubernatorial candidates Virg Bernero and Rick Snyder speaking at the American Arab Chamber of Commerce annual banquet. On the one hand, this could be seen as a wonderful participation in the political process.

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