That’s right. According to the lawsuit, John Benitez, Jr. was terminated for doing his job because “conservative” Muslims complained about him treating women wearing the hijab, although he did so under the orders of a doctor.
Some 30 percent of Dearborn residents are Arabs, although it is unclear what percentage of those are Muslims. One indication is that Dearborn boasts the largest mosque in North America. Another is the mounting evidence of bias against Christians in such places as Fordson High School, where the student body is 80 percent Arab.
No Male Nurses for Women Muslims
A nursing as well as Army veteran, Benitez, 63, began working at the clinic in September 2010, AP reported, citing the complaint filed by his lawyer, Deborah L. Gordon.
Shortly thereafter, his boss, a Muslim, ordered him to stop treating women who wear the hijab because they are conservative Muslims who must not be treated by medical personnel of the opposite sex. Benitez would, instead, send those patients to the supervisor, a woman. Benitez complied until a doctor found out.
The complaint, AP reported, alleges that “Benitez complied until Nov. 17, 2010, when a doctor saw what he was doing and questioned him ‘about the cumbersome and unusual practice of taking women wearing a head scarf to the nursing supervisor for care,’ rather than going ahead and treating them.”
The doctor’s good sense didn’t matter. Benitez’ Muslims supervisors canned Benitez on Dec. 1, 2010. His attorney, Gordon, told AP that clinic officials admitted to Benitez that they fired him "not because of any performance problem, but … because the clinic's conservative male Muslim clientele did not want a male treating female patients."
Benitez alleges sex discrimination. His attorney explained the lawsuit to the Detroit News: “When you get to the point that taxpayer-funded entities are having to comply with personal religious beliefs rather than letting people do their job you’re going down a road that does not end in a good place. If people don’t want to be treated, they can go find their own practitioner.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gave Benitez the go-ahead for the lawsuit last month.
Other Problems in Dearborn
Islam is a major problem for Dearborn. Indeed, the city that sired Henry Ford and is headquarters for the Ford Motor Company has become something of a semi-Sharia state.
Thus, lawsuits from Christians seem to be a never-ending problem.
Blogger and lawyer Debbie Schlussel filed a federal lawsuit against Dearborn schools and Imad Fadlallah, former principal of Fordson High, on behalf of two teachers who allege that Fadlallah systemically harassed and fired as many Christian teachers as possible.
The complaint’s list of particulars in the lawsuit, if true, is frightening. Claims the lawsuit:
Though Fordson is a publicly-funded high school, upon taking over as principal at Fordson and throughout his six years at the helm thereafter, Defendant Fadlallah used his position to illegally promote Islam, assert organized Islamic religious observances upon students, and to use Islam and Arabic heritage for discriminatory and illegal preferences in hiring, promotions, and disciplinary actions with regard to Fordson employees and teachers.
The complaint charges Fadlallah with “weed[ing] out Christian teachers, coaches, and employees,” and claims he “terrminated, demoted, or reassigned them because of their Christian beliefs, expressions, and associations, and/or because they are not Muslims.”
Aside from harassing the plaintiffs, the lawsuit alleges, Fadlallah transferred three non-Muslim employees and replaced them with a Muslim and a teacher married to a Muslim. It alleges that “a Christian math teacher, whom Fadlallah wanted out of Fordson, was assigned the worst students behaviorally and academically, in order to drive her out. A Christian teacher’s assistant was harassed by Defendant Fadlallah, until she left Fordson and moved out of state to avoid the stressful situation.”
Fadlallah’s goal, the lawsuit alleges, was to “purge” the school of non-Muslims. The complaint also alleges that Fadlallah is closely tied and related to Hezbollah terrorists.
That lawsuit is pending. But such is the tenacity of the school system that it fired one of the teachers after Schlussel filed the lawsuit. Schlussel has appealed that decision as well.
Is Sharia Law Operative In Dearborn?
If the past is prologue, the school system may well settle. In July 2009, the Thomas More Law Center filed a lawsuit against the school system on behalf of Gerald Marszalek, a beloved wrestling coach who was fired because of his connection to a volunteer coach who is a Christian minister.
That case began after Fadlallah fired the volunteer coach because a Muslim student converted to Christianity at the volunteer’s summer wrestling camp, which was unaffiliated with the school. The lawsuit alleged that Fadlallah is so fanatical that he actually hit the new Christian convert. “In full view of students and faculty,” the lawsuit alleged, “Defendant Fadlallah approached the young Fordson student who had chosen to be baptized a Christian at Hancock’s summer wrestling camp, punched the student, and advised the student that he had ‘disgraced his family’ by converting to Christianity from Islam.”
Anyhow, after Fadlallah canned the volunteer, he fired Marszalek, which invited the lawsuit. That one cost the city $25,000.
And as The New American reported in June, the city lost another lawsuit, filed by the Thomas More Law Center just a month before its lawsuit on behalf of Marszalek, because Dearborn forbade a Christian pastor from walking about to distribute literature at the city’s Arab-American fair. The city wanted him confined to a booth, arguing that the festival is akin to state fair, which also confines exhibitors to booths, and that it had the right to forbid literature distribution to ensure public safety and avoid clogged streets.
But a federal court said the festival and state fair are different. Unlike a state fair, which charges admission, the festival is open to all, free of charge, and it may not, therefore, restrict those who wish to distribute leaflets. The court took note of the minister’s argument that Muslims would be reluctant to approach a booth, as opposed to accept a randomly distributed flyer, because Islam’s penalty for apostasy is death.
Andrew Bostom, a scholar of Islam, noted that Sharia law forbids the proselytizing of Muslims, the position taken by the city of Dearborn. He also pointed to polling data that shows that Dearborn's large Muslim population believes that Sharia should be the law of the land in Islamic countries. But how about Dearborn? Bostom explained:
Such data supposedly reflected the Detroit area (read Dearborn) Muslims views of “Islamic countries,” only. But given the intrinsic, universally supremacist nature of Islam and the global umma (i.e., as stated in Koran 3:110, and the Orwellian-named Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, “Ye are the best community that hath been raised up for mankind. Ye enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency; and ye believe in Allah”), once an area has a Muslim majority it is assumed by Muslims that Islamic Law should prevail — hence the “enclave” phenomenon, now evident in the United States.
The poll cited by Bostom found that 81 percent of mosque attendees in Dearborn either strongly or somewhat agree that Sharia law should be the prevailing legal code in Muslim countries.
