A controversy is brewing over a Youtube video that has gone viral.
Samer Hijazi of the Arab American News reports that the American Arab Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn has accused a Christian group of editing the video to make Dearborn locals look uncivilized at the Arab International Festival that was held on Father's Day Weekend.
The 22-minute video "American Arabs Stone Christians in Dearborn, Mi." which was edited by the Bible Believers, shows attendees of the event throwing rocks and other debris at the Bible Believers as they protested Islam.
The Chamber accuses of the group of editing out parts of the video -- including a Bible Believers' member carrying a pig's head -- to make it look as if they had done nothing to provoke the crowd. Pork is forbidden among observant Muslims. An independent video (show below) shows the Bible Believers essentially taunting attendees of the event and carrying a pig's head.
The group not only carried a pig's head, but held up signs that said: "Prophet Muhammad is molester and false prophet."
The Arab American News writes:
What many don't know however is that there are two videos that were uploaded by the group that depict the incident: The 22-minute video that has gone viral, and a much longer raw footage video, which is almost 70 minutes in length. That video has only been viewed 14,000 times but captures the moments from when the group entered the festival up until when they were asked to leave. Fay Beydoun, the Director of the AACC argues that when you watch the video in it's entirety, viewers would see that the locals and children were provoked to retaliate. She says that the AACC is working on releasing a response video.
Ruben Israel, one of the founders of the Bible Believers has claimed that the video was not edited to make his group look like the victims, but rather to only highlight the 'important parts'. In an interview this week he stated that his group didn't do any sort of antagonizing to get the response that they did.
"We were going to do some preaching and the preaching would provoke some good conversation and conversation is what's good....and that's the purpose for the large signs because they display exactly who we are and what we believe. That’s all we were going to do. We wanted to hang around there for a few hours, pack up and leave. We weren't going to stay there until the end of the event," Israel told The Right Side News earlier this week .
The first video below is the edited version. A second video, which is much shorter, but was taken by someone else, shows the pigs head and the protestors provoking the crowd. -- A.L.
