Rev. Terry Jones plans to file an appeal tomorrow in Wayne County Circuit Court over a Dearborn court’s decision against him last week that thwarted his plans to protest outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, an attorney said today.

“It was a clear violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech,” said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel for the Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Jones.

Jones, who ordered the burning of a Quran last month, was to protest Friday outside the Dearborn mosque, but Wayne County prosecutors filed an unusual complaint against him, saying he would breach the peace if he rallied. A jury agreed with prosecutors and Jones was briefly jailed, then released after posting a $1 bond.

“This is America, not a banana republic,” Thompson told the Free Press today. “We still revere the Constitution…We have to protect Terry Jones and anyone else who has a right to free speech rather than throw them in jail.”

This is the latest effort by the Thomas More Law Center, a Christian group, to fight what it sees as the growth of radical Islam in the U.S. They’re also involved with legal efforts involving four Christian missionaries arrested in Dearborn last year and a dispute with the Detroit bus system over ads some say are anti-Islam. And they have filed suits in cases in California and Oklahoma involving situations where they say non-Muslims were compelled to be indoctrinated in Islam, Thompson said.

“A bedrock principle of a free society is that people should be able to express themselves freely without prior restraint,” Thompson said of the Jones case. Even if one might disagree with Jones’ Quran burning, unpopular speech is protected under the Constitution, he added.

Dearborn officials and Wayne County prosecutors have said that if Jones protested at the mosque, it would be a breach of the peace given death threats against Jones and the layout of the mosque entrance and adjacent property. They also argued that since the rally would have been on Good Friday, there would have been heavy traffic flow because of nearby churches and Friday Islamic prayers that would have caused problems.

Thompson said today that there was a rally Friday at the mosque and traffic did not appear to a problem.

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