Mosque Protester Who Posted Muslims’ Addresses: I’m Being ‘Smeared’

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The man who recently led a group of armed protesters outside a Texas mosque says that he’s being “attacked and smeared” for posting local Muslims’ home addresses to Facebook earlier this week.

David Wright, who leads a group of anti-Muslim protesters that calls itself the Bureau of American Islamic Relations (BAIR), listed “the name and address of every Muslim and Muslim sympathizer that stood up for Sharia tribunals in Irving TX” on his Facebook page Tuesday. The list of names appeared to be copied from a document showing which residents urged the Irving City Council to vote against a bill they said was motivated by baseless rumors that a local mosque housed a “Sharia law court.”

Wright told local TV station KDFW that the anyone could access the information he posted through the city’s website.

But The Dallas Morning News, which first reported the list, noted Thursday that the list of names had disappeared from BAIR’s Facebook page. The newspaper also noted that the personal Facebook profile Wright posted the list of names on had disappeared, although he appears to have created a replacement page. Wright posted the list of names again Wednesday afternoon on that new page.

“I am being attacked and smeared by the liberal media for legally
exercising my 1st and 2nd Amendment rights and for using public data to
defend my credibility when they make accusations against me,” Wright wrote on Thursday.

Wright went on to describe his group as “self defense only” and wrote that none of its members had killed any Muslims.

“You know as well as I do if it was my intention to use this as a hit list then it would have already happened,” he added in a comment on the post.

Latest Livewire
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: