ANAHEIM – More than 200 people rallied Saturday around the young Muslim protesters known as the “Irvine 11,” pledging their own demonstrations as a key court date nears.

The 11 students face criminal charges because they repeatedly interrupted a speech last year by Israel’s ambassador to the United States. They are scheduled to be arraigned Friday on charges of disturbing an assembly and conspiring to disturb an assembly.

Their supporters – stung by what they consider the injustice of the case – filled a meeting room at the Islamic Institute of Orange County on Saturday evening. Speakers questioned whether the students would have been prosecuted if they weren’t Muslim, but said the case raises questions regardless of religion.

“The reality is that protest and expressing dissent makes up the very fabric of American democracy,” said attorney Reem Salahi, who is helping to defend the 11 students.

District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has repeatedly said the students broke the law and would be prosecuted regardless of their religion or any other affiliation. The 11 students “meant to stop this speech and stop anyone else from hearing (the ambassador’s) ideas,” he said when he filed the charges in February.

“This is a clear violation of the law and failing to bring charges against this conduct would amount to a failure to uphold the Constitution,” he said.

But speakers at Saturday’s town hall at the Islamic Institute argued that the students were exercising their free-speech rights and should be protected.

The meeting was meant as a call to action, and the speakers encouraged those who came to make their voices heard. Fliers urged: “Stand with the Eleven” and offered talking points for letters to the editor or calls to radio talk shows:

“Any decision to prosecute the students is a form of selective prosecution … Criminal prosecution is a waste of taxpayer funds … .”

The group is planning its own demonstration on Friday, the day the 11 students are to be arraigned. They plan to gather outside the courthouse, dressed in black, with tape over their mouths.

Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the students should no more face charges than what he described as the “bigoted mob” that gathered outside an Islamic fundraiser last month in Yorba Linda.

(Click here to read about the Yorba Linda protest.)

Internet video of that protest shows some in the crowd chanting “Go back home!” as men, women and children file into the event. Protesters said they were concerned about past anti-American statements by the event’s two keynote speakers.

Ayloush said the Yorba Linda protesters had the right to say what they wanted – but so too, he argued, did the Irvine 11.

“For me, it’s free speech either way,” he said. “Even hate speech is free speech.”

Contact the writer: 714-704-3777 or dirving@ocregister.com