Majority Leader Kumar Barve

Abdul Sheikh's Gaithersburg rental business typically spends $20,000 to $25,000 at Lowe’s each year.

Now he said he'll take that money elsewhere.

The company has pulled advertising from a national reality show about Muslim-American families based on pressure from a group that says it fails to "accurately portray Muslims as terrorists."

"I guess they have the right to spend money the way they want, but the way they did this wasn’t right," Sheikh said. "That's the crux of the issue."

Sheikh was one of about 60 protesters spread across two of the five entrances to the Kentland Lowe's around 2 p.m. Sunday. With silver whistles and rainbow-colored kazoos, they waved signs at drivers and pedestrians on their way into the company's only Montgomery County location, chanting, "One, two, three, four, how Lowe can you go?"

Former Maryland Del. Saqib Ali, one of the protest’s leaders, is one of several organizers united through the National Lowe's Boycott Network, a grassroots campaign raising awareness about Lowe's decision to pull advertising from the TLC series "All-American Muslim," which follows five Muslim-American families in Dearborn, Mich. Lowe's was pressured into the decision by the group Florida Family Association.

Members of the network are encouraging a nationwide boycott of Lowe's, and organized protests this weekend in several other locations across the country, including San Diego, Calif; Allen Park, Mich.; Brooklyn, N.Y. and Alexandria, Va. By Sunday afternoon, nearly 40,700 people had signed a national petition against the decision.

More than 100 people were expected to join Ali at the roundabout at Kentland Boulevard and Market Street over the course of the afternoon, including, Del. Kumar Barve, Maryland's House Majority Leader; Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett; Gaithersburg City Councilman Michael Sesma; and former Maryland Del. Robin Ficker.

"We are now becoming a country where a virulent minority of people have decided it's okay to hate people with different religious views and I think that's unacceptable," Barve said. "I don't know which is worse: the honest, naked religious hatred of the Florida Family Council or the moral cowardice of Lowe's."

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