Opinion | Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Dearborn, Mich.
Thousands march in support of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Protesters, many with kaffiyehs covering their faces, shout “Intifada, intifada,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “America is a terrorist state.” Local imams give fiery antisemitic sermons. This isn’t the Middle East. It’s the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Mich.
Almost immediately after Oct. 7, and long before Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza, people were celebrating the horrific events of that day in pro-Hamas rallies and marches throughout Dearborn. A local headline describing an Oct. 10 event at the Ford Performing Arts Center read “Michigan rally cheers Hamas attack.” Imam Imran Salha of Dearborn’s Islamic Center of Detroit told the crowd that Israel’s past actions have put “fire in our hearts that will burn that state”—Israel— “until its demise.” In May 2023, Mr. Salha had urged his congregation to say “amen” in agreement with his prayer that Allah “eradicate from existence” the “sick, disgusting Zionist regime.” In October 2022, according to the Washington Free Beacon, his organization received $150,000 in funding from the Homeland Security Department’s nonprofit security grants program.
At another rally, held Oct. 14 in front of the Henry Ford Centennial Library, Imam Usama Abdulghani also didn’t hide his support for Hamas’s terrorist actions. The American-born, Iranian-educated Shiite Islamic scholar called Oct. 7 “one of the days of God” and a “miracle come true.” He described the attackers as “honorable.” He said they were “lions” defending “the entire nation of Muhammad the messenger.”
Local enthusiasm for jihad against Israel and the West extends beyond celebration of Hamas. The Islamic Center of America, a leading Dearborn mosque, held a memorial service on Dec. 30 for a Hezbollah operative killed in an Israeli airstrike. The Hadi Institute, which runs an Islamic Montessori school and bills itself as a youth community center, held a “Commemoration of the Martyrs” on Jan. 5. This event honored Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, leader of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. Both men were on the U.S. list of designated terrorists when they were killed in a U.S. airstrike on Jan. 3, 2020. The commemoration included poetry and praise, along with claims about ISIS being operated by both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Mossad. Imam Abdulghani used his remarks to express his “warmest congratulations” to “our very special leader, Imam Khamenei”—essentially declaring allegiance to the Iranian ayatollah who regularly calls for the destruction of the U.S.
Support for terrorism in southern Michigan has long been a concern for U.S. counterterrorism officials. A 2001 Michigan State Police assessment submitted to the Justice Department after 9/11 called Dearborn “a major financial support center” and a “recruiting area and potential support base” for international terror groups, including possible sleeper cells. The assessment noted that most of the 28 State Department-identified terror groups were represented in Michigan. Many current or onetime Dearborn residents have been convicted of terror-related crimes in recent years.
Ahmad Musa Jibril is perhaps the most influential English-speaking jihadi sheikh. From his home in Dearborn he promotes holy war to his tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and Telegram. On Oct. 7, the day Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and took almost 200 hostage, a Twitter account bearing his name retweeted a post that said, “The hearts haven’t been overjoyed like this in so long.” This account also posted a tweet imploring Allah to “purify the land from the aggression of the apes, swines, and hypocrites.” He later recorded a video calling on Muslims in the West to start normalizing the term “jihad” by using it frequently “on your social media, and in the mosques.” He has called President Biden a “senile pharaoh.”
Dearborn’s radical politics are complicating Mr. Biden’s path to re-election. Michigan is a must-win state for Democrats, and the president’s campaign strategists are clearly worried that virulent anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment could hurt him in November. The AP reported Jan. 26 that local leaders gave Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez the cold shoulder during a recent visit to the Detroit area. “Little bit of advice—if you’re planning on sending campaign officials to convince the Arab-American community on why they should vote for your candidate, don’t do it on the same day you announce selling fighter jets to the tyrants murdering our family members,” tweeted Abdullah H. Hammoud, Dearborn’s Democratic mayor.
Open support for Hamas is spreading. Since Oct. 7, similar protests have occurred in major American cities featuring pro-jihadist imagery, chants and slogans. Rallies are now also expressing support for the Iran-backed Houthis, who are lobbing missiles at Israel and trying to sink commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
What’s happening in Dearborn isn’t simply a political problem for Democrats. It’s potentially a national-security issue affecting all Americans. Counterterrorism agencies at all levels should pay close attention.
Mr. Stalinsky is executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.
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I only have a few questions:
1) Who vetted these people?
2) How & why are they here?
3) what should be done with them?
In what way? Who vetted you?
Born here? They live here? The same could be asked of any extremist group.
Until they break the law? Nothing. It's a free country, don't ya know?
Have people in Gaza vett their pants over the last 6 months? They are trapped between Hamas and the IFD.
Is that in Michigan?
[deleted][✘]
Sorry for the bad suggestion.
The old neighborhood.
I have a few questions.
1. have they committed a crime?
2. are they in the US legally?
Nothing much can be done if they have not committed a crime and are here legally. The best that can be done is to keep the ringleaders under surveillance.
And that’s particularly true in the case of conflict-driven Arab immigration in the current US immigration system. Since so many people come over with refugee status or on special immigrant visas, they’re often put in the position to act as “sponsors” for other family members or people they know from back home.
And so the chain migration phenomenon repeats itself, with whole families and even small towns relocating from the Middle East to Michigan.
The US opened up 25,000 special visas to people from the Middle East in 2010 . The vast majority coming over on those visas are Iraqis, and “most of these people are related somehow to each other,” Alloos says.
What explains Michigan's large Arab American community? (michiganpublic.org)
Not surprising.
Former first lady Malania trump. But you're ok with that, right?
And Melania Trump sponsored her parents, the perfect example of chain migration.
I thought that chain migration was ethnic migration, like the Chinese, Irish, Italian, etc.
She and her parents are Slovenian, Eastern European and much like the groups you mentioned not always welcome in the US.
Yes, not much chain migration there.
She has not caused trouble and has been a positive influence
I'm ok with those claiming to be refugees to be properly vetted.
Evidently Obama was in a bit of a rush to quietly get them resettled here.
Slovenia is a country with a population of 2.1 million and there are around 500,000 living in the US. If we were familiar with iron ore mining you'd know that based on a tiny worldwide population there are a good number of Slovenians in northern MN who worked in mines on the Vermillion, and Mesabi iron ranges and the same with Croatians and Italians. And yes it was mostly immigrant labor in the mines and sooner or later the father mother, cousin etc were on there way to the US to join daddy.
BTW, Greyhound Bus Lines was started there (Hibbing) taking miners from the various towns to the mines and back.
And Slavic people which includes Slovenians were called Hunky or Bohunk.
Debatable.
He hasn't been in office for 7 years Vic.. Might be time to let it go.
He did a lot of damage.
''Chain migration'' started in 1965 and was designed to keep out or limit ''certain types of people'' as one can see the dumb ass politicians that started it really didn't think things through not unlike today's politician world.