In Dearborn, Michigan, the natives are up in arms. And by “natives,” I mean the Hamas-loving protesters who have been flooding the streets and calling out “Genocide Joe Biden” for not attempting to crush Israel. This was all spurred by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this weekend by Steven Salinsky. The title, “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,” reportedly spurred “an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online.” In response, the Mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, increased police deployments, not to protect any vulnerable Jews in the area, but to mosques and centers of infrastructure. Soon, everyone up to and including the President was jumping on the bandwagon. (Associated Press)
Dearborn, Michigan, is ramping up its police presence in response to fallout from an opinion piece that described the city, which has the nation’s highest Muslim population per capita, as “America’s jihad capital.”
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud on Friday tweeted that city police increased security at places of worship and major infrastructure points as a “direct result” of a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled, “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital.”
Hammoud posted on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, that the item published Friday “led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city of Dearborn.”
Stalinsky made it clear in a later interview that he wasn’t calling for violence against anyone. He was trying to draw attention to the broadly antisemitic protests that have roiled the area and was hoping to avoid potential violence against Jews that might result. Instead of the hoped-for result, people on the left began clamoring about supposed Islamophobia and attacks on Muslims. Even Joe Biden tweeted about the supposed danger.
Not for nothing, but the people who track such incidents haven’t been recording any sort of increase in anti-Muslim attacks. What they have seen, however, has been a marked increase in incidents of antisemitic rhetoric, property damage, and even physical violence since all of these protests broke out. When you have people openly marching in the streets hoisting swastikas and “Gas the Jews” signs, one might suppose that counterterrorism officials should be taking notice.
Keep in mind that Dearborn is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the country. It’s also in the congressional district of Squad member Rashida Tlaib, who has been dousing verbal gasoline onto the anti-Israeli fire since October 7. With the vocal backing of the Mayor and their congresswoman, would it truly be all that surprising if some miscreants took their anti-Jewish rhetoric to the next level and shifted to physical attacks? I would dearly love to be wrong, but we can’t rule it out.
Too many examples have already shown up in primarily blue cities where the pro-Hamas chorus has been the loudest. Stalinsky reminds us that it was on October 10 that Imam Imran Salha of Dearborn’s Islamic Center of Detroit told an assembled crowd that Israel's past actions should "put a fire in our hearts that will burn that state until its demise." Keep in mind the timing. That was only three days after the Hamas attacks and weeks before any serious Israeli counteroffensive began. Almost all of the dead and missing at that point were the Jews, not the Palestinians. Salha went on to command his followers to beseech Allah to “eradicate from existence the sick, disgusting Zionist regime.” He wasn't calling for freedom for the Palestinians. He was demanding the eradication of the Jews. Might we not be concerned that some of his followers might heed that call right in Michigan?
Later that week, Imam Usama Abdulghani called the October 7 attacks "a miracle come true." He described the Hamas terrorists as "lions defending the entire nation of Muhammad." There's nothing subtle about that and those words were coming from the most highly placed Muslim leaders in the Dearborn community. Who among his followers wouldn't want to see themselves enshrined among the "lions" in their growing army?
Similar chants were heard at The Islamic Center of America, a leading Dearborn mosque. They held rituals in honor of fallen Hamas fighters and stoked the flames of anger among their members. The list goes on. The bottom line that Stalinsky was obviously trying to emphasize is that if there is anywhere in the United States where a full-blown jihad might break out, it's probably Dearborn. Few there are urging any sense of calm or restraint or calling for enhanced security at Jewish centers of worship. Instead, they are claiming to be the victims who are under threat even as they call for the utter destruction of the Jewish people. So who was the real bad guy in all of this? Was it the person who wrote an op-ed pointing all of this out or the people setting fire to Israeli flags in the streets?
