Dearborn community leaders condemn history of bigotry targeting Arab Americans

For more than 40 years, Dearborn's residents have faced inaccurate stereotypes of the city based on anti-Arab racism that often spikes during war and foreign policy tensions.

Once again, they find themselves under scrutiny amid an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has brought renewed attention to the city with the highest percentage of Arab Americans.

A recent opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal with an inflammatory headline that read "America's Jihad Capital" has sparked fears they will be targeted once more. Arab Americans and their supporters, including the head of the Detroit NAACP, gathered Monday outside Dearborn police headquarters to denounce the piece and welcome visitors to experience the city's hospitality, food and diversity.

"We are Arab Americans and we are proud of who we are," said Osama Siblani, a community advocate and publisher of The Arab American News, a Dearborn-based newspaper that has been publishing in English and Arabic for nearly 40 years. "And this person is not going to take it away from us. The Wall Street Journal will not make us shake. ... We are not scared. You know why we're not scared? Because we know the Constitution. ... We are a hospitable and welcoming community."

Siblani spoke at a news conference organized by the Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL), a Dearborn-based civil rights group, that featured civil rights activists and Arab American advocates. Some called upon the Wall Street Journal to apologize and retract the opinion piece written by Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a group that says it monitors extremists, but has faced criticism from some activists for unfairly targeting Muslims and Arabs.

"This ... places a target on our community's back and makes many in our community feel unsafe," Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun said at the news conference. "This irresponsible form of journalism is unacceptable. And whoever was behind it must be held accountable."

Baydoun and other speakers noted that many Arab Americans proudly serve in the U.S. military and in law enforcement in Michigan. In addition to the news conference, two Arab American leaders joined presidential candidate Cornel West as he visited Dearborn and posted a video on X that condemned the article. The Dearborn-based American Human Rights Council also released a statement Monday calling the piece irresponsible.

Stalinsky's piece, published online Friday afternoon, was slammed Saturday by Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who leads a city of almost 110,000 residents, 54% of them Arab American.

"Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic," Hammoud wrote. "Dearborn is one of the greatest American cities in our nation."

Over the weekend, his views were echoed by a number of other elected officials, including the two U.S. senators from Michigan, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, some House representatives and state legislators, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and even President Joe Biden.

'We must...condemn hate in all forms': Biden says of Wall Street Journal's Dearborn piece

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"Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong," Biden wrote.

Hammoud last month turned down an invitation to meet with Biden's campaign manager during her visit to Dearborn because of the president's support for Israel's attacks in Gaza.

Biden and Hammoud found common ground on criticizing the opinion piece, though Hammoud followed up with another tweet that suggested Biden's policies fostered the environment that led to the opinion piece. Hammoud said the Biden administration needs to “recognize the rhetoric and decision making that created the climate for it to be written." Arab Americans have criticized Democrats in Michigan for their strong support for Israel.

In a statement to the Free Press on Monday sent through a MEMRI official, Stalinksy defended his article and asked Hammoud to condemn what he said were "speeches and sermons by extremist imams."

Stalinksy said there are what he characterized as "shocking anti-U.S. and pro-jihad sermons and marches that are going on openly in his city. And it must be pointed out that these events took place in the direct center of Dearborn, at locations such as the Henry Ford Centennial Library and the Ford (Community &) Performing Arts Center."

Stalinsky's op-ed focused on Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran's government, three groups the U.S. government has said support terrorism. In Dearborn, there are some who reject labeling the groups terrorist entities because they see them protecting communities where they have roots. Some in Dearborn's Lebanese Shia community, for example, view Hezbollah as a resistance group that successfully fought off Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, where they have family ties, in 2006. Stalinksy said his article was "not political — it is about national security."

Stalinsky added that "it is deeply troubling that I have not seen one reaction in the media which has talked about the content of my article or asked any of the critics if they have seen them. The media hysteria and online frenzy have solely focused on the mayor’s statement."

Civil rights advocates are concerned there will be a renewal of war on terrorism tactics that have targeted their communities. Even before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Arab Americans were racially profiled at airports and faced what was called "secret evidence" used against them in trials. In 1985, amid tensions after hijackings in the Middle East, the New York Post ran a cover story on Dearborn headlined "Beirut, USA" that falsely claimed Islamic militias ran Dearborn's streets. After 9/11, the war on terrorism led to even greater scrutiny, with federal agents increasing raids, arrests and criminal cases involving Arab American and Muslim suspects.

Nabih Ayad, an attorney who founded the ACRL, spoke Monday about how over the past 20 years, Dearborn was falsely labeled a city under Islamic law, sharia, and was targeted by anti-Islam evangelists, including a Quran-burning pastor and a Christian extremist who brought a pig's head to taunt Muslims at the annual Arab International Festival in 2012. The annual festival had to be canceled because of the soaring insurance costs due to tensions brought about by the harassment. There were other cases of mosques being threatened, Ayad said.

Ayad said that while there may be an occasional person saying something extreme at a rally in Dearborn, that should not be used to target the entire city. Stalinksy said in his article that some imams, such as Ahmad Musa Jebril, have made statements suggesting support for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. But the article failed to mention that Jebril has often been ostracized and excluded in Michigan's Muslim centers because of his extremist views, the Free Press reported in 2017.

Local Muslim leaders have said they're not aware of Jebril leading any mosque in Michigan. He once spent 6½ years in federal prison for financial crimes.

"You take supposedly a statement or two, whether it's founded or unfounded, by an individual and you want to ... (take a) broad brush against this community, it's simply unjust and unfair," Ayad said.

"It's like saying all the Black Lives Matter movement" is problematic because there may be one person who expressed anti-white views, Ayad said.

Stalinksy's op-ed also referenced a rally on Oct. 13 outside the Henry Ford Centennial Library in Dearborn that was smaller in size than a larger rally at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center on Oct. 10. The Oct. 13 rally at the library featured some speakers who called for Palestinian resistance, appeared to support the Oct. 7 attack, and praised the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran and the late Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by the U.S. in military strikes in 2020. Most of the other numerous pro-Palestinian rallies held in metro Detroit have not featured open support for Iran's government.

Also on Monday, Whitmer blasted the opinion piece as "cruel and ignorant," using stronger language that her tweet Sunday on the piece. The Associated Press said it was unable to reach the Wall Street Journal for comment Sunday.

The Rev. Wendell Anthony, a longtime Black leader in Michigan who is president of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, joined Arab American leaders on Monday, saying the article was "not only misinformation, it's disinformation. ... Our nation is plagued by Islamophobia, white supremacism, antisemitism, racism, genderism and ageism. There are just too much isms going around."

Abed Ayoub, a Dearborn native who is national director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that the type of rhetoric in the opinion piece has consequences, noting the stabbing death of a 6-year-old boy, Wadee Alfayoumi, of Palestinian descent near Chicago in October in what officials have called a hate crime motivated by bigoted views against Palestinians, and the November shooting of three Palestinian Americans in Vermont.

"That's what these consequences look like," Ayoub said.

Previous Free Press stories and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com or X @nwarikoo.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Arab American activists condemn Wall Street Journal op-ed on Dearborn