The Mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, has fired back after a racist op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal called his city “America’s Jihad Capital.”
The op-ed by Steven Stalinksy alleged that Muslim and Arab leaders from Dearborn are “siding with Hamas against Israel and Iran against the U.S.” Dearborn has a majority Arab-American population.
On Saturday, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud took to X to express his disgust with the article, where he called it, “Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic.”
He continued by defending his city, which is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States.
In January, Dearborn officials and community leaders canceled a meeting with Joe Biden’s campaign manager, over their disapproval of Biden’s unswerving support for Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza. “I will not entertain conversations about elections while we watch a live-streamed genocide backed by our government,” Mayor Hammoud wrote in a statement on X.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan also responded to the op-ed in a post on X. “The same rightwing outlets who warn of rising antisemitism (and, yes, antisemitism is on the rise) have no problem pushing horrendous Islamophobia & anti-Arab bigotry,” he wrote. “Can you imagine a headline like this about a predominantly Jewish or Black area of the U.S.? Shame on @WSJ”
