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.”
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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”