As Trump Stirs Islamophobia, Michigan Muslims Worry

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DEARBORN, MI - Here, where Arab-Americans settled decades ago in greater concentrations than anywhere else in the country, GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s call this week for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” heightened worry among already anxious Muslims.

Trump’s suggestion for a religious litmus test to control entry to the United States — coming on the heels of the candidate’s earlier call for special Muslim ID cards and registries — goes far beyond normal political drama and rhetoric, said Fatina Abdrabboh, director of the Michigan chapter of the American-Arab Discrimination Committee.

Rather, Abdrabboh told The Detroit News, Trump’s policies are a “symbol of hatred and racism that, should he rise to the presidency, foreshadow a grim future.”

For months before the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris, anti-Islam sentiment had been simmering in Dearborn, whose high population of Arab-American Muslims makes the city of nearly 97,000 a nexus in the escalating wave of Islamophobia

Dearborn is home to about 40,000 Arab-American Muslims who are part of a large ethnic population whose immigrant families settled in southeast Michigan to work in automobile factory jobs in the early part of the last century.

After the Paris attacks, the FBI sought to reassure Muslims and warned government agents would aggressively investigate “misguided retaliatory threats” in Dearborn. Local Muslims tried to separate themselves from jihad extremists in the public’s mind with anti-ISIS rallies and discussion forums, but were dealt setbacks in efforts to improve relations with non-Muslims by events like the recent terrorist shootings in San Bernardino, CA, by a radicalized Muslim couple.

See Also

• Dearborn Rally, Forum Decry ISIS and Islamophobia
• Dearborn Stunned as 3 Residents Killed in Beirut Bombings
• FBI Probes Threats in Dearborn After Paris Attacks

A situation that developed around a long-standing peace really last weekend showed how quickly misunderstandings can escalate in today’s era of social networking. The demonstration was falsely identified as a pro-ISIS rally in online posts that featured a doctored photograph, and the rumor was so pervasive that the website Snopes.com created a special “Great Flakes” page to debunk it.

Dearborn Mayor Mayor John B. O’Reilly Jr. told WDIV-TV the story spread with a level of vitriol that, though disappointing, has become increasingly familiar during his eight years in office.

“That’s what we deal with all the time,” O’Reilly said. “People misconstruing or using us as some symbol of something terrible when, quite the contrary, we’re a pretty nice community.”

Critic: Rhetoric Meant to Provoke Violence

Civil rights and advocacy groups, politicians and others swiftly denounced Trump’s comments in a sweeping round of condemnation.

ADC-Michigan leaders said in a statement they planned to outline civil rights concerns associated with “a recent spate of bigoted hate speech ... by presidential candidates” in a Thursday morning news conferences at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Representatives of the Hindu American Foundation, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , Asian Americans Advancing Justice, League of Latin American Citizens and Mexican American Legal Defense were also expected to speak on the effects of the current political tenor on populations they represent.

“People that I’ve spoken with out there are outraged about (Trump’s) comments and believe that he’s stoking up so much hatred in our society that he may provoke someone to commit violence against them,” Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Detroit News.

”This type of fascist language is going to do nothing but eventually provoke someone to attack and maybe even kill Muslims,” he said.

Some local Muslims say they can no longer ignore Trump’s rhetoric while quietly hoping that his political popularity fades.

The Royal Oak-based Michigan Muslim Community Council plans to convene leaders in the coming days to draft a response to Trump, the group’s chairman, Muzammil Ahmed, told The Oakland Press.

In other instances, Muslims are simply trying to calm community fears.

Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Metro Detroit spokesman Mahir Osman met recently with the Rochester Hills City Council to “reassure” officials that area Muslims are “peaceful and law-abiding citizens” living by the teachings of Islam.

Iman Mustapha El-Turk, of Troy, director of the Islamic Organization of North America, told The Oakland Press, that Trump is trying to score political points in an atmosphere that is “very Islamophobic.”

“We are just like other human beings in this country enjoying its freedoms and diversity,” El-Turk said.

See Also

• Michigan Governor Pauses Syrian Refugee Plan
• Filmmaker Michael Moore Opens Home to Syrian Refugees
• Syrian Village ‘Imminent’ Threat: Oakland Executive

After the Paris attacks, Oakland County political boss L. Brooks Patterson further escalated tensions when he fumed that Middle East refugees who would be living in Syrian Village under development in Pontiac pose an “imminent” threat. He ordered all county employees to stop doing any work related to the project, and called on the mayor of Pontiac to stop the project altogether.

“Crazy,” Unconstitutional Plan: Congressman

In a flurry of speeches and interviews over the last few days, members of Michigan’s congressional delegation have both celebrated the economic, cultural and societal contributions of Michigan’s Arab-American residents and denounced Trump’s remarks.

U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, of St. Joseph, one of the top Republicans in the House, called Trump’s proposal for a religious test to enter the United States “crazy,” and said it “goes against the very principles that our founding fathers wrote into the Constitution.”

U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, said that though Americans are frustrated by what they perceive as President Obama’s failure to adequately respond to terror threats, “we need to come together as a nation, not create some kind of unconstitutional religious litmus test that will only further divide us.”

See Also

• Snyder: Bipartisan Coalition Should Discuss Refugees

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Dearborn Democrat, alluded to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and Japanese internment camps in the United States during World War II in a post on Facebook page that linked to a New York Times story on the controversy, aide Hannah Smith told Patch.

Dingell posted:

“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. We must remember that when we allow fear to cause division, terrorism wins.”

From the Senate floor Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, praised Arab American military service men and women who lost their lives to the war on terror and other conflicts.

“Take a walk through Arlington Cemetery, and you will see many graves bearing the crescent and star,” Stabenow said. “How can anyone question the patriotism of those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country?”

On the front lines the anti-Islam cultural war in Michigan, Fatimah Farooq, 23, of Dearborn, said Trump’s rhetoric is divisive and dangerous and gives “extremist groups like ISIS what they want.”

Farooq reflected with sadness “that this is 2015 and we’re seeing the same type of stuff,” the Free Press reported.

“I think he’s pushing us 10 steps back, instead of moving forward,” she said, “and he’s gaining such a following.”

» Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr / Creative Commons