Dearborn, Michigan — Dearborn is not the place to live if you want to criticize government actions without being called an “Islamophobe.” Americans who expect politicians to distance themselves from people who say nice things about terrorist organizations that have killed U.S. citizens in the Middle East should also stay out of the city.
Does the mayor’s concept of ‘co-existence’ amount to subordination of non-Muslims by another name?
That’s the takeaway from the September 23, 2025 meeting of Dearborn’s City Council, where first-term Mayor Abdullah Hammoud refused to apologize for trying to bully Christian evangelist Ted Barham into leaving the city at the previous city council meeting on September 9, 2025. Barham attracted the mayor’s ire at that meeting by complaining about the naming of a busy intersection after a Hammoud supporter who, in addition to praising former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, once joked about sending Israeli Prime Minister the Benjamin Netanyahu “back to Poland.”
Not only did Hammoud, the mayor of a city with more than 100,000 residents—55 percent of whom are Muslim—fail to apologize for bullying Barham in a vain effort to get him to leave the city, not one council member offered a word of criticism of Hamas and Hezbollah after they were challenged to do so by one of the more than 100 audience members who showed up to attend the September 23 city council meeting.
“Do you definitively, unequivocally—by name—denounce Hamas and Hezbollah, or do you support them?” Dearborn resident Anthony Deegan asked the council members on September 23. They said nothing in response.
Protecting Siblani
With its silence, the council lent credence to Barham’s concerns about the naming of the intersection of Warren Avenue and Chase Road after Osama Siblani, the founding publisher of Arab American News. According to the ADL, Siblani told the Chicago Tribune in 2006 that, “If the FBI wants to come after those who support the resistance done by Hezbollah, then they better bring a fleet of buses. I for one would be willing to go to jail.”
Siblani’s gibe about needing a fleet of buses to arrest Hezbollah supporters in the region is no joke. In 2024, Dearborn hosted an Al Quds Day celebration during which protesters called for America and Israel’s destruction. Siblani has condemned chants calling for America’s destruction, but according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, he has legitimized an anti-American narrative to audiences in the Middle East. In 2024, he described U.S. efforts to drive Iran out of Syria as an attempt to steal the country’s oil. “America wants two things: To partition Syria and to keep the oil and gas resources,” he said.
In 1993, Siblani, a newspaper publisher, abandoned the principle of free speech during an appearance on Larry King’s show on CNN on which he condemned U.S. President Bill Clinton for meeting with Salman Rushdie for an hour. Rushdie was forced to live in hiding as the result of a fatwa calling for his murder issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khomeini issued the fatwa in response to the publication of Rushdie’s book, Satanic Verses. “When [Clinton] met with Salman Rushdie in the White House for one hour,” Siblani said, “it’s sending a message—The President’s thereby sending a message to the Islamic world that he condoned the insult of Islam, and that is something that should not have been done.”
By way of comparison, Siblani came to the defense of Al Manar, described by National Review (NR) in 2006 as “a satellite television channel operated, owned, and controlled by the Iranian-funded Hezbollah terrorist network [that] was designated as a global terrorist entity.” NR reports that Siblani “was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, ‘I disagree with the State Department that it [Al-Manar] incites violence. … By that standard, they should shut Fox News for inciting against Muslims.’”
Incitement to Violence?
During his September 9 testimony before the council, Barham criticized naming the intersection after Siblani, stating the publisher was a promoter of Hamas and Hezbollah. Barham, a pastor in the Open Brethren, a church community founded in the 1800s, also quoted Siblani as declaring, among other things, that “we are the Arabs who are going to lift Palestinians all the way to victory whether we are in Michigan and whether we are in Jenin.”
Barham stated that such language could incite acts of violence in the Middle East and even in the United States. At this point, longtime city councilor Robert A. Abraham, interrupted Barham to declare, “I’m going to stop you because he’s not a violent person. You can interpret his words any way you want, but I will guarantee you he is not intending to incite violence anywhere in the world. … [W]e’re not going to allow personal attacks in our community.”
Barham, however, stood his ground, quoting Siblani as stating
We are the Arabs that are going to lift Palestinians all the way to victory. Whether we are in Michigan, and whether we are in Jenin. Believe me. Everyone should fight within his means. They will fight with stones. Others will fight with guns. Others will fight with planes, drones. And others will fight with rockets. And others will fight in their voice.
‘You Are Not Welcome Here’
Eventually, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a Shia Muslim whose family hails from Lebanon, weighed in, calling Barham, “a bigot,” “a racist,” and “an Islamophobe.” He didn’t stop there.
“I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here,” the mayor told Barham. “And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city because you are not somebody who believes in coexistence.” It was an astounding display of contempt from an elected official who had sworn to uphold the United States constitution when he was sworn in as mayor in 2022. Hammoud’s verbal attack was an attempt to use the language of coexistence and a narrative of Muslim victimhood to put an uppity non-Muslim in his place.
On this score, Barham can be likened to the descendant of a slave who made the mistake of standing up to his white overlords in the post-Reconstruction South. By leveling the “Islamophobia” charge at Barham, Hammoud sent two messages. First, he made it perfectly clear to Dearborn’s non-Muslims what would happen to them if they stepped out of line. Second, he made it clear to Dearborn’s Muslim residents that he could be counted on to protect their honor in the face of attack. In other words, Hammoud’s attack served to protect a hierarchy rooted not in race, but religious identity.
It’s a problem people need to pay attention to, warns A.J. Nolte, professor at Regent University and director of its Institute for Israel Studies.
“What’s at issue here is that the mayor appears to have a relationship with a Hezbollah sympathizer. Hezbollah is dedicated to a Shia variant of Islamic supremacism imported directly from Iran,” Nolte said. So, the question is simple: “Does the mayor’s concept of ‘co-existence’ amount to subordination of non-Muslims by another name?”
Hammoud’s Defenders
A few—but not a majority—of people who attended the September 23, 2025, city council meeting went along with Hammoud’s agenda in part because he has been an effective mayor. Instead of refuting Barham’s factual claims about Siblani, they praised Hammoud for how well Dearborn was run under his leadership and how wonderful interfaith relations are in the city. “This is the greatest city that I’ve ever lived in in my entire life,” said Nathan Hayes, the pastor of a church whose roof collapsed after a rainstorm in July. Hayes told the audience that the first two people who contacted him after the disaster were Muslims.
“They opened up their facilities and said, ‘Hey, if you need a place, come be part of what we’re doing.’” After characterizing Hammoud’s September 9 outburst as an act of “frustration,” Hayes said, “I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to allow us and letting us be part of this community and letting us be part of this great city.”
In her defense of Hammoud, Sarah Lau, a nine-year resident of Dearborn who hails from lower Alabama, said in a well-prepared speech that “five seconds of a council meeting taken out of context shouldn’t define the character of a man who has spent years helping his neighbors.” She then went on to recount how Hammoud had helped Dearborn residents clean out their homes after recent flooding in the city. “That’s the kind of person you want leading your city. Someone who shows up, gets his hands dirty, and helps his neighbors. Since then, we’ve watched Abdullah grow as a leader, and we’ve watched Dearborn grow under his leadership. We’ve seen real investment, positive change, and a vision for a city where everyone belongs.”
On this score, Barham agrees with Lau, with Fox News reporting that Barham praised the mayor for “funding new playgrounds and recalled his son’s warm encounter with the mayor at a preschool visit.”
Pushback
Nevertheless, the pushback against Hammoud’s aggressive comments dominated the September 23 meeting. Dearborn resident Jeff Davis declared, “I’m not sure what the mayor’s intentions were, but some people that are given to being irrational or violent behavior might think this was a call to help rid the city of this man,” he said before reminding listeners that the day after Hammoud verbally attacked Barham, an irrational person who believed what people said about Charlie Kirk pulled out a rifle and killed him in Utah, prompting people to say, “We’re all Charlie Kirk.”
We don’t want to condone anything like that,” Davis said. We want to be telling people how we can get along.” Davis also declared, “Unless the council and the mayor do something, we’re going to have people saying, “We’re all Ted Barham.”
Zenon Sommers, a missionary with Ratio Christi, a group that promotes “thoughtful Christianity” on college campuses, challenged Hammoud to apologize to Barham for his September 9 comments. A 2022 graduate of the University of Michigan, Dearborn, Sommers heard Hammoud give the commencement speech during which he declared that “"As you’ve studied here in Dearborn, you got to learn better than most what a vibrant, messy, multicultural democracy looks like. The Dearborn difference is exactly that.”
The mayor did not live up to these ideas, Sommers suggested. “Denigrating Mr. Barham’s character and insisting that he is not welcome in Dearborn because of his Christian faith serves only to flatten the multiculturalism that makes Dearborn so special. It burns bridges instead of building them. I therefore would join those others here who had asked Mayor Hammoud to apologize publicly for his comments toward Mr. Barham and for the city council to take action to affirm the right of all in Dearborn to practice their religion without opposition from their elected officials.”
At this point, council president Michael T. Sareini intervened, stating, “There was no stifling of religion in the council meeting. I just want to make sure that’s abundantly clear.”
Shane Rife, a resident of nearby Garden City, said he was shocked by Hammoud’s attack on Barham’s character. Once he started digging into the facts of the controversy, he was shocked to learn that Hammoud and Dearborn leaders appeared publicly with Siblani, who had openly praised Hassan Nasrallah, who served as leader of Hezbollah until his death in 2024.
“When I heard that the mayor was upset and accused Ted of Islamophobia and bigotry, it sounded like an attempt to silence Ted,” Rife said adding that such an accusation would be very effective in Muslim-majority Dearborn. Then, in a dramatic fashion, Rife challenged the officials before him.
“Where is your allegiance? Is your allegiance to the United States or is your allegiance to Hezbollah?” he asked. City officials—who had intervened aggressively when Barham spoke at the September 9 meeting and offered a point of clarification to a previous speaker’s request to acknowledge the freedom of religion—said nothing.
During his time at the podium, Barham—who has served as a missionary for the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church in Muslim-majority territories—stated that he had no interest in filing suit against Dearborn for infringing on his rights.
“I would like to repeat what I said to you [on September 9] Mr. Mayor: “God bless you,” he said, invoking the words of Jesus, “Bless those who curse you, and some other very powerful words which were mentioned this week at [Charlie Kirk’s] funeral about loving your enemies and … your haters.”
Through it all, Hammoud remained unrepentant and responded to the criticism directed at him by declaring, “Dearborn represents the best of America. We put into practice the ideal that people of all backgrounds, of all faiths, and of all beliefs can live peacefully and respectfully as neighbors, as classmates, as business owners, and as congregants.”
Ignoring the concerns expressed about chants for America’s destruction uttered by some of his constituents, Hammoud complained about people who come to Dearborn to burn Qurans. “Dearborn has often been slandered for simply coexisting peacefully because the truth is some people are uncomfortable and frankly upset about seeing church steeples and mosque domes share the same skyline on roads like Altar Road [a street in Dearborn where several houses of worship are located].”
The Real Issue
But the way Barham frames it, the real issue is not that Muslims and Christians get along so well in Dearborn, but that Christians are treated so badly in Muslim-majority environments in the rest of the world. Numerous leaders in the city regularly condemn Israel for its actions while remaining silent about Muslim mistreatment of Christians in the Middle East, Barham added. “I want to kind of shine a spotlight on the oppression of Christian minorities, and I think that’s an enormous issue that people don’t talk about,” he said.
Speaking with Focus on Western Islamism (FWI), Barham stated that in his September 9 outburst Hammoud might have forgotten that the laws that govern relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Muslim-majority environments do not apply to the United States.
“I think when you live in this bubble [of Muslim-majority Dearborn], you forget you live in America and what the rules are,” Barham said. If that’s the case, then maybe Hammoud did Americans a favor by subjecting Barham to a small taste of the abuse Christians endure in many other countries in the world at the hands of Muslim leaders.
