Michigan First: Exposing America’s Islamists, State by State

“So my respected brothers and sisters, I request you, as Muslims living here in America, in the house of Shaitan, in the house of Firaun, do the part of Musa Alayhis Salatu Was Salaam. Reclaim the narrative.” That was said from the pulpit of the Islamic Center of Detroit in a sermon posted January 10, 2025. Shaitan is Satan; Firaun is Pharaoh. The country in question is ours.

It is not one pulpit. At Light of Guidance in Dearborn, a speaker declared in a video posted June 5, 2020: “Today, the fall of the great Satan has begun. All across the world, the empire crumbles. A new light is shining as the arrival of the promised leader manifests itself.” Another told parents in a video posted December 15, 2023: “How are you and I able to raise believing children in the belly of the beast so that they grow up warriors for the Mahdi? Right here, the belly of the beast.”

That is how these pulpits speak about America. Here is how they pray.

At the Islamic Center of Detroit, in a video posted May 9, 2025, a speaker prayed: “O Allah, deal with Netanyahu, his soldiers, and his minions, for they cannot escape You. O Allah, count them one by one and kill them individually, leaving none of them. O Allah, we place You against them and seek refuge in You from their evils, O Lord of the worlds.” At the Islamic Center of East Lansing, in a Ramadan night prayer posted March 27, 2025: “O Allah, deal with those who besieged them. O Allah, deal with the aggressor Jews. O Allah, count them in number and kill them dispersed, and leave not one of them.” At the American Moslem Society in Dearborn, in a video posted April 24, 2026, a speaker asked: “O Allah, grant victory to our brothers the mujahideen in Palestine, and grant victory to our brothers the mujahideen in every region of the regions of the earth, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, let us live upon jihad in Your path and cause us to die upon martyrdom in Your path.” At the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, in a video posted May 27, 2026, a speaker urged worshippers “to pray for the mujahideen for victory and steadfastness, for after God, the reliance is upon them, upon their arms, and upon their strike is our hope.”

Those are prayers for killing and for holy war, said aloud in Michigan and posted by the institutions themselves. The translations from Arabic are the Forum’s; the site shows the original beside each.

The Islamic Center of Detroit is where the words, the money, and the officials meet. It has taken $45,029,009 in public money across 26 items. Of that, $43,748,952 is school-meal reimbursement, reported by the Michigan Department of Education to the federal government; the largest single item is $31,006,670. The center also received two federal refugee subawards passed through the state, $500,000 in 2025 and $500,000 in 2026, and two Nonprofit Security Grant subawards from the Department of Homeland Security, also passed through the state: $150,000 in 2023 and $89,100 in 2020.

The security grants deserve a second look. Congress built that program to protect houses of worship from terrorism. Jewish congregations in Michigan apply to it because of threats against them. Of the institutions whose words are on the site, eight took $2,080,350 from it: Islamic Association of Greater Detroit, $450,000; Islamic Organization of North America, $450,000; Flint Islamic Center, $300,000; Islamic Center of Detroit, $239,100; Muslim Unity Center, $195,000; Rayyan Center, $150,000; Masjid Umar bin Khattab, $150,000; Islamic Center of America, $146,250.

Across the state, the Middle East Forum found $47,357,044.59 in public money paid to 12 of these institutions across 49 items, not counting pandemic-era loans.

Public officials have lent these institutions their offices. The Wayne County Commission took up a testimonial resolution honoring the Islamic Center of Detroit’s 25th anniversary on December 2, 2025. The East Lansing City Council passed its fourth resolution honoring Ramadan on March 5, 2024, in solidarity with the community the Islamic Center of East Lansing serves. The mayor of Warren cut the ribbon on the Islamic Organization of North America’s soup kitchen on August 24, 2022. The site lists 30 official acts at the Islamic House of Wisdom alone, including mayors at its iftar dinners. In all, 41 public officials and public bodies attended, spoke at, honored, or funded these institutions in 63 acts.

This is not a story about one mosque or one bad Friday. It is a pattern of institutions that tell children they are being raised in “the belly of the beast,” pray for “the mujahideen,” and ask God to kill Jews one by one, while drawing on federal, state, and local money and the prestige of public office.

Americans may worship as they wish. The First Amendment protects the sermon, but it does not oblige the taxpayer to fund the institution, or the mayor to honor it, without knowing what is said there. Officials who hand out school-meal money, security grants, and testimonial resolutions have a duty to know whom they serve and whom they reward.

The first victims of this preaching are Muslims who want no part of it: reformers shouted down at their own mosques, and parents who would rather their children hear about mercy than about martyrdom. Holding these pulpits to account takes their side.

Michigan is first. It will not be the last.

The Forum has published 928 statements from 36 Michigan institutions at Michigan’s Islamist Pulpits. Every statement is linked to the original video at the moment it was said. Every translated passage shows the original Arabic or Urdu beside the English. Every dollar links to the paying agency’s data, so any reader can open the award. We asked each institution for comment before publication and publish replies on its page.

Next, we take the same method to every state where Islamist institutions take public money and host public officials. One state at a time, in their own words, on video.

But officials and agencies can act now:

• The Michigan Department of Education should publish the Islamic Center of Detroit’s current school-meal sponsor agreement and its most recent administrative review, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture should say whether it has reviewed the state’s oversight of that sponsor.
• The Michigan State Police should state whether its Nonprofit Security Grant review weighs an applicant’s own published calls for killing, and whether any institution on the site has an application pending.
• The state’s Office of Global Michigan should release the scope of work and performance reports for both refugee subawards to the Islamic Center of Detroit.
• Every mayor, council, and county commission that honored these institutions should watch the videos and say plainly whether these words speak for the people they serve.

The words are the institutions’ own. The money is the public’s. Both are now in one place: testimony.meforum.org.

Gregg Roman is executive director of the Middle East Forum, an applied policy research organization founded in 1994.