Without the anti-American, anti-Semitic vote of America-hating Muslims Democrats have no chance of winning Michigan. Joe Biden knows this and capturing that vote is a big part of Biden’s calculations of what to do in the Middle East.
And the leading Islamists in Michigan know it too and are using Biden’s fear of losing the Michigan anti-Semitic vote to influence Middle East policy.
Arab Americans are a key voting bloc in Michigan, a swing state that Biden won by a disputed154,000 votes against Donald Trump in 2020. The White House and Biden’s campaign recognize the state's significance and are scrambling for ways to reassure the community in the face of an increasing backlash. The tension is so high that Arab American leaders even refused an opportunity to meet with Biden's campaign manager in January, reported USA Today.
Many of Michigan’s Arab Americans, some of whom still have family and friends living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, are vowing not only to vote against Biden in the state’s Democratic primary on Feb. 27 and the general election in November – they are actively campaigning against him.
Michigan’s “Abandon Biden” movement, part of a larger national campaign, is hosting meetings with third-party candidates such as Jill Stein and Cornel West. A separate initiative, which organizers are calling “Listen to Michigan,” is urging Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the primary to send a message to Biden that his actions in Israel are unacceptable, reported USA Today.
The debate over whether the Arab American vote in Michigan can swing this year’s election has focused heavily on Wayne County cities like Dearborn. Just nine miles west of downtown Detroit, in the shadow of the city’s towering skyscrapers, Dearborn has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States. Fifty-five percent of its residents are Middle Eastern or North African, noted USA Today.
And this cadre of radical Islamists based in Michigan isn’t a simple internal to the Democratic Party electoral college problem – it has huge national and national security implications.
As Steven Stalinsky writing for the Wall Street Journal documented, in Dearborn, thousands have marched in support of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Protesters, many with kaffiyehs covering their faces, shout “Intifada, intifada,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “America is a terrorist state.” These anti-Semitic, anti-American rallies are incited by local imams giving fiery antisemitic sermons.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are deeply embedded in the fabric of Michigan’s Muslim Democrats. A local headline describing an Oct. 10 event at the Ford Performing Arts Center read “Michigan rally cheers Hamas attack.”
Imam Imran Salha of Dearborn’s Islamic Center of Detroit told the crowd that Israel’s past actions have put “fire in our hearts that will burn that state”—Israel— “until its demise.” In May 2023, Mr. Salha had urged his congregation to say “amen” in agreement with his prayer that Allah “eradicate from existence” the “sick, disgusting Zionist regime.”
Despite this very public record of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, in October 2022, according to the Washington Free Beacon, his organization received $150,000 in funding from Joe Biden’s Homeland Security Department’s nonprofit security grants program.
Ahmad Musa Jibril is perhaps the most influential English-speaking jihadi sheikh, reported Mr. Stalinsky. From his home in Dearborn he promotes holy war to his tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and Telegram. On Oct. 7, the day Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and took almost 200 hostages, a Twitter account bearing his name retweeted a post that said, “The hearts haven’t been overjoyed like this in so long.” This account also posted a tweet imploring Allah to “purify the land from the aggression of the apes, swines, and hypocrites.” He later recorded a video calling on Muslims in the West to start normalizing the term “jihad” by using it frequently “on your social media, and in the mosques.” He has called President Biden a “senile pharaoh.”
Support for terrorism in southern Michigan has long been a concern for U.S. counterterrorism officials, observed Mr. Stalinsky. A 2001 Michigan State Police assessment submitted to the Justice Department after 9/11 called Dearborn “a major financial support center” and a “recruiting area and potential support base” for international terror groups, including possible sleeper cells. The assessment noted that most of the 28 State Department-identified terror groups were represented in Michigan. Many current or onetime Dearborn residents have been convicted of terror-related crimes in recent years.
Make no mistake – Biden’s actions have nothing to do with humanitarian concerns for the residents of Gaza – they are pure politics. Dearborn’s radical Islamist politics are complicating Mr. Biden’s path to re-election and the Democrats’ prospects for holding the seat of retiring Democrat Senator Debra Stabenow. So, the Biden administration is desperately trying to find ways of mollifying this dangerous anti-American Fifth Column, including putting public pressure on Israel to abandon its war to defeat Hamas and threatening to withhold vital US military aid to Israel as it fights to defeat a declared enemy of the United States.
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