Resident Sues Dearborn, MI For Discrimination Favoring Islam

A public interest law firm filed a lawsuit today against the city of Dearborn, Michigan, for allegedly establishing Islam as a religion in violation of the U.S. Constitution and civil rights laws. The American Freedom Law Center is pursuing the suit on behalf of Dearborn resident and Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland.

“The lawsuit alleges that City officials spent public funds and used City property to promote and celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan while refusing Cleveland’s repeated requests that the City extend the same recognition to Christian and Jewish holidays — and that Mayor [Abdullah] Hammoud and other City officials retaliated against Cleveland for speaking out about the disparity,” says an AFLC press release.

The complaint filed Thursday alleges that the city of Dearborn has spent public funds for years to commemorate Islamic holidays but not the holidays of other religions such as Christianity and Judaism. It says AFLC and Cleveland have made numerous requests, by email and at city council meetings, that the city give equal treatment to religions with public funds and avoid a lawsuit. City officials not only failed to respond, the complaint says, but Hammoud directed the city attorney to tell city council members not to respond.

“I don’t have a problem with people of faith exercising their deeply held beliefs,” Cleveland said in a phone call Wednesday. “I have a problem with people supporting or excusing terrorism and antisemitism and establishing a religion and discriminating against people of other faiths.” She emphasized that she is not seeking the removal of Islamic religious expression but asking the city to comply with its constitutional obligations to treat all religious expression equally.

Michigan Senate candidate and fellow Muslim Abdul El-Sayed endorsed Hammoud’s campaign for mayor in 2021, and Hammoud in turn is an El-Sayed supporter and donor. El-Sayed has also embraced prominent supporters of Islamist terrorism.

Mahmoud and his chief of staff, Zaineb Hussein, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning. If the city replies, this article will be updated accordingly.

The complaint says Dearborn used public funds to pay for banners on public property celebrating Ramadan, crescent lights on city light poles for Ramadan the next year, a large, lighted crescent moon to celebrate Ramadan in a public park, and police department T-shirts to commemorate Ramadan. The complaint alleges the city has taken no comparable actions to celebrate the holidays of other faiths, such as Easter or Passover.

Last year, Hammoud made international headlines for telling a constituent, a Christian pastor, that he was a “bigot” and “Islamophobe” for objecting to Dearborn renaming a street after Osama Siblani, a longtime public supporter of the U.S.-designated Islamist terrorist organizations Hezbollah and Hamas, which have murdered Americans out of religious and nationalist hatred.

“Although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here,” Hammoud responded, according to video of the public meeting. “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.”

Hammoud refused to apologize for the verbal attack, and the pastor, Ted Barham, declined to sue for discrimination despite what he said was encouragement from supporters all over the world. The complaint notes Hammoud later attended a ceremony celebrating the renaming of the Dearborn street after Siblani, editor-in-chief of the Dearborn-based Arab American News.

In 2024, Siblani claimed, “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.” Siblani was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2013.

A few months after the street was renamed, one of the city’s Muslim council members, Kamal Alsawafy, refused to condemn Hezbollah or Hamas when Cleveland found him at her polling place and asked. This was days after the FBI stopped three Dearborn residents — Ayob Nasser, Mohmed Ali, and Majed Mahmoud — from making an alleged terrorist attack at an Ohio amusement park.

The AFLC complaint says federal courts have recognized a pattern of Dearborn preferencing Islam over other religions, in violation of U.S. law. In 2011, the 6th Circuit ruled that Dearborn violated free speech and religious exercise by banning a pastor from sharing Christian pamphlets at the city’s Arab festival.

In 2013, the city paid $300,000 to resolve similar claims after police arrested Christians for talking about Jesus at the same festival. In 2015, the 6th Circuit again ruled that local government had unlawfully removed Christians from preaching to a “hostile” crowd at the Arab festival, violating their freedom of speech. In that case the surrounding county paid $200,000 in attorneys’ fees to AFLC for enforcing what the en banc court judged was an impermissible heckler’s veto.

“Despite these legal defeats, nothing has changed in the City,” the complaint says.

Cleveland and AFLC seek “a declaration that Defendants violated her clearly established constitutional rights as set forth in this Complaint; an injunction enjoining Defendants’ acts, customs, policies, practices, and procedures that favor Muslims and discriminate against Christians and Jews as set forth in this Complaint; nominal damages; and an award of costs and attorneys’ fees,” the complaint says.

Dearborn, a Detroit suburb, became the first majority-Arab U.S. city in 2023 and currently boasts the largest mosque in America. While the city hides political affiliations by marking local races “nonpartisan,” all of the current city council members and Hammoud have Democrat affiliations in voter registrations, party endorsements, or public declarations. Three of the seven current city council members and the mayor are publicly declared Muslims.

The Ford Motor Company moved its headquarters to Dearborn in the 1920s and hired many Middle Eastern Christians who moved to the area as refugees. Chain migration policies passed in the 1960s, combined with U.S. wars in the Middle East, displaced the Arab Christians with Muslims yet again, this time in the United States.

Several nearby Detroit suburbs feature a similar religious dynamic, with Hamtramck perhaps the most notorious. That town of 28,000 became Muslim-majority in 2013 and elected the first all-Muslim city council and mayor’s office in the United States in 2021.

According to the AFLC complaint, Cleveland attended an April public meeting in which Dearborn officials stated they would not cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement efforts. According to reporting from Peter Schweizer, President Joe Biden erased immigration regulations to surge the number of virtually unvetted citizenship and visa approvals during his presidency, as did presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Schweizer and others, including scholar Christopher Caldwell, note that many globally prominent Islamic leaders, such as those of the Muslim Brotherhood, instruct Muslims to enter Western countries and have large families as a form of covert religious demographic warfare. Some also encourage lying to non-Muslims about their actions and intentions.

“By 2040, Muslims are projected to become the second largest religious group in the US, after Christians,” says the BBC.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist and the researcher and host for The Federalist’s forthcoming lawfare podcast series, “Overruled.” Her latest book with Regnery is “False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America.” A happy wife and the mother of six children, her ebooks include the NEW “300 Classic Books for Ages 9 to Adult,” and the bestselling “Classic Books For Young Children.” An 20-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media including Tucker Carlson, CNN, Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Joy is also the cofounder of a high-performing Christian classical school and the author and coauthor of classical curricula. Her traditionally published books also include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.