DEARBORN, Mich. – Leaders in the Dearborn community are pushing back against an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal calling the city “America’s Jihad Capital.”
The Wall Street Journal piece was published on Friday, in the commentary section, written by Steven Stalinsky. The column immediately sparked backlash in the Arab American community.
Dearborn, Michigan has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the U.S., and has been the target of threats, Islamophobia and anti-Arab rhetoric for decades.
On Saturday, Dearborn mayor Abdullah Hammoud said the city would be ramping up security at places of worship and “major infrastructure points,” due to an increase in threats following the column’s publishing.
It’s 2024 and the @WSJ still pushes out this type of garbage.
— Abdullah H. Hammoud (@AHammoudMI) February 3, 2024
Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic.
Dearborn is one of the greatest American cities in our nation.
- fastest growing city in MI
- home to the #1 travel destination in MI (Greenfield Village / Henry Ford Museum)
-… pic.twitter.com/81iQGGKWPx
This is Dearborn, @WSJ. pic.twitter.com/ksARO7vsbv
— Abdullah H. Hammoud (@AHammoudMI) February 3, 2024
President Joe Biden posted a statement, calling for anti-Arab hate to end.
Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 4, 2024
That’s exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate, and it shouldn’t happen to the residents of Dearborn – or any American town.
We must continue to condemn hate in all forms.
Take On Hate, a grassroots campaign to end anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment, is calling for the Wall Street Journal to retract the piece and apologize, launching a petition.
This article is alarmist and espouses racist tropes of Arab and Muslim American communities. This is particularly dangerous in the current context, where Arab and Muslim American communities across the country face an increased risk of targeted violence, such as the murder of 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume who was stabbed 26 times, and the shooting of three Palestinian students in Burlington, Vermont. This opinion piece lacks any research or references and is based on hearsay and decades of Islamophobic rhetoric. Worse, the article paints politically and ideologically diverse Arab and Muslim communities with the broad brush of terrorism. This has the added risk of chilling the political expression and free speech of Arab and Muslim Americans across the country.
We demand that the WSJ retract this article immediately and issue a formal statement of apology for promoting Anti-Arab and Islamophobic rhetoric. Furthermore, we call on the WSJ to take concrete steps to address and rectify the harm caused by this article. It is imperative that media outlets uphold ethical standards of journalism and refrain from publishing content that discriminates against and demonizes entire communities based on their religion or ethnicity.
Take On Hate
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also posted a statement on the column:
Dearborn is a vibrant community full of Michiganders who contribute day in and day out to our state. Islamophobia and all forms of hate have no place in Michigan, or anywhere. Period.
— Gretchen Whitmer (@gretchenwhitmer) February 4, 2024