Civil rights leaders in Dearborn, Michigan, are accusing the national media of fueling anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment through its coverage of an alleged ISIS-inspired terrorist plot that the FBI says it recently disrupted.
According to The Detroit Free Press, activists and local figures—including former Democratic political candidate Nasser Beydoun, the Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)—condemned what they described as Islamophobic reactions following the FBI’s announcement of the arrests. Federal authorities allege that two men, in coordination with other individuals, were stockpiling weapons, gathering tactical gear, and scouting potential targets while in contact with unnamed co-conspirators. Several of those implicated either lived in or met in Dearborn, according to FBI filings.
The Department of Justice unsealed its criminal complaint last week, revealing what officials called a “major ISIS-linked terror plot” involving multiple suspects arrested in Michigan.
“Our newly unsealed complaint reveals a major ISIS-linked terror plot with multiple subjects arrested in the Eastern District of Michigan targeting the United States,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said Friday.
Dearborn, which is 54.5 percent Middle Eastern or North African, has long been home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the U.S. In 2023, it became the first American city to recognize Eid al-Fitr—the final day of Ramadan—as a paid municipal holiday, according to CBS News.
Beydoun, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2024 as a Democrat before being disqualified over residency issues, said he believes the national media has unfairly painted Dearborn as a hotbed of extremism.
“You see the national media, what they’re doing to Dearborn—the attacks and the lies,” Beydoun told The Detroit Free Press. “Anything like this just adds to that fervor and feeds into the people who want to hate Muslims and want to hate Dearborn, to make it the so-called ‘Sharia law capital.’”
According to the FBI, the arrested suspects considered targeting LGBTQ-friendly bars and clubs in Ferndale for an armed attack. Investigators allege that one juvenile co-conspirator was an ideological follower of Ahmad Musa Jibril, a controversial Muslim preacher from Dearborn with a history of supporting ISIS and Sharia law. The teen allegedly consulted Jibril’s father about when to carry out what he referred to as a “good deed,” according to the FBI.
Beydoun described Dearborn as a “safe, welcoming, and diverse city”, but said incidents like these have tangible social costs.
“These headlines have a direct, harmful impact in Dearborn,” he told The Detroit Free Press. “There’s a constant fear that there will never be an end to anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia—something we’ve dealt with since 9/11 and again after Oct. 7, 2023,” referencing Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Dawud Walid, executive director of CAIR-Michigan, echoed Beydoun’s concerns, arguing that many in the community feel the government is once again targeting Muslims through entrapment schemes.
“Every single person I spoke with said, ‘Here we go again,’” Walid said. “There’s a long history in America of the FBI using confidential informants and taxpayer dollars to create plots like this.”
CAIR itself has a controversial history. The organization was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 federal case against the Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted of illegally funneling money to Hamas. Prosecutors at the time alleged CAIR was part of a network advancing Hamas’s political objectives in the U.S. under the guise of civil rights activism—a charge the group continues to deny as “Islamophobic.”
In October, CAIR-Ohio Director Khalid Turaani appeared in a virtual panel about Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation—the group’s name for the Oct. 7 massacre—alongside a senior Hamas representative, according to The Detroit Free Press.
Nabih Ayad, founder of the Arab American Civil Rights League, accused the media of sensationalizing any association between Dearborn and terrorism.
“Once somebody says ‘Dearborn’ and ‘terrorism,’ it becomes a very sexy story for the media,” Ayad said. “How many acts of terrorism have actually happened from this community? None.”
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