The mayor of Dearborn in the US state of Michigan has ordered police in the city to go on alert after the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece, which has been slammed as “bigoted” and “Islamophobic”.
The WSJ on Friday published the op-ed titled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital”.
The piece was decried by the city’s mayor and rights advocates from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee as anti-Arab and racist.
“Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic,” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said about the WSJ piece written by Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“Effective immediately – Dearborn police will ramp up its presence across all places of worship and major infrastructure points. This is a direct result of the inflammatory WSJ opinion piece that has led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city of Dearborn,” the mayor noted.
About 54% of the residents of Dearborn are Arab Americans, according to census figures.
Rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian bias in the US since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip in October.
Among the hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs that raised alarm was the November shooting of three Palestinian college students in the US state of Vermont.
Earlier, a 71-year-old white man in the state of Illinois stabbed to death a 6-year-old Muslim boy 26 times and seriously injured his mother in October.
CAIR, the US largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, reported receiving 1,283 requests for help and reports of bias from the beginning of October to early November, an increase of 216 percent compared to 2022.
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed more than 27,365 Palestinians and injured 66,630 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
