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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer stayed silent for days after a controversy in Dearborn, where the city’s Muslim mayor scolded a Christian resident who objected to new street signs honoring an Arab-American newspaper publisher known for past statements viewed as sympathetic to terrorists.
Fox News Digital tried to reach Whitmer’s office and staff Wednesday, a week after the Detroit Free Press first reported the Dearborn meeting kerfuffle.
Mayor Abdullah Hammoud reportedly told resident Ted Barham that he is “not welcome here,” and that if Barham moved out of the city, where around 40% of the population is Muslim, he would hold a parade.
DEARBORN’S MUSLIM MAYOR TELLS CHRISTIAN HE’S ‘NOT WELCOME’ IN DEBATE ON HONORING PRO-TERROR ARAB LEADER
Barham expressed concern over the city honoring newspaper publisher Osama Siblani, saying that renaming streets for the controversial figure is akin to calling them “Hezbollah Street” and “Hamas Street.”
Hammoud accused Barham of not believing in “coexistence,” and advised him to close his eyes if he drove along the avenue where signs commemorating Siblani have been installed.
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Barham also reportedly said that Siblani may have still done good for the Dearborn community via his newspaper, but stood by his criticisms and read from the Lebanon-born man’s past quotations, according to the Free Press.
Some past statements catalogued by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, quote Siblani as claiming Hamas is not a terrorist organization and that Hezbollah would – in 2024 – “take care of the job” in regard to protesters who were chanting “death to Israel.”
According to MEMRI, Siblani claimed the blood of jihadists at the time “irrigate the land of Palestine.”
In 2006, Siblani was quoted in the media as saying, “If the FBI wants to come after those who support the resistance done by Hezbollah, then they better bring a fleet of buses. I, for one, would be willing to go to jail,” according to documentation from the Anti-Defamation League.
Siblani told the Free Press that he did not know Barham – who had said he previously lived in Palestinian territories – and that his comments cited by the resident “was quoted [via] bits and pieces,” and were taken out of context.
He also criticized MEMRI, co-founded by a former Jerusalem intelligence official, for allegedly engaging in the same practice.
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