Civil rights activists in Dearborn, Michigan, say media coverage of an alleged Islamic terrorist plot foiled by the FBI invites bigotry toward the mostly Arab town, according to The Detroit Free Press.
Former Democratic political candidate Nasser Beydoun, as well as leaders of the Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), slammed so-called Islamophobic reactions to the potential pro-ISIS attack the FBI says it thwarted on Friday, the paper reported. Two men are accused of stockpiling weapons and scouting out target locations while in contact with unnamed co-conspirators, and multiple people in the group live or met with one another in Dearborn, the FBI said.
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.
According to the complaint, subjects had multiple AR-15 rifles, tactical gear, and a detailed plan to carry out…
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) November 3, 2025
Dearborn was recorded as 54.5% Middle Eastern or North African in the 2020 U.S. Census. It became the first U.S. city to make Eid Al-Fitr, the last day of Ramadan, a paid holiday in 2023, CBS News reported.
“You see the national media, what they’re doing to Dearborn, the attacks and the lies … so anything like this just adds to that fervor and just feeds into the people who want to hate on Muslims and want to hate on Dearborn and make Dearborn this Sharia law capital,” Beydoun told The Detroit Free Press. The self-described civil rights advocate ran for the U.S. Senate in Michigan in 2024 as a Democrat but was disqualified over a dispute about his residency.
The alleged ISIS supporters arrested Friday considered targeting LGBTQ-friendly bars and clubs in Ferndale for their armed assault, the FBI said. An unnamed, juvenile co-conspirator in the alleged terrorist conspiracy was an ideological follower of Muslim preacher Ahmad Musa Jibril, who has been a public figure in Dearborn for years in support of ISIS and Sharia law, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported. The juvenile consulted Jibril’s father over the phone about when to conduct the attack, asking in vague terms when to do a “good deed,” the FBI claims.
“[Beydoun] described his community as safe, welcoming, diverse — a city that is growing and has a lot to offer,” The Detroit Free Press wrote. “But these headlines have a direct, harmful impact in Dearborn, Beydoun said. It carries the fear and anxiety of the community that there may never be an end to the anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia they’ve faced since 9/11 and Oct. 7, 2023, when the militant group Hamas launched an attack against Israel, and Israel responded with a two-year assault on the Gaza Strip.”
Dawud Walid, the head of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, said Arabs and Muslims expressed fears about the terrorism case, according to The Detroit Free Press. “Every single comment that was made is that, ‘Here we go again,’ the government has been involved in a plot or a scheme to entrap young people,” Walid reportedly said. “There’s a long history in America of the FBI using confidential informants, along with taxpayer dollars, to plot schemes.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 trial of activists from the Holy Land Foundation, a charity illegally funding Hamas. CAIR allegedly belonged to a committee of organizations formed by a Hamas official to advance the jihadist group’s global political agenda under the guise of civil rights activism. CAIR has disputed such characterizations as Islamophobic.
CAIR Ohio director Khalid Turaani attended a virtual talk in October about the implications of “Al Aqsa Flood” — Hamas’s nickname for the Oct. 7 massacre — alongside a senior Hamas representative, The Free Press reported.
“Once somebody says ‘Dearborn’ and ‘terrorism,’ it’s a very sexy thing for the media,” ACRL founder Nabih Ayad said, according to The Detroit Free Press.
“How many acts of terrorism have actually happened from this community?” Ayad reportedly said. “None.”
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