‘Death to America’ chants in Michigan point to serious problems with mass immigration

Earlier this month, chants of “death to America” were heard at an event. But it was not at a meeting organized by Iran’s Islamic regime in Tehran, nor in Gaza, Afghanistan or Somalia. Instead, this hatred of the United States found expression in the heart of America, Michigan.

Hate against America was on full display on April 5 in Dearborn, Michigan, during a rally marking the so-called International Al-Quds Day (“Al-Quds” – literally “the Holy” – is the Arabic word for Jerusalem). . . One speaker, Tarek Bazzi justified the anti-American sentiment by asking “(w)hy are our protests on the International Day of Al-Quds (…) so anti-America? Why don’t we just focus more on Israel and talk about America so much? Gaza has shown the whole world why these protests are so anti-America. Because it is the United States government that is providing the funds for all the atrocities we just heard about.”

He approvingly quoted Malcom “This is why Imam Khomeini, who declared International Al-Quds Day, would say that all your chanting and all your shouting should be poured out on the head of America,” Bazzi continued. This led to several cries – in Arabic – of ‘death to America’.

In case there was still any doubt about the extent of Bazzi’s anti-Americanism, he emphasized that “it’s not just Genocide Joe (i.e. President Biden) that needs to go. It is the entire (American) system that must disappear. Any system that would allow and support such atrocities and such devils – such a system does not deserve to exist on God’s earth.” The fact that he could say such things and have a clearly receptive audience speaks volumes about the inability of immigrants to integrate into America.

The Dearborn area’s representative in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, refused to condemn the “death to America” ​​chants and instead deviated from it by going on a tirade attacking Fox News. Like Bazzi, Tlaib does not appear to be particularly grateful to America, despite the fact that the daughter of working-class Palestinian immigrants has taken advantage of the many opportunities the US has to offer, including a seat in Congress.

Dearborn has the highest percentage of residents of Middle Eastern descent of any U.S. city, with 55 percent of residents coming from that background. The city was dubbed America’s “Jihad Capital” in an op-ed in February The Wall Street Journal as a result of pro-Hamas rallies and strong pro-Islamist, anti-Western agitation. A similar situation exists in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the Somali immigrant population forms an “insular ethnic community” that became a “rich recruiting ground” for terrorist organizations such as Al-Shabab and ISIS. According to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics, the vast majority of the 549 individuals convicted of terrorist crimes between 2001 and 2018 were foreign-born, but, disturbingly, more than a quarter (27 percent) were born in US born (though granted, some may not have been children of immigrants). For example, in November 2016, 18-year-old Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan carried out a terrorist attack on Ohio State University by aiming his car at a group of students, then jumping out and stabbing people with a butcher knife, resulting in 13 people being killed. who have been hospitalized with injuries. In June 2023, a US-born jihadist of immigrant descent, Ibraheem Izzy Musaibli (of Dearborn), was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of providing and conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and attending an ISIS training camp. Moreover, Musaibli fought against the American forces for two and a half years. Clearly, the potential security threats posed by a combination of anti-Americanism among certain immigrant groups—combined with problems with assimilation—are not merely theoretical.

In his important book ExodusBritish economist Paul Collier explains how the continued replenishment of ethnic enclaves through endless mass migration on a large scale slows or even thwarts assimilation and integration. It can thus act as a vector for more extreme and anti-American sentiments among the US diaspora. However, one thing is certain: when immigrants or their children – the beneficiaries of the “land of opportunity” – shout “Death to America,” there is a serious problem.