In a bid to win over Muslim voters in a battleground state, former president Donald Trump has forged an unlikely alliance with a Michigan mayor who leads an all-Muslim city council located within Detroit. Once consumed with hatred of “Islamic radicalism,” Trump called in 2015 for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration to the U.S.; now he supports that radicalism.
Who is Mayor Ameer Ghalib? A 44-year-old Yemeni-American and self-described conservative Democrat, he works part-time as the mayor of Hamtramck, earning $6,500 annually. Following a pair of meetings with the former president in September, he quoted Trump calling him “the greatest mayor in the whole world.”
Hamtramck’s blurring of mosque and state, its leaders’ obsession with Israel, and the city’s hostility towards gays reflect the Islamist ideology that Trump previously considered an imminent threat, or a “Trojan horse.”
Ghalib’s long-deleted Arabic-language social media posts, archived in screenshots and professionally translated, point to a bigoted and corrupt politician who owes his political fortunes to the city’s religious hardliners. He has transformed Hamtramck into a unique stronghold of radical Islam. In the course of doing so, Ghalib survived a train of scandals involving bigotry aimed at African-Americans, Christians, Jews, and gays. The mayor even implicated himself in apparent voter fraud.
In 2020, Ghalib posted an offensive meme mocking black justice demonstrators and depicting African-Americans as alcoholics and looters in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests. In the same thread, he “liked” comments referring to Black people as “animal and inhuman.”
Ghalib has often accused Arab world leaders of secretly “becoming Jewish,” and he endorsed a post referring to Jews as “monkeys” who levy taxes on “the air we breathe.” His role models include Iraq’s monstrous Saddam Hussein and Turkey’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Under Ghalib’s administration, Hamtramck’s all-male, all-Muslim city council has implemented a series of reforms that have brought the city code in alignment with Islamist values. The Islamic call to prayer blasts out over loudspeakers from as early as 4:10 a.m. Ghalib systematically replaced non-Muslim city employees with Muslim ones. An ordinance allows backyard animal sacrifices. Gay pride flags are banned on city property.
To celebrate Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis, the city council renamed the town’s main street “Palestine Avenue.” A resolution requires the city to divest from Israeli businesses.
Several city officials joined the mayor in voicing explicitly antisemitic opinions online. Mohammed Hassan, the city’s mayor pro tem, shared an image in 2021 of a monkey sporting Jewish side curls and a hat bearing the Star of David, captioned: “Israel – the real terrorist!!!” Nasr Hussain, Hamtramck Plan Commission member, called “the Holocaust God’s advance punishment” for Jews, who he claimed are “as savage and cruel as the Nazis themselves.” (Ghalib refused to denounce this statement.)
Then there is Hamtramck’s record of ballot fraud, including allegations of immigrant ballot harvesting. Ghalib announced his apparent breach of election laws in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, when he supported Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT): “There were twenty people around me planning to vote for Biden because they loved [Barack] Obama,” he wrote on Facebook. “I got them to vote for Sanders and did their families’ ballot cards myself.” (Michigan law makes it a crime to influence a voter who is filling out a ballot card or to assist a competent voter in marking a ballot.)
Other city leaders face accusations of foul play; police raids, cease and desist orders, and even convictions related to ballot harvesting have embroiled several city councilmembers and candidates.
Hamtramck’s blurring of mosque and state, its leaders’ obsession with Israel, and the city’s hostility towards gays reflect the Islamist ideology that Trump previously considered an imminent threat, or a “Trojan horse.”
By embracing Hamtramck’s mayor, Trump inadvertently brings a needed spotlight to this obscure corner of the United States, revealing small-town corruption, bigotry, and extremism that should alarm all Americans.
Benjamin Baird is the director of MEF Action, a project of the Middle East Forum.
