Police in Michigan city put on alert after WSJ opinion piece

WASHINGTON: The mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, said the city’s police officers were ramping up their presence across places of worship and major infrastructure points following an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that he called “bigoted” and “Islamophobic.”

The WSJ published the piece on Friday headlined as “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital.” The city’s mayor and rights advocates from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee condemned the piece as anti-Arab and racist for suggesting the city’s residents, including religious leaders and politicians, supported Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and extremism.

“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.