Dearborn, Michigan – Jake Lang, a far-right provocateur in a bulletproof vest, shouts anti-Muslim obscenities on a bullhorn outside a rally featuring former US President Barack Obama in Detroit.
His associates, wearing crusader-themed accessories – including a tin shield featuring a black cross – hold campaign signs for Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, who is in a close race with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.
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If it weren’t for the bigoted slogans, the people lining up around them to attend the campaign event for El-Sayed and other Democrats could have mistakenly thought the protesters were in Halloween costumes.
“Get the f*** out, Muslims,” Lang shouted. “The crusade is coming. Self-deport.”
Lang may appear like a fringe agitator. But Muslim American activists say the bigotry he is spreading is going mainstream, especially in the context of the Senate race in Michigan.
Anti-Muslim attacks against El-Sayed have been perpetuated at the highest level of the US government, including by President Donald Trump and his cabinet members.
Suehaila Amen, a prominent Arab and Muslim advocate in the Detroit area, said bigotry against her community is reaching an all-time high.
“They make immediately post ۹/۱۱ look like a walk in the park for us. This has been absolutely disgusting to witness,” Amen told Al Jazeera.
One of Lang’s allies, Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, is an official faith adviser to the Rogers campaign.
Sewell helped Lang organise an anti-Muslim march in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn – home to a large Arab and Muslim community – in August.
Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, said the city – which has long been a target for anti-Muslim provocateurs – has been receiving an increased number of threats in recent months.
“The general public is unaware of how many threats are aimed towards the city of Dearborn on a daily basis, via social [media], via our dispatch when they’re calling ۹۱۱ or calling our call centre, and lobbing these threats against the residents of the city each and every single day,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera.
“That does worry me.”
Escalating attacks
While the Rogers campaign did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment about the Republican candidate’s links to Sewell, Rogers defended his focus on El-Sayed’s background, saying it was for national security.
“This is not about the way you pray; it’s the way you think,” Rogers told reporters after his debate with El-Sayed earlier this month.
Local leaders say their community is not cowering in the face of such threats and Trump’s near-daily attacks, and is pushing back through civic engagement and rallying around the El-Sayed campaign.
“Trump is a fascist,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera. “I think the best thing we can do, the best response, is to send Abdul to the US Senate, somebody who’s got two doctorates, someone who is a son of this country, a son of the state, someone who is the captain of his high school team … I think that that’s the best response that we can give fascism.”
Trump has repeatedly mocked El-Sayed’s name, misrepresenting it as Mohammed, and called the Democratic candidate a “jihadist”.
Amen said Arab and Muslim Americans are used to being targeted for their names, but when the president does it, it legitimises bigotry and racism.
“It’s not just some loser that lives around the block who may call you a racist expletive; it’s the loser who lives in the White House,” she said.
Amen added that Arab and Muslim communities are going about their daily lives and organising politically despite the escalating attacks, stressing that they reject attempts to cast them as foreigners or outsiders.
“We are an integral part of the fabric of this nation, whether people like it or not,” she told Al Jazeera.
Republicans across US target El-Sayed
As the Senate race intensifies, Rogers has been baselessly accusing El-Sayed of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Last month, Rogers went as far as agreeing with a social media post calling El-Sayed, a doctor and former public health official, a “terrorist”.
Trump has suggested that El-Sayed would be a physical threat to the Capitol, saying that he would want him to go through a metal detector.
At an event in western Michigan earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr incorrectly claimed that Arabs do not produce literature or science and “don’t win Nobel Prizes”. He argued that the Muslim Brotherhood – which only briefly held power in Egypt between ۲۰۱۲ and ۲۰۱۳ – has destroyed Arab civilisation.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz joined in on such attacks, describing El-Sayed as a “jihadist leprechaun”.
Cruz warned that El-Sayed, a Michigan-born and raised father of two with a medical degree and a doctorate in public health, could end up on the Senate Intelligence Committee and endanger national security.
“If I am correct that he is a passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, there is a very real risk that Americans will die as a result,” he said.
On Wednesday, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy invoked Dearborn – one of the safest and fastest-growing cities in Michigan – to drum up fear of immigration.
“Look at what’s happening in Dearborn, Michigan, for God’s sake. We’re not going to let that come to our state of Ohio,” he said.
Trump supporters weigh in
El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent, has avoided focusing on the attacks, calling them “deflections and deceptions”.
It’s not clear how attacks linked to El-Sayed’s Muslim faith and Arab heritage will affect the race.
About ۳۸ percent of respondents in a survey of potential voters conducted by Michigan State University said a candidate being a Muslim would make them less likely to offer support to their campaign.
After a Trump rally for Rogers in Port Huron, northeast of Detroit, where the president spent most of his nearly two-hour speech attacking El-Sayed, some attendees appeared to agree that El-Sayed may be a threat to national security.
As the US president spoke, shouts of “traitor”, referring to El-Sayed, erupted from the crowd.
Trump supporter David Beamer, whose son died in the ۹/۱۱ attacks in ۲۰۰۱, spoke at the event and questioned El-Sayed’s American identity.
“Abdul has a birth certificate. The birth certificate says he’s a citizen of America. You know what? A birth certificate doesn’t make you an American,” Beamer said.
Al Jazeera asked Duane Crempa, a ۷۲-year-old Republican in a Batman mask who attended the Trump speech on Sunday, whether he believes that El-Sayed is a “jihadist” as Trump claims.
Crempa said he is a good judge of character. “Yeah, there is something not right with him. That’s all I’ll say; there’s definitely something not right,” he added.
Jermaine Miller, who also was at the rally, told Al Jazeera he hopes El-Sayed is not a “terrorist”.
“But I mean, it sounds convincing, but it is believable,” he said of Trump’s allegations that the Democratic candidate is a “jihadist”.
‘It’s awful to live this way’
In the Detroit area, Arab and Muslim advocates say the issue is bigger than a Senate seat, arguing that such rhetoric endangers their communities and risks ripping the social fabric of the state.
“We’ve seen the increase in hate marches and hate speech and people being very comfortable sharing their hateful views online and coming into our city and harassing people for no reason – people who are just trying to live and function in this country,” Amen said.
“It’s been tremendously heartbreaking to watch our community constantly have to question why people are maliciously maligning them in public.”
Earlier this year, two gunmen killed three people outside a mosque complex in San Diego in southern California in what authorities said was a hate crime.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who represents Dearborn and parts of Detroit, said she fears for her two Muslim boys, Adam and Yousif, amid the rise of hate with the election campaign.
“Yesterday, we were all watching the football game, and we literally had to turn off the ads every time in between [plays] because we didn’t want our babies to see these awful, racist ads,” Tlaib told Al Jazeera.
“It’s awful to live this way right now.”
With petrol in Michigan nearing record highs, Arab and Muslim advocates say their communities are being scapegoated to cover up the shortcomings of the Trump administration, including the war in Iran.
Abdelhalim Abdelrahman, communication director for American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), said the attacks against El-Sayed amount to “disgusting Islamophobia” that serves as a distraction.
“Abdul El-Sayed’s name is a visibly Muslim name, and it’s being treated as inherently suspicious, as if a Muslim American cannot willfully execute their duties as an active member of Congress to protect the American people,” Abdelrahman told Al Jazeera.
At the Trump rally in Port Huron, one of Trump’s allies appeared to weigh El-Sayed’s candidacy against petrol prices.
Brian Pannebecker, a retiree from an auto manufacturing company Trump invited to the stage on Sunday, stressed that Michiganders need to vote for the Republican ticket.
“I don’t care if they’re paying a buck and a half more a gallon for gasoline. That is no excuse to vote for a socialist Islamist for the US Senate,” Pannebecker said.
