Last month, Ted Barham, a Christian pastor and longtime resident of Dearborn, Michigan — the city with the largest Arab population in the U.S. — bravely spoke out at a city council meeting about the ceremonial naming of two intersections after Osama Siblani.
Siblani is the publisher of Dearborn’s Arab American News and a prominent community leader.
Barham took issue with the city’s honoring of Siblani given his past remarks praising Hezbollah and Hamas as "freedom fighters.” At the meeting, he calmly but pointedly made his case, arguing that the city might as well have named the streets “Hamas Street” and “Hezbollah Street.”
Dearborn's Muslim mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, however, was enraged. He called Barham an "Islamophobe" unfit for the city, declaring him "not welcome here" and quipping