Middle East Insider · Issue 066 · Wednesday, October 21, 2026

The Mosque on Tireman Avenue

Good afternoon. Today’s brief begins at home: the Forum has published three years of prayers for killing at the Islamic Center of Detroit, and federal spending records list the mosque as the recipient of about $45 million since 2017. Then President Trump on Iran, Israel’s soldiers voting, a New York congressional candidate detained in the West Bank, the Israel-Lebanon talks in Tampa, Houthi drones over Saudi Arabia, and France’s army on the streets Saturday.

The Forum publishes three years of prayers for killing from the Islamic Center of Detroit, and federal spending records list the mosque as the recipient of about $45 million since 2017, $31 million of it in a single Agriculture Department entry.

Sam Westrop, the head of the Forum’s Islamist Watch, published on Tuesday the Forum’s review of sermons, lectures and prayers at the Islamic Center of Detroit, the mosque on Tireman Avenue: more than 400 examples of violent or extremist speech from video the mosque itself posted over three years, 44 of them in one reel (Focus on Western Islamism). The prayer leaders ask God to “eradicate them from existence,” to “orphan their children as they orphaned ours, and demolish their homes as they demolished ours,” and to “destroy the state of the Zionists, O Allah, destroy them utterly”; one asks for “victory to our mujahideen brothers stationed in Gaza.” Other speakers voice support for convicted terrorists and praise jihad.

Federal spending records list the Islamic Center of Detroit as the recipient of about $45 million in pass-through grants since 2017, almost all of it Agriculture Department child-nutrition money routed through the Michigan Department of Education. The largest entry is a single subaward of $31,006,670 dated December 2, 2021, under the state’s National School Lunch Program grant, the largest of the 1,492 on that grant (USAspending.gov). Health and Human Services refugee money reached the center through the state’s labor department in two $500,000 entries, dated October 1, 2024, and October 1, 2025 (USAspending.gov). The mosque says on its website that it has served more than 150,000 meals a week at 13 sites since the pandemic began (ICD); the entry does not say which program the money paid for, and the Forum has filed Freedom of Information Act requests to find out.

Karen Whitsett, a Democratic state representative from Detroit, asked the legislature for $7.5 million for the center in the 2026 state budget (Michigan Capitol Confidential). The center has filed no federal nonprofit return since 2003; the IRS designates it a religious institution, a category exempt from filing (ProPublica). The Forum’s text names no speaker; the Washington Free Beacon has named the head imam, Imran Salha, who told a rally days after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that Muslims have a “fire in our hearts that will burn that state until its demise” (Washington Free Beacon). Neither the mosque nor the agencies had answered in public by this afternoon.

I want an answer to one question: how an institution whose prayer leaders ask God to orphan children and destroy a state came to be listed for $31 million of federal money in a single entry, and about $45 million in all. The Forum will now examine every federal grant to organizations with a history of extremism, agency by agency, starting from the almost 4,000 federal grants to American Islamist nonprofits in the Forum’s dataset, and we will share what we find with the inspectors general, the committees of Congress and the White House. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced a review of the Council on American-Islamic Relations on June 9 after the Forum briefed his department (Middle East Forum); on October 13 Representative Chip Roy and eight House Republicans asked him to widen it to the recipients in the Forum’s July report (Middle East Forum).

Focus on Western Islamism, Texas Sheikh Affirms Jihad, Killing of Civilians, and Stoning of Adulterers (Oct 21): Dexter Van Zile on Salah Al-Sawy, secretary-general of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, a body of Islamic legal scholars that issues religious rulings for Muslims in the United States, whose rulings on his Arabic-language website declare that “the occupying Jews in Palestine are usurpers.”

MEF Online, I Fled Islamism in Iran. Now, American Tax Dollars Are Funding It in Michigan (Oct 20): Mahyar Entezari, from the Washington Examiner: at least seven Michigan mosques campaigned for Abdul El-Sayed before his Senate primary win; one imam: “don’t allow the Zionist candidate to win.”

MEF Online, Macron Struggles to Regain Control amid Riots Propelled by Far-Left Push for a ‘New France’ (Oct 20): Michel Gurfinkiel, from the New York Sun: “the rioters, drawn from either the ultra-left or the Islamist sphere, were well-organized and had planned their operations a long time in advance.”

President Trump says the choice left is how to win, Araghchi names a sixth-day reopening of the strait, and Israel’s soldiers begin voting.

The talks. President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, “As you know, we’re doing very well with Iran,” and that what remained was “a final decision of which way do we want to win,” the “nice way or the not nice way” (CBS News). Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, told Iraqi media that the talks continue through Qatar and Pakistan and that Iran’s seven-day plan would reopen the Strait of Hormuz on the sixth day if Washington accepts its conditions (Israel Hayom). The Financial Times reported today that Israel’s military was ready to strike Iran on the weekend of October 10 and that President Trump opposed renewed fighting before the midterms; the Jerusalem Post reported that no strike was planned for October 10 (Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post).

The vote. Soldiers began voting today at more than 850 polling stations, some of them in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, open through October 27 (JNS). A Channel 12 News poll gives Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party 24 seats, Likud 21 and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party 14, with 55 for the opposition and 51 for the Netanyahu bloc (Jerusalem Post). Eisenkot told Israel’s 103FM radio, “I will not serve under Netanyahu, not even in a rotation agreement” (Jerusalem Post); Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post that Iran and its proxies “are considering ways to influence the elections” (Jerusalem Post). The Forum’s poll of polls stands at 54 for the Netanyahu bloc, 52 for the opposition and 14 for the Arab parties.

Soldiers detain a New York congressional candidate at an olive harvest, and Israel accuses the Lebanese army of coordinating with Hezbollah as the Tampa talks open.

Gaza and the West Bank. Soldiers detained Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for a New York congressional seat, and some 90 volunteers of Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli rights group, today at an olive harvest in the village of Nahalin, near Bethlehem; the army called the volunteers’ arrival “an act intended solely to provoke,” and police released Lander “after it became known that he was a congressional candidate” (AP, Jerusalem Post). The army said a strike in Gaza City on Sunday killed Musa Hamouda, who it says helped plan the September 2025 explosive device attack on a tank that killed four Armored Corps soldiers (Jerusalem Post).

Lebanon. Officers from Israel, Lebanon and the United States began three days of talks on Tuesday at United States Central Command in Tampa. The Israeli army said Hezbollah went on using a site at Kafra, a village in southern Lebanon, that the Lebanese army was to have cleared, and that “elements within the Lebanese Army coordinated with Hezbollah”; the Lebanese army called that false, and President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon said Israel “has not complied with the framework agreement,” the American-brokered arrangement between the two countries (Ynet).

Washington prepares to pull diplomats’ families from the Gulf, the Saudi-led coalition downs five drones, and France calls in the army for Saturday.

The Gulf. Reuters reported this afternoon that the State Department is preparing to order some personnel and families out of American embassies across the Gulf because of a possible resumption of hostilities with the Houthis, three officials said (Reuters). The Saudi-led coalition that fights the Houthis in Yemen said it intercepted five drones over Medina and the Eastern Province today; the Houthis denied launching any at Medina (AP, Reuters). Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, said his country’s support for Saudi Arabia is limited to defending the kingdom’s territory and will not extend to an attack on Yemen (Arab News).

Europe. France will put soldiers beside its police for the protests called for Saturday. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said on Tuesday, “The deployment next Saturday will be massive,” and that there had been intelligence failures, that police deployments had been too static and that police leave should have been canceled; Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez: “I deeply regret what happened. I accept my share of responsibility” (Reuters).

Israel votes on Tuesday, October 27. The Forum’s Michael Rubin gives lunch briefings on Israel’s next war: Philadelphia, November 5; Washington, November 6; Miami, November 18; Boca Raton, November 19; Palm Beach, November 20. My own, on American policy after the Iran war: San Francisco, November 10; Los Angeles, November 13; San Diego, November 16. To meet, or to host an evening for the Forum, reply to this email.

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