Middle East Insider · Special Edition · Thursday, October 29, 2026

Thirty-Six Pulpits

Good evening. A special edition on the Forum project that went live today at testimony.meforum.org: 928 statements from 36 Michigan institutions, each on the institution’s own video at the moment it was said, beside the public money 12 of them took and the officials who honored them. Then what we ask of Lansing, of every statehouse, and of Washington.

Count Them One by One, the Forum’s documentary from the broadcasts, 11 minutes and 42 seconds: the pulpits on America, jihad and the Jews, in their own voices, with English subtitles in the picture. It is on YouTube and on the site.

The Forum has put 928 statements from 36 Michigan pulpits on video, each at the moment it was said, beside the $47.4 million in public money that 12 of them received and the 63 documented acts by the officials who attended, honored or funded them.

Michigan’s Islamist Pulpits went live today at testimony.meforum.org. It holds 928 statements from 36 institutions in 19 Michigan communities, most of them mosques and Islamic centers, with four organizations, two umbrella bodies, three schools, a media outlet, two charities and two advocacy groups among them, drawn from 648 of their own broadcasts. Every statement links to the video at the moment the words were said, and where they were Arabic or Urdu the original sits beside the Forum’s English. Twelve of the 36 received $47,357,045 in federal, state and city money, listed by transaction. Officials and public bodies attended, spoke at, honored or funded them in 63 documented acts.

The statements about America come from two institutions. At the Islamic Center of Detroit, Dr. Zulfiqar Shah told the Friday congregation in a sermon posted January 10, 2025, “I request you, as Muslims living here in America, in the house of Shaitan, in the house of Firaun, do the part of Musa Alayhis Salatu Was Salaam. Reclaim the narrative.” Shaitan is Satan, Firaun Pharaoh, Musa Moses. At Light of Guidance in Dearborn, whose 380 statements are the most on the site, speakers said in videos posted in June 2020, “Today, the fall of the great Satan has begun. All across the world, the empire crumbles,” and in October 2025, “We can raise children, Inshallah, to be soldiers of the Mahdi right here in the belly of the beast.”

Sixty-nine statements pray or call for killing or destruction, the site’s highest severity class, and 25 of them were broadcast by the Detroit center. In a Friday prayer posted May 9, 2025, Dr. Muhannad Hakeem asked there, in Arabic, “O Allah, deal with Netanyahu, his soldiers, and his minions, for they cannot escape You. O Allah, count them one by one and kill them individually, leaving none of them.” The same formula was broadcast from East Lansing in a Ramadan night prayer posted March 27, 2025, “O Allah, deal with the aggressor Jews. O Allah, count them in number and kill them dispersed, and leave not one of them,” and from Bloomfield Hills in March 2024, “O Allah count them one by one and kill them all, scattering them.” At the Islamic Organization of North America in Warren, a lesson posted in December 2013 foretold “This final annihilation of Jews at the hands of Hazrat Masih, Hazrat Mahdi, and Muslims, final extermination. They will be exterminated.”

Ninety-two statements pray for the mujahideen or call for jihad, at 16 of the 36 institutions. At the American Moslem Society in Dearborn, in a Friday sermon posted April 24, 2026: “O Allah, let us live upon jihad in Your path and cause us to die upon martyrdom in Your path.” At the Al-Huda Islamic Association in Dearborn, two days after Hamas’s chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran, the preacher asked God to accept “the leader of the mujahideen, Dr. Ismail Haniyeh.” And at the United Michigan Muslim Association in Beverly Hills, a Friday sermon posted February 17, 2024 says, “as they call Michigan the Mujahideen State or the State of Jihad, may Allah make it easy for the Mujahideen that are fighting the IDF.”

The money is mostly one institution’s. The Islamic Center of Detroit received $45,029,009 across 26 items, including $43.7 million of federal school-meal reimbursement paid through the Michigan Department of Education between 2017 and 2022, a single subaward of it $31,006,670; two $500,000 refugee-assistance subawards routed by the state’s labor agency in 2025 and 2026; and $239,100 for security. In December 2025 Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II presented the center a 25th-anniversary tribute on behalf of the State of Michigan, some 11 months after the “house of Shaitan” sermon and seven after the Netanyahu prayer, and the Wayne County Commission placed a resolution in its honor on its December 2 agenda.

The figures are the site’s, from each institution’s page; the other nine official acts are at institutions that received nothing. Federal money is by transaction as USAspending.gov reports it, pandemic loans excluded. CAIR-Michigan’s two items are Department of Corrections payments to the CAIR-MI Legal Fund and a Detroit lawsuit settlement; the Ashura Project’s are two Dearborn checks whose purpose the city did not state.

Nineteen issues, from support for terror groups to the claim that divine law overrides the laws Americans vote for.

The site grades statements on a five-step severity scale and tags each with one or more of 19 issues. The classes: 69 prayers or calls for killing or destruction, 263 prayers for or praise of terrorists or calls to jihad or martyrdom, 25 death rulings for apostasy or blasphemy, 67 antisemitic tropes and conspiracy claims, 393 of hostility and 2 of religious law over civil law; the rest carry issue tags only. Antisemitic anti-Zionism is tagged at 32 of the 36 institutions, support for designated terror groups at 16, divine law over democratic law at 16, hostility to Western governments at 13, loyalty to Iran’s regime or its Supreme Leader at 13, intimidation of apostates at 10. Personal religious practice is never tagged; the site’s rule is “Only advocacy to impose it or to change law and public institutions.”

The death rulings are lessons, not prayers. At the Flint Islamic Center a lecturer said in a video posted August 29, 2024, “among us, the apostate is killed,” and that one who “announces his apostasy, especially if he is a writer or thinker or an influential person” is “killed for this.” The Islamic Association of Greater Detroit in Rochester Hills, which took $450,000 in security grants, carries four death rulings, and Mufti Rabbani’s Urdu commentary there, posted November 3, 2024, says, “After this, the Jews will be singled out and killed one by one, and the Jewish nation will be eradicated.” The clearest of the Iran entries is at Light of Guidance: on September 28, 2024, Shaykh Usama Abdulghani offered “our congratulations and condolences to Hezbollah as well. Both the leadership and the personnel. You see, we ask that Allah protect them and guide them as they finish the job and cleanse the earth of the filth of that settler colony,” and a majlis there on March 1, 2026 was held for “The Martyr Sayyid Ali Khamenei.”

Three federal programs carried nearly all of the $47.4 million, and each passes through a state agency that names the recipient.

Of the $47,357,045, $43,748,952 is Agriculture Department money: reimbursement for meals under the National School Lunch Program and the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which Washington pays to a state education agency, which passes it to the sponsor that serves them. The Michigan Department of Education reported 20 subaward entries for the Islamic Center of Detroit in the fiscal years 2017 to 2022 (the site’s years are fiscal years), the largest a single $31,006,670 line dated December 2, 2021; the mosque says on its own site that it has served more than 150,000 meals a week at 13 locations. The amounts are “as reported by the Michigan Department of Education to the federal government,” and the Forum’s request is for the meal claims and site reviews behind them.

The Department of Homeland Security paid $2,411,505: $2,080,350 in Nonprofit Security Grants, the FEMA program for houses of worship and other organizations at high risk of attack, which a nonprofit cannot apply for directly, in 17 subawards to eight institutions since 2014, scored and ranked by the Michigan State Police; plus a $331,155 public-assistance grant to the Islamic House of Wisdom in 2024 under the state’s COVID-19 disaster declaration. Health and Human Services paid $1,040,000, most of it two $500,000 Refugee Support Services subawards to the Detroit center through the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity for fiscal 2025 and 2026, dated October 1 of 2024 and of 2025. Each of the three federal programs runs the same way in nearly every state: Washington pays the capital, which chooses the subrecipients and reports them, and the site’s first question for policymakers is which agencies vet grantees for statements from their own pulpits before the money goes out.

The lieutenant governor appears four times, Dearborn’s mayor four, Detroit’s former mayor four, and a county commission twice.

Lt. Gov. Gilchrist, who is on Tuesday’s ballot as the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, presented the Islamic House of Wisdom a proclamation for 28 years of service on March 30, 2023. He visited the expanded mosque in Rochester Hills on March 2, 2024, and gave the Detroit center its anniversary tribute, “from Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II and the State of Michigan” in the center’s own announcement. Mike Duggan, then Detroit’s mayor, held a town hall at the House of Wisdom in 2015, went to the Detroit center’s iftar in May 2019 and to the Rochester Hills ribbon-cutting in 2024. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud attended the House of Wisdom’s iftar in 2023 and the Islamic Institute of America’s groundbreaking in 2022, prayed at Al-Huda in 2022, and spoke at the Islamic Center of America in 2019 as a state representative.

Attorney General Dana Nessel attended that 2019 event in Dearborn; Rep. Rashida Tlaib spoke there and at two other institutions; Rep. Debbie Dingell and then-Rep. Andy Levin spoke at a Take on Hate rally that the Warren organization lists on its own site, with Gilchrist and Tlaib attending. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is entered once, for a 2023 letter with the governors of nine other states and Puerto Rico asking Congress for more security-grant money, attached to the American Muslim Center; it is the thinnest entry on the site. The Wayne County Commission honored the American Moslem Society’s 80th anniversary by resolution in 2019, and the East Lansing council’s Ramadan resolutions of 2023 and 2024 are the other public bodies on it.

Every quotation links to the broadcast at the moment it was said, each passage was transcribed twice, speakers are not named, and every institution was asked to respond.

The Forum transcribed and translated the broadcasts with machine-learning tools and compared each passage “against a second, independent transcription and translation of the same audio before publication”; English passages were matched to the recording. The site names no speaker (the video titles do) and attributes each statement to the institution whose channel broadcast it. The 648 broadcasts were posted between May 2008 and October 2, 2026, more than half of them since the start of 2024. State and city money comes from minutes and from payment data obtained under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act; figures the paying agency has not confirmed are held back.

Each institution was sent a request for comment on October 26 or 28, by email or its website form. One replied: the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, whose executive director wrote that its speakers’ opinions “do not necessarily reflect the views of ISPU” and that “We do not censor what speakers say on our webinars.” The Islamic Center of East Lansing has made 11 of its YouTube videos private since the Forum drew on them, the site says; the Forum holds copies of seven and plays the March 2025 Ramadan prayer from its own. The site was built with the Informing America Foundation, a Washington grantmaker for investigative journalism. A corrections page records every change, and anyone who finds an error in a transcript or translation can send the link to [email protected]. For reporters there is a newsroom with the release, a PDF for each institution with its EIN and county, the money and officials tables, and briefings with Jim Hanson, Sam Westrop and me. Every excerpt in the film is on the evidence page with its source broadcast and time stamp.

Seven requests, from Lansing to Congress.

In Michigan: that Gov. Whitmer and her labor agency suspend further refugee-assistance subawards to the Islamic Center of Detroit pending review; that the Department of Education publish the meal claims and site reviews behind the $43.7 million; that the State Police disclose how it vets security-grant subrecipients; that Lt. Gov. Gilchrist and the Wayne County Commission say whether they will withdraw their 2025 honors; and that the Legislature hold hearings and require a review of an institution’s public statements before any state proclamation, tribute or grant.

Beyond Michigan: that governors, attorneys general and legislators in every state ask which religious institutions receive school-meal, refugee and security-grant money passed through their capital, how those recipients are vetted and which officials have honored them; and that the Departments of Agriculture, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services explain how they vet subrecipients, with oversight hearings in Congress on what Washington sends to pulpits that pray for jihad and for the killing of Jews.

I draw three conclusions. First, the First Amendment protects a sermon; it does not entitle anyone to a state honor or a federal grant, and the question the site puts to every agency is not their right to preach but the public’s duty to pay for the building and the lieutenant governor’s to bring a plaque. Second, the money is federal and the signature is the state’s: school-meal reimbursement, refugee assistance and security grants reach a mosque, with rare exceptions, only after a state agency names it as a subrecipient, so the same question belongs to every governor, and the Forum will put it to each of them. Third, the test of this work is whether it survives contact with the people it names. Every statement is on their own video, every dollar is a transaction a reporter can look up, every official act is quoted at its source, and the corrections page is open; an institution that believes a passage is mistranslated can send the link and we will print the correction where it appears. Washington’s part is the hearings: Homeland Security’s own grant notice says its security review checks each selected recipient’s name and address against intelligence reporting after the scoring is done, and is silent on what is preached there; Agriculture and Health and Human Services say nothing at all.

Middle East Insider, The Mosque on Tireman Avenue (Oct 21): The daily edition that carried the Forum’s first report on the Detroit center’s prayers and its $45 million; today’s site adds the other 35 institutions, the officials and the film.

Focus on Western Islamism, Supplications for Slaughter from America’s Top Taxpayer-Funded Mosque (Oct 20): Sam Westrop’s report on the Islamic Center of Detroit: more than 400 examples of violent or extremist speech from three years of the mosque’s own video.

MEF Online, Michigan First: Exposing America’s Islamists, State by State (Oct 29): My essay on the launch, with the requests that go beyond the release: the Detroit center’s sponsor agreement and its most recent administrative review from the Michigan Department of Education, and the scope of work for both refugee subawards.

On Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern the Forum hosts Bernard Haykel of Princeton on Saudi Arabia at War.

Corrections Desk. Errors in this edition go to [email protected]; errors on the site are noted on the page where they appear and on its corrections page.

If you live in Michigan, send this to your state representative and your county commissioner; anywhere else, forward it to one official who signs grants.

Reply with the name of one institution in your state whose broadcasts you want the Forum to read next.