Politics

NEW: American Suburb Forced To Hear Muslim ‘Call To Prayer’ Blaring At 5 AM Daily, Residents Speak Out

Published

2 months ago

September 26, 2025

A liberal Michigan suburb with one of the nation’s few majority-Muslim city councils is now an epicenter of complaints about the morning Islamic “call to prayer” disrupting residents’ quality of life.

At a contentious public hearing, voters voiced their concerns about mosques in East Dearborn, which have been allowed to blare calls to prayer at 5:30 a.m. over loudspeakers. The disruption has made it impossible for neighbors like Andrea Unger to get a good night’s sleep.

During her remarks, Unger questioned whether the city council is tacitly allowing the mosques to violate the city’s loudspeaker ordinance, which limits the use of amplified speakers in public between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Police have received numerous noise complaints, CBS Detroit reported.

“The noise complaints have been made out and the police have made numerous visits. What is the next step?” she asked.

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The pervasive morning call to prayer is just the latest flashpoint in a debate that has roiled Dearborn since the city council gained its Arab majority in 2013, signaling the growing Arab-American community’s influence over local politics.

Just this month, the city’s Muslim mayor refused to apologize after calling a Christian pastor a racist and telling him he’s “not welcome here.” The pastor, Ted Barham, previously criticized a local initiative to name a street after a trailblazing Muslim journalist with a history of sympathetic comments toward Hezbollah, a terrorist network.

Barham testified about Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani, “He’s a promoter of Hezbollah and Hamas,” quoting his remarks: “He talks about how the blood of the martyrs irrigates the land of Palestine … whether we are in Michigan and whether we are in Yemen. Believe me, everyone should fight within his means. They will fight with stones, others will fight with guns, others fight with planes, drones, and rockets.”

Although the county commission, not the city council, approved the street’s renaming, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud’s condemnation of Barham drew criticism from Muslim city residents as well.

“The United States of America is built on the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. These two principles are sacrosanct,” Nagi Almudhegi, a Yemeni-American engineer and candidate for mayor, told Fox News. “If I were in Mayor Abdullah Hamoud’s spot at that time, I would have not said anything. The gentleman has a right, as an American citizen, to speak his mind. And he did it in a respectful, calm way. The mayor should have afforded him that opportunity instead of launching into that tirade.”