WATCH: Rust Belt City Police Chief Says ‘Praise To Allah’ In Shocking Press Conference

A hotbed of Islamic politics in Michigan is going viral after the city’s police chief offered up “praise to Allah” during a press conference about expanding diversity in his ranks.

Issa Shahin, chief of police for the city of Dearborn, celebrated the hiring of Muslim police officers during his tenure. Since being appointed in January 2022, the Dearborn Police Department has seen its number of Muslim officers rise to nearly half, up from just 3% several years ago.

“When I joined the Dearborn department, Dearborn’s Arab-American population was nearly 50%, yet less than 3%” of the police force was Arab-American, Shahin explained.

Now, the department “embraces the community it serves, with 45% of our officers being Arab-American,” he continues in the clip.

“Hamdellah, hamdellah,” he concludes, a variation on the traditional Islamic call to praise for Allah.

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Dissent among Dearborn residents is growing against the city’s increasingly tolerant accommodations of Islamic religious customs.

Earlier this month, residents stormed a meeting of the city council, which is comprised of all Arab-American politicians, to complain about 5 a.m. calls to prayer blaring across the city. Despite a city ordinance prohibiting amplified sounds before 7 a.m., mosques have seen no pushback from the city as morning prayers disrupt the sleep of non-Muslim residents.

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, according to CBS Detroit.

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

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 influence of the Arab-American community 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.

Dearborn has the largest population of Arab-Americans of any city in the U.S., and it is surpassed in percentage only by Hamtramck, Mich., which is a majority-Arab city and has elected an all-Muslim city council.

Two years ago, progressives in Mantramck were outraged after the city council voted against the flying of Pride flags, citing concerns about supporting LGBT lifestyles.