Penn State graduate student Roua Daas, an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine, speaks at a pro-Palestinian protest at the Allen Street gates in State College, PA on Feb. 12, 2024. Photo: Paul Weaver/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

An imam in Dearborn, Michigan drew scrutiny after a recently circulated recording showed him denying the legitimacy of the Sept. 11 terror attacks against the US. 

Imam Usama Abdulghani, a Shiite Muslim religious leader, told congregants that the Sept. 11 terror attacks, which killed over 3,000 Americans, were fabricated. In the video, which was circulated by MEMRI, He argued that the “goal” of Sept. 11 commemoration events are to degrade “the psyche of the Muslims.”

“You and I, we all know, 9/11 was a big lie,” he said. 

“They got people to believe it. They made it up. It was all a big lie,” he continued. 

Referencing stories from the Quran, he encouraged attendees to “do research” into the attacks and not believe the official narrative of the devastating terrorist event. 

He further repudiated the “shameful” and “granola” responses from Muslim leaders and organizations in the wake of the attacks. He continued, claiming that it “was so sad to see” many members of the American Muslim community “apologize” for the attacks. 

“A lot of Muslims lives were altered because of this,” he said in reference to the US War of Terror. 

He made the remarks on Sept. 11, 2026 as the country commemorated the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks. 

Abdulghani encouraged the congregants, instead of mourning the attacks, to embrace “the supremacy of Islam.” 

“The right way of thinking is that Islam is supreme. I’m not going to try and justify Islam. I don’t feel relieved if someone acknowledges me,” he said. 

“Islam is supreme,” he said. 

Dearborn is home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the US. According to the 2020 Census, 54.5% of the city’s residents reported Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.

In the three years following the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, Dearborn has emerged as a flashpoint in the broader discourse regarding evolving US opinions on the Jewish state. The city has drawn criticism after holding multiple demonstrations celebrating terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Further, residents of Dearborn have been recorded chanting slogans such as “death to America” and “death to Israel.” 

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud has established himself as an especially outspoken critic of Israel who has repeatedly condemned Israel’s military operations against Hamas, accusing the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” in Gaza and an “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank. Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, a brutal onslaught that started the current Gaza war, Hammoud condemned the Jewish state as a “racist apartheid system that criminalizes Palestinian existence.”

Hammoud is currently facing a federal civil-rights lawsuit accusing his administration of using taxpayer-funded city resources to promote Islam while refusing comparable recognition to Christian and Jewish holidays and retaliating against a journalist who challenged the disparity.

As the profile of the city has continued to rise amid the war in Gaza and political ascendance of several Muslim American political figures, more skeptics are pointing to the city’s longstanding pattern of radicalism.