Organization Trends
Pro-Terror Extremist Voters: Trump
Pro-Terror Extremist Voters in the U.S. Election (full series)
Harris | Trump | Third Parties
Pro-Terrorism Voters
Category 2: Trump as the Lesser of Two Evils
Some Islamist extremists are voting for Trump as the lesser of two evils. The most prominent is Michigan, Ameer Ghalib the Yemen-born Muslim mayor of Hamtramck. He recently endorsed Trump and joined him on stage after having met him personally at least twice.
Ghalib was first exposed as an extremist in July 2022 when the Middle East Forum discovered his anti-Semitic statements and racist remarks about black people, praise for Iran’s attacks on the U.S. military in Iraq that “puts Trump on the line,” opposition to the Trump-brokered normalization agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and admiration of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It even found compelling evidence that Ghalib had engaged in significant voter fraud.
He reacted by bashing the researchers who embarrassed him as “opportunistic parasites,” an insult with a growing irony given Ghalib’s endorsement of a candidate whose policies he condemned and enemies he applauded, including the Iranian government that is currently trying to assassinate Trump.
Ghalib says he is voting and campaigning for Trump because Trump is a “family-oriented person” who shares his social conservatism. He outraged liberals by banning the pro-LGBT rainbow flag from flying on flagpoles on government property and by taking a stand against placing LGBT-related books in school libraries that he felt reflected the “ gay agenda.”
He was then a guest on former gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon’s radio show in July 2023, where he threatened to switch his political aisle. He then met with former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn, who is also the chairman of the right-of-center America’s Future. The meeting brought him into further contact with Trump’s camp, ultimately leading to their recent rally together.
In his interview with the New York Times, Ghalib said the current administration’s pro-Israel foreign policy also pushed him toward Trump, without addressing the obvious contradictions given that Trump is more pro-Israel than Harris. He further justified his choice by saying that Trump “kept repeating to me that his goal is to end the chaos in the Middle East,” so he believes Trump will be better at ending the war between the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” and Israel.
A group of imams from the Arab American Bar Association’s Michigan chapter also endorsed Trump. The Arab American News, a pro-Iran media outlet in Dearborn, reported on how Soujoud Hamade, the president of the Arab American Bar Association’s Michigan chapter, made pro-Hezbollah remarks that accused the U.S. media and government of lying for Israel in early October.
Imam Belal Alzuhairi endorsed Trump at the event, arguing that he “promises peace not war” and “he promised to end the war in the Middle East and Ukraine.”
Alzuhairi later explained that his endorsement was partially a bid to provoke harder competition between the two main parties for Muslim votes. He said the “Democrats took us for granted” and “Now, they understand that no, we’re not in your pockets. I mean, we have alternatives.”
News reports variably identified him as being affiliated with the Islamic Center of Detroit and the Great Mosque, also known as the United Community Center, in Hamtramck. His reported affiliation with the Islamic Center of Detroit is concerning.
The imam of the Islamic Center of Detroit, Imran Salha, prays for Allah to “annihilate” the “Zionist aggressors.” He spoke at an event where Cornel West was the keynote speaker and preached that Israel should be destroyed. In May 2023, he harshly criticized Muslims who were forging anti-Israel alliances with non-Muslims and “shake hands with people who endorse things like the LGBTQ principles.” He also preached against assimilation into American culture and instructed, “Do not try to appease the White Man. We have been stuck under the colonized way of thinking.”
Salha endorsed Trump, announcing he was “the first Muslim Palestinian imam in America” to back him. He did so after spending time with the Lebanese father-in-law of Tiffany Trump who was conducting outreach to Muslim and Arab voters for the Trump campaign.
The backlash compelled him to rescind his endorsement and apologize, saying, “As we abandoned the Republican Party in 2003 to vote Democrat for 20 years, it was my belief that the best way to punish the Democrats is by abandoning them now.”
His statement is significant. It harkens back to when the Islamist and pro-Islamist infrastructure in the U.S., which mostly originated with the U.S. wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and had ties to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Iranian government, favored the Bush presidential campaign in 2000 and was arguably the deciding factor in the election.
The rebirthing of the “conservative-Islamist alliance” was observed in detail by Sam Westrop of Focus on Western Islamism back in October 2022.
Opposition to alleged sexualizing of children’s education, pro-LGBT material in schools more generally, and other liberal stances on cultural issues has united some Republican-voting social conservatives, Islamist extremists (including ones with well-known theocratic and pro-terrorism views) and pro-Islamist white nationalists.
Of course, the same exact dynamic exists on the other side of the political aisle. Islamists and pro-Islamist Marxists and anarchists (such as supporters of the Hamas-aligned, Marxist-Leninist terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) have allied with Democratic-voting social liberals, including those advocating for exposing schoolchildren to the controversial material they feel will promote tolerance toward LGBT community members.
As for the white nationalists in this category, some of those we’ve monitored encourage voting for Trump because they believe he will be less hospitable toward legal and illegal immigrants, more favorable towards Russia, and more likely to fuel the “accelerationism” that white nationalists see as necessary for the creation of a majority-white or all-white ethnostate.
However, they almost universally hate him, particularly for his support for Israel and ties to Jews and LGBT community members. Jared Kushner, the Jewish husband of Ivanka Trump, and Miriam Adelson, the Jewish widow of mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, are targets of their anti-Semitic obsessions just as much as Harris’s Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff, and Jewish mega-donors George and Alexander Soros are.
In the next installment, other Islamist extremists believe that voting for third parties is the best strategy.