An imam at a mosque attended by Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed described Zionists as the “cockroaches of history” and claimed the main religious duty of American Muslims is to fight them with “every single mode that is within your reach as a citizen of this country.”
Imran Salha, the imam at the Islamic Center of Detroit (ICD), said Muslims “have two roles here in America: To teach about Allah and frustrate the Zionists. Frustrate the Zionists with every single mode that is within your reach as a citizen of this country.”
“Every single time you go to a protest and you make the Zionists uncomfortable, you are rewarding Allah. They are the cockroaches of history, and we are the liberators,” Salha said in a 2024 sermon translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
He added that “Every single time you go on Fox News and you yell at that Zionist, Allah is rewarding you.”
News of Salha’s comments comes as El-Sayed has faced scrutiny for his attendance at the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, where the imam gave a eulogy praising the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as a “righteous man” and a “martyr,” the Washington Free Beacon first reported.
It also comes as Jewish Democratic voters have increasingly expressed concern about El-Sayed’s candidacy.
During a recent series of focus groups conducted by the Sentinel Action Fund, a conservative super PAC, several Michigan Jewish voters reportedly “expressed that this would be the first time they vote Republican,” referring to El-Sayed’s GOP opponent Mike Rogers.
“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I’d consider [voting Republican], but it’s leaning towards that because I really don’t like [Abdul El-Sayed] at all,” one Michigan Jewish voter told the focus group, according to a memo shared with the Free Beacon.
El-Sayed often attends services at the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor and, while traveling the state, at the ICD, a source familiar with the situation told the Free Beacon. El-Sayed has also spoken at multiple events at the ICD—including in 2017 and 2018—and attended a political meeting at the mosque in 2019, according to reports.
Salha has a history of extremist remarks, according to social media posts and speeches reviewed by the Free Beacon.
In December 2023, he stated that “Zionism is terrorism” in a post on X. In another post, Salha denounced Israel and the United States for the targeted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar, calling the strike “Dishonorable, cowardly, and yet another example of the moral bankruptcy of both America & Israel. And yet another example that America is indistinguishable from Israel.”
As the imam at ICD, Salha has also hosted radical speakers at the mosque. In June, he held a fundraiser for Gaza that featured Imam Tom Facchine. In 2024, Facchine came under fire after he urged anti-Israel activists to “take out” a pro-Israel professor at Columbia University and “create a situation in which he’s in jeopardy,” arguing that if they were “able to take out somebody like that and make an example, that might shut up a hundred more.” Salha also spoke at a 2016 event alongside Hatem Bazian, a professor who has called for an “intifada” and advocated for the release of terrorist Marwan Barghouti.
Some of Salha’s radical comments have previously been reported. Three days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Salha railed against Israel for lighting a “fire in our hearts” that will “burn that state until its demise.”
In a May 2023 sermon at ICD, he prayed to “eradicate” the “sick, disgusting Zionist regime,” according to a translation from MEMRI.
He also defended Hezbollah’s terrorist attacks against Israel in a social media post. “We can condemn Hezb[ollah] atrocities in Syria while also recognizing that they *are* making sacrifices for the sake of Palestine and frustrating the illegal zionist regime in unprecedented ways esp with recent hits,” wrote Salha in September 2024.
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