A Michigan Imam preached that the leaders of Saudi Arabia are “agents of the Jews” and should be put to death, as seen in a video posted to Facebook and found by Clarion Project.
The video shows Dearborn Imam Husham al-Hussainy condemning the Saudi royal family as “impure,” calling for them to be executed for the Saudi campaign in Yemen against the Houthi rebels backed by the Iranian regime, and is filled with conspiratorial anti-Semitism.
Speaking in Arabic, al-Hussainy said that the Saudi leaders are “agents of the Jews” and that the so-called Zionist conspiracy should be blamed for any Saudi transgression.
Al-Hussainy even went so far as to claim that the Saudi airplanes bombing Yemen “are Israeli airplanes with Israeli policy and Israeli targets.”
He then urged Muslims to “stand together” with Christians against the “oppressive Saudi-Zionist airplanes.”
Al-Husainy, an Iraqi-American Michigan imam who founded the of the Karbala Islamic Center in 1995, has a history of supporting the Hezbollah terrorist group, Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in Iran and radical Shiite militiamen in Iraq backed by the Iranian regime.
For example, last year, al-Hussainy visited Iraq and was a guest speaker for a crowd affiliated with the Iranian-backed militia Saraya Ashura. Iranian regime operatives have directly trained and armed many of Saraya Ashura’s fighters and the militia threatened to attack U.S. personnel in Iraq.
Yet, despite this public record, al-Hussainy is welcomed and participates in interfaith and civil rights events nationally and throughout the city of Detroit.
Only two months after he gave this sermon (which was posted in 2015 to the Facebook page of the Karbala Islamic Center in Dearborn), al-Hussainy participated in a Detroit-area civil rights award dinner sponsored by the Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL) and the Detroit branch of the NAACP.
In 2017, Hussainy was invited to speak at a memorial service to remember the victims of 9/11 with Detroit community leaders. In 2018, a judge determined what many suspected all along — that Hezbollah and the Iranian regime (both of which Imam al-Hussainy supports) are culpable for the 9/11 attacks because of their material support for Al-Qaeda and the hijackers, specifically.
Yet, al-Hussainy is a well-respected imam. In 2007, he gave the invocation prayer at the Democratic National Committee’s Annual Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C.
Al-Hussainy and his mosque are also embraced by other Shiite groups and mosques in the Detroit area and nationally. The Karbala Islamic Center conducts activities with the Islamic Center of America and the Islamic Institute of Knowledge, among others.
Al-Hussainy’s preaching endangers both Saudis and Jews, as the sermon legitimizes violent retaliation against both. If you believe that the Saudi leaders deserve death, then the Jews supposedly commanding the Saudis are likewise deserving of death.
The conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia has spilled over onto American soil in the past. In 2011, Iran hatched a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. by blowing up a restaurant in Washington D.C., an attack that would have killed perhaps dozens of American civilians.
The tension between the two countries is much higher today than it was then, with Iran now attacking Saudi cities and oil fields.
If Iran’s network of supporters in America, like Imam Al-Hussainy, believe that “the Jews” and Israel bear responsibility for the Saudis’ actions, then synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses, Israeli governmental buildings and similar sites may be potential targets for Iranian retaliation.