By Abdul-Majeed Azad

A couple of weeks before the general election, Imam Husham Al-Husainy of Iraqi descent, who runs the Shi’a Karbala Islamic Education Center in Dearborn, MI, in his miserable myopia and total ignorance on Trump’s history of religious conviction, said, “I lean towards Mr. Trump because I found him closer to the Bible, the Torah and the Quran. Because I support peace, no war. This country deserves to have a strong leader where he can bring peace in this world.”

To be in the blinding lights of the media camera, he enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s re-election campaign, saying, “I am supporting Donald Trump because he opposes gay marriage, and he is the most Christian person in the election. He will return us to conservative values, and I am a Muslim, and I will stand with whoever opposes gay marriage.”

Apparently, Al-Husainy hasn’t read [the] Quran well, otherwise he wouldn’t call Trump’s belief system to be aligned with its teaching, on the topics of peace or homosexuality in any of its present variations. Because contrary to Al-Husainy’s imaginative flawlessless of the then-candidate, the reign of our country was given to a twice-impeached, four-times indicted, convicted felon who was accused by more than 20 women of groping and sexual assault, [who was] mired in countless civil and criminal lawsuits [and] was found liable for rape and still lies glibly!

Incidentally, among his recent flurry of frenzied executive orders, Trump has not committed to implementing a ban on gay marriage, as Al-Husainy had misinformed himself. Nor has he indicated that he would challenge the court ruling that legalized it.

Just days before the election, I had shared my trepidation on the real possibility of a fascist being installed as the president of the United States for the first time in the 248 years of its existence as a republic! It had then sure sounded ominously hysterical, hyperbolic and overblown. On January 20, it became apparent that we are about to bid farewell to our Constitution, freedom and democracy. Within two weeks since, the country was plunged into all sorts of civil, political and executive abysses.

Last October, Imam Bilal Alzuhairi – another Islamic cleric from Dearborn – endorsed Trump carte blanche as a peace candidate. Does he remember his utterly naïve off-the-cuff comments, such as, “We, as Muslims, stand with him because he promises peace – he promises peace, not war” and, “We are supporting him because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine?” This too proved equally perilous, as we know it.

In exchange for negotiating an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, our “peace” President has coerced [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to part with his country’s rare-earth resources. In the case of Gaza, though, he is eyeing something more substantial.

Not long ago, in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, candidate Trump had mused about real estate prospects on the ashes of plundered Gaza, saying that “as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place – the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful.” His dream was to expel Gaza’s population to Jordan and Egypt, which was flatly rejected by these countries.

On Tuesday, when the American convicted felon president met an Israeli war criminal at the White House, he went even further, saying the United States should “own” Gaza and develop it into a seaside tourist destination, calling it the Riviera of the Middle East! On February 4, Donald Trump, flanked by Benjamin Netanyahu – the mass murderer of Gaza, declared a war criminal by the International Criminal Court in The Hague – issued a decree of ethnic cleansing under the shameful guise of a “clean up” and “mop up” of the debris and war and destruction created by the Americans in collusion with the Israelis. This is not short of an expressed declaration of the act of obliteration of a sovereign people and nation by a U.S. dictator.

Ironically, Trump’s Gaza “Riviera” echoes his Zionist son-in-law Jared Kushner’s waterfront property dreams last year on the site of Gaza blitzkrieged by the IDF with American-supplied 2000-pound bombs.

There is a vociferous international outcry to this preposterous suggestion of Gaza “ownership” by an imperialist president. Palestinian American analyst Yousef Munayyer calls this “ethically and morally repugnant.”

But the big question is: Where are the clerics and Arab-Muslims of Dearborn who had not long ago said that Donald Trump was a man of God and peace? Will Imams Al-Hussainy, Alzuhairi and their mute flocks at least repent in solitude?