The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says it received three death threats on three consecutive days this month, and the organization has turned the matter over to Canton Township police, where its office is based. CAIR-MI says the threats arrived alongside a broader wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric spreading online in Metro Detroit.
According to The Detroit News, CAIR-MI reported the threats to Canton Township police, which is now investigating. The group's office regularly fields harassing emails and social media messages, but the recent run of consecutive death threats marks an escalation that prompted the formal police report. CAIR-MI attorney Amy Doukoure said political disagreements and public debate must never be used to justify threats of violence against Muslims, Muslim institutions, or those who defend the rights of American Muslims.
Doukoure also said death threats directed at a civil rights organization are an unacceptable, and inevitable, result of manufactured anti-Muslim hate, according to the same report. CAIR-MI has urged law enforcement authorities to investigate credible threats and called on public officials and community leaders to condemn efforts to intimidate Muslim Americans and their advocates. The organization has also called for an end to anti-Muslim hate speech more broadly.
A Primary Win and a Provocateur's Return
CAIR-MI has pointed to two recent developments as flashpoints behind the surge in hostility. Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic U.S. Senate primary on August 4, defeating U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens to advance to the November general election against Republican Mike Rogers, according to PBS NewsHour.
The second flashpoint is the repeated appearance of far-right activist Jake Lang in Dearborn. Ahead of an August 18 Dearborn City Council meeting, local law enforcement and civil rights groups urged residents not to engage with Lang, who organized an anti-Muslim demonstration in the city, per WDET 101.9 FM. Lang's presence in the city has already produced physical confrontations, as Hoodline reported when he was chased and punched at a Dearborn Arbaeen procession earlier in August.
Federal Immigration Fallout From the August 2 Confrontation
That August 2 clash has continued to generate legal consequences. Federal immigration authorities confirmed on August 14 that ICE detained an Iraqi immigrant, one of three men charged locally with assault after confronting Lang during the religious procession, according to The Arab American News. The detention has added another layer of tension to a summer already marked by threats against Muslim public figures in the region, including an out-of-state man indicted for threatening to kill Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a case Hoodline detailed in its report on the Wasilla man indicted for threats against Hammoud.
A Record Year for Anti-Muslim Bias Complaints
The Canton Township threats land against a backdrop of rising anti-Muslim bias nationwide. CAIR's 2025 Civil Rights Report, published in March, documented 8,683 anti-Muslim bias complaints nationwide in 2025, the highest number recorded since the organization began tracking such complaints in 1996. That figure represented a slight increase over the 8,658 complaints logged in 2024, underscoring what CAIR-MI describes as a sustained, worsening pattern rather than an isolated spike.
The current threats also echo a prior federal case tied to CAIR-MI's own office. In March 2025, a federal court in Detroit sentenced 73-year-old Michael Shapiro of West Palm Beach, Florida, to 18 months in prison for leaving anti-Muslim death threats on the voicemail of CAIR-MI's Canton Township office in December 2023, per the Department of Justice. Shapiro was prosecuted under federal statute for transmitting threats across state lines, a law that carries penalties of up to five years in prison per count when threats of injury or death are sent via telephone, social media, or other electronic communication across state borders.
Legal Tools Available to Investigators
Michigan's own hate crime law has also been strengthened since that earlier case. Public Act 259 of 2024, which took effect in April 2025, amended state statute MCL 750.147b to replace Michigan's old ethnic intimidation law with an expanded hate crime statute that explicitly criminalizes true threats made based on religion or ethnicity, even when made with reckless disregard for whether the recipient would interpret them as threatening violence. Separately, Michigan's terroristic threat statute, MCL 750.543m, makes communicating a threat to commit an act of terrorism a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $20,000 fine, regardless of whether the person making the threat had the actual intent or capability to carry it out.
The Canton Township threats are not an isolated incident within the region this year. In June, police in Madison Heights launched an investigation into anti-Muslim death threats delivered via recorded audio messages targeting congregants at the American Islamic Community Center, according to CBS Detroit. And in July, remarks by U.S. Rep. John James describing a Shia religious march in Dearborn as extremists on our doorstep sparked backlash from CAIR-MI, as covered in Hoodline's report on the John James Ashura comments firestorm. CAIR-MI has repeatedly warned that such rhetoric from public figures fuels the hostility now landing on its own doorstep.
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