Harris and Whitmer et al don’t care. They just want to get their “Anti-Islamophobia” card punched. The possibility that Elahi could be influencing his people in an anti-American direction doesn’t even enter their minds. It just isn’t a concern at all.
“Michigan Imam Garners Political Favor While Keeping Close with Iranian Regime,” by Susannah Johnston, Focus on Western Islamism, August 17, 2022:
A Michigan mosque and imam praised by politicians has served as a key institution for the interests and agenda of the Iranian regime for decades.
Since the early 1990s, Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi has presided over the Islamic House of Wisdom (IHW), an Iranian-led Shi’ite mosque in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. In recent years Elahi has publicly presented himself as a moderate, progressive Muslim devoted to serving the community with blood drives, COVID-19 vaccinations, and welcoming people of all faiths to his house of worship. He even serves as a police chaplain for the city of Dearborn.
Elahi seems popular, with his work apparently winning the attention of Vice President Kamala Harris, Michigan’s Governor Whitmer, as well as Congressional representatives, and state and local officials.
Yet behind the façade of friendly community organizing, Elahi has worked as an Iranian regime operative and maintained decades-long friendships with Iranian leadership, tightly associating himself with a regime responsible for the deaths of at least hundreds of Americans. The regime has remained under some form of U.S. sanctions since 1979, and the U.S. Department of Defense calls it, “the leading source of instability in the Middle East.”…
Before moving to America, Elahi served as the head of “political ideology” for the Iranian Navy in the 1980s, according to both a U.S. government-commissioned 1987 Rand report and a CIA report. A since-deleted biography page at Elahi’s mosque describes his appointment to the position. The post details Elahi’s founding of the Cultural Research Center, “to explain the spiritual motivations of the martyrs.” A since-deleted resource linked to on IHW’s website notes that martyrdom is a “goal of Shi’ite Islam.”
According to a report commissioned by the United States Institute of Peace, Elahi came to the United States in 1991 on a four month visa, “to inspect American branches of Hizbullah (Tehran’s network of agents) and to reinforce Tehran’s influence on Shi’ite communities.”
In 1992 he became an imam for the Islamic Center of America, a leading Shia Islamist institution which in 2010 hosted a memorial service for Hizbullah “spiritual leader,” Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.
IHW’s website boasts pictures of Elahi meeting in 2005 with Fadlallah, who advocated suicide bombings during Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s. In fact, some consider Fadlallah “the inventor of the modern suicide bomb.” When Fadlallah died in 2010, Elahi publicly mourned him as a “great scholar” and “a man of great wisdom, knowledge, leadership, and spirituality.”
Elahi also claims lengthy friendships with at least three of Iran’s recent presidents. In 2013, Elahi offered high praise for the election of Hassan Rouhani (President of Iran 2013-2021), who Elahi said he had known for 37 years and “admire[d]…his ethical character and moral values.” During his term, Rouhani poured billions into funding terror, arrested thousands of political dissidents, and allowed physical and psychological torture of prisoners….
After praising the late president in January, Elahi traveled to Iran in March 2017, and met with former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who he called a friend of “almost 30 years.” They had an “extremely friendly conversation” in his office about Khatami’s eight years as president and discussed memories of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the regime’s founding figure.
Khatami, while less bombastic than former Iranian President Ahmadinejad, made his hostility to the “Zionist regime” clear: “If we abide by the Koran, all of us should mobilize to kill.” Khatami later took credit for developing Iran’s nuclear technology.
In 2005, when then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel should be, “wiped off the map,” Elahi defended the remarks….
One article offering information about jihad, linked to on IHW’s website, says, “It is these People of the Book whom we are to fight until they pay the Jiziyah (tribute). When they have humbled themselves before us and submit to paying the Jiziyah, we are to fight no more.”
Another linked resource demeans and derides Jews, “Why does the chief advisor of land distribution have to be a Zionist Jew? …Should a government which does not submit to the laws of Islam rule over the Muslim masses? You tell me, your excellence!” And yet another IHW resource calls Jews, “more murderous than the Pharaoh, greater worshippers of wealth than Qarun and more deceitful than Balaam…”
The Islamic House of Wisdom also glorifies the late supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, and promotes the current supreme leader, Khamenei.
Despite Islamic House of Wisdom’s promotion of Islamist resources and Elahi’s support for Tehran, Elahi reportedly received an invitation to a vaccination event in July 2021 featuring Vice President Harris.
In 2021, Michigan’s Governor Whitmer participated in an IHW prayer service. And the Mayor of Dearborn Heights, Bill Bazzi, fundraised for IHW saying, “We do need to support the Islamic House of Wisdom financially…” and Imam Elahi has “an open line to us both” – referring to himself and Dearborn Heights Council Chair Dave Abdallah, who formerly served on the board of IHW.
Neither political office responded to requests for comment when asked about IHW’s radical Islamist record.
Elahi did initially respond to FWI’s inquiries. In an email, he referred to himself as, “a man of interfaith and dialogue.” When asked by FWI about his past in the Iranian navy, his praise of Iranian leaders, and his online library that, “calls for subjugating Christians and Jews under Islam and recommends the death penalty for apostasy, he remarked that he, “didn’t like the tone of your email” and that “many of the stuff u mentioned sound strange to me and i would be very curious to know about.” He did not provide further comment….
