“ROSALIE SULLIVAN, 71, a feminist and longtime civil rights activist who led the fight to remove a Nativity scene in Dearborn, has died.”
Forty years ago—almost to the day—an obituary ran sporadically throughout the country announcing the death in early November 1986 of Rosalie Sullivan. The obit was short on personal details, but highlighted Sullivan’s role as the state coordinator for the National Organization for Women and as a former district executive with the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.
Her claim to fame, however, was that “[i]n 1984, she and seven other Dearborn residents sued to force the city to remove a Nativity scene from the City Hall lawn.”
As a result, just one week before Christmas in 1984, then-federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered the crèche “dismantled within 48 hours.” Dearborn and its city council instead sold the nativity display and a portion of the previously city-owned property to a local foundation, which then donated both to the Dearborn Chamber of Commerce.
Since then, Dearborn has been out of the business of recognizing Christmas. The argument made by Sullivan and like-minded leftists was that the Establishment Clause bars the government from endorsing religion, notwithstanding our country’s long-established historical roots as a Christian nation.
And yet, over the last several years, Dearborn and its mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, have moved to establish Islam as the Michigan city’s preferred religion—and not merely with a single display acknowledging the religious holy month of Ramadan.
The “Ramadan Kareem” banners that first appeared on light poles in Dearborn in April 2025, flanking downtown city streets, merely represent the most blatant move by Mayor Hammoud to declare Islam the city’s preferred religion. The city also purchased and erected a large lighted crescent moon—an Islamic religious symbol—in the municipal park.
In contrast, there were no banners or displays recognizing Lent, which was in its fourth week, or Passover, which was then less than a week away, on April 12, 2025.
As a resident of Dearborn and a constitutional lawyer who lived through the decades during which courts demanded the removal of religious displays and monuments that recognized our Judeo-Christian heritage, the local government’s singular celebration of the Muslim holy day of Ramadan surprised me. I reached out to the city to ensure that officials intended to also recognize the Christians and Jews who called Dearborn home, but my inquiry went unanswered.
By law, though, the city couldn’t ignore my Freedom of Information Act requests. And from those I learned that Dearborn’s Ramadan decorations were just the tip of the iceberg.
Behind the scenes, Mayor Hammoud advanced his goals by using city resources and his Dearborn email account to invite select members of the community to an Iftar celebration, documents revealed. Observing and engaging in Iftar is an Islamic religious exercise: Iftar symbolizes obedience to Allah’s command. Muslims refrain from food, drink, and other physical needs from dawn until sunset, and Iftar is the moment when this fast ends for the day.
Other FOIA documents revealed that the police department planned to sell Ramadan t-shirts, embossed with the Dearborn police shield, a crescent moon, and the words “Ramadan Kareem.”
The American Freedom Law Center (“AFLC”) highlighted these details in a letter to the mayor and the city attorney on my behalf. That letter also reminded Mayor Hammoud and Dearborn’s lawyer of the three prior cases AFLC’s lawyer, Robert Muise, had won related to the unconstitutional targeting of Christians in Dearborn. As with my initial request, that letter did not demand that Dearborn remove the Ramadan displays, but rather asked the city to treat Christians and Jews equally. That letter also went unanswered.
The mayor did have an answer for Christian pastor Ted Baram, however, when Baram spoke out in opposition to the recent renaming of a local street in honor of Osama Siblani, a public supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah. After Pastor Baram identified himself as a Christian who had lived in Lebanon, Israel, and the West Bank, he told the City Council the intersection signage was “quite inappropriate,” comparing it to naming a street “Hezbollah Street or Hamas Street.”
Mayor Hammoud’s response to Pastor Baram?
“[T]he best suggestion I have for you is to not drive on Warren Avenue or to close your eyes while you’re doing it . . . . I think it’s quite hypocritical [that] you’re approaching this podium when you yourself have videos on YouTube standing in front of my mosque saying the cruelest of things about Muslims, about the religion of Islam, because you are a bigot and you are a racist and you are an Islamophobe,” Hammoud said. “And although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here. And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city.”
The mayor’s diatribe made clear that those who speak against the religion of Islam are not welcome in Dearborn. That is not coexistence: that is co-opting the government for one faith.
The City Council remained mum in response to Mayor Hammoud’s comments. They also sat silent when I asked the holders of Dearborn’s purse strings to trump the mayor and use their budgetary authority to direct the funding of Christian and Jewish holy days in addition to Muslim ones. Not only did the City Council refuse to appropriate funding for displays to celebrate holy days such as Easter, Passover, Christmas and Chanukah, but Dearborn proceeded to purchase bigger and brighter Ramadan displays, consisting of large lighted crescent moons.
I also attempted to speak with the council members individually, but was told they were directed not to speak with me. That left me two options: acquiesce in the mayor establishing Islam as the city’s favored religion or seek legal relief.
I chose the latter, and on Constitution Day, the AFLC filed suit against Dearborn and Mayor Hammoud in federal court in Michigan.
Unlike the late Ms. Sullivan, who was lionized as a “feminist” and “civil rights activist” for fighting to remove the nativity scene from city hall, the legacy media ignored the filing of my lawsuit. Instead, those outlets reported on Dearborn’s response to the litigation and city officials’ vanilla denial of unequal treatment.
Locally, the Arab American News opted to feature a picture of me on its front page, under the headline “MALICIOUS LAWSUIT.”
The publisher of the Arab American News is none other than Osama Siblani, the Hezbollah and Hamas apologist who now has a street named after him in Dearborn.
Other local coverage consisted of the claim that Dearborn spends hundreds of thousands of dollars celebrating Christmas. But as has already been pointed out: Dearborn has not recognized Christ’s birth since 1984, when a federal court ordered its Nativity scene removed within 48 hours. Since then, Dearborn has fastidiously avoided any religious overtones to December 25, celebrating instead the secular holiday season with lights, a tree, and decorations.
The mayor and his surrogates can continue to downplay or dismiss the allegations in my lawsuit. But those of us who live in Dearborn—especially Christian and Jewish residents who have faced the brunt of the city’s religious discrimination—know that what this fight is really about isn’t decorations—it’s about dominance.
