Michigan residents say Warren is 'America's next Dearborn' as mosques replace churches across town

From the Newshound archive · first published 21 September 2026.

Residents of Warren, Michigan — the state's third-largest city — are sounding the alarm over the rapid growth of the local Muslim population, with a Lutheran church that stood for more than 80 years now converted into the Al Ihsaan Islamic Center. Justin Tye, 57, who bought back his childhood home 13 years ago, says the neighbourhood has changed beyond recognition and warns the pattern is accelerating. Locals say the transformation mirrors what happened to Dearborn, the nearby city now known as a majority-Muslim enclave. The converted church, its cross removed, has become the sharpest symbol of a community that feels it is losing its identity.

Tye says the former Lutheran church's steeple cross is gone, replaced by an Islamic centre serving Warren's surging foreign-born Muslim population.

Residents say they feel powerless as properties are snapped up and converted, with one warning: 'They'll turn anything into a mosque.'

Warren's blue-collar roots date to the post-war auto boom, when veterans flocked to work for Ford and GM — locals say that heritage is now vanishing fast.