While Democrats in Michigan had perhaps their best statewide election in 30 years, Republicans made surprising gains in a longtime Democratic stronghold: the Arab-American community of Dearborn.

The auto-manufacturing suburb is the most Muslim city in America per capita. It’s also the only area in metropolitan Detroit where the Republicans made gains. The GOP did not win Dearborn, but did gain about 13 percentage points when compared with the gubernatorial race in 2018.

The Muslim community is concentrated on the east side of the city, where Republican gains were even more pronounced, according to the Detroit Free Press.

The share of the vote secured there by the incumbent Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was down about 20 percentage points compared to 2018. Her Republican challenger, Tudor Dixon, garnered 32.6 percent of the vote in the area.

Even the Arab-American member of the so-called Democratic squad who represents Dearborn in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, lost support in this election cycle. In one precinct, whose voters are estimated to be at least 90 percent Arab, she defeated a MAGA challenger by a mere four votes.

“There is a dramatic shift in terms of voting in Dearborn,” one resident, Khalil Othman, said. An IT manager and father of five, Mr. Othman joined the red tide in his community.

He said he has voted Democrat since he emigrated from Yemen almost 20 years ago, and he helped found the Yemenite American Democratic Caucus within the Michigan state party. He even ran for local office over the summer as a Democrat.

Over the past few months, however, he has been vocal in his support for Ms. Dixon — who even mentioned him in a gubernatorial debate.

Mr. Othman said growing numbers of Arab-Americans at Dearborn are coming to reject the “radical ideology” of the Democratic Party concerning sexual content in public school education.

Dearborn has exploded into a hotbed of parental rights activism over the past few months as an unlikely coalition of Christian and Muslim parents joined forces to protest what they consider illicit materials found in the school library.

A local mother, Stephanie Butler, first raised concerns over curricular and library material. When her private complaints to the school’s administration failed, Ms. Butler began organizing parents — including Muslim parents — in protest.

When the parents arrived at a school board meeting in September, Mr. Othman said, they thought it would be an “easy discussion.” They thought they would just show the board members the books, which would then be taken out of circulation.

The books in question, including “Push,” “Flamer,” and “This Book Is Gay,” are “really pornography,” he said. 

“This Book Is Gay” has drawn particular ire from parental rights advocates for its chapters on “Where to Meet People Like You,” which contains advice on gay dating apps such as Grinder, and, “The Ins and Outs of Gay Sex,” which instructs readers on oral and anal sex.

“It’s a manual [of] sexual activities — showing kids how to do this and that,” Mr. Othman said. “If I showed these to any kids outside the school, most likely I would go to jail.”

The school district temporarily took the library books out of circulation but would not commit to permanent removal.

Following the meeting, on September 25, about 200 persons rallied outside a public library at Dearborn. The parents spread the word about the books, and their message was amplified by Muslim clergy, including Imam Sayid Hassan al-Qazwini of the Islamic Institute of America, who had rallied with Senator Sanders of Vermont in 2020. 

An October school board meeting gained even greater attendance. The meeting, which was reportedly attended by a majority Arab-American crowd, became so rowdy it was shut down.

The district had announced an initiative wherein parents can block their children from taking out particular books, but parents warned that students would still have access to the books — just within the library’s walls. 

Two books, “Push” and “Red, White, and Royal Blue,” were removed from circulation after review, according to Bridge Michigan, while several books are still under review. “Flamer,” a graphic novel with an illicit scene that was read aloud at the meeting, will remain in circulation for high schoolers. 

On Monday night, at the most recent school board meeting, a Lebanese-American resident of Dearborn, Mike Hachem, served the school board with a notice of intent to sue on behalf of the concerned parents. His notice was greeted with a warm applause by parents in the audience.

In the notice, the plaintiffs’ lawyer alleges the school district is violating the parents’ constitutional rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and due process, as well as the right to care for their own children. 

The parents have retained a Hillsdale-based libertarian lawyer, Daren Wiseley.

The Arab community, however, is not unified in its opposition to the school board. The mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, has spoken in support of the school district’s policies, and opposition to the school board was not enough to unseat school board members in the most recent elections.  

Two incumbent board members, Hussein Berry and Patrick D’Ambrosio, were re-elected. The activist Ms. Butler launched an unsuccessful write-in campaign that garnered fewer than 2,000 votes. Messrs. Berry and D’Ambrosio each won more than 10,000 votes.

Mr. Othman describes the Dearborn Muslim community as a “unique” religious minority dependent on public schooling. There are several full-time Islamic schools in the area, but private school is not a possibility for most families in east Dearborn, where the median income is between $35,000 and $40,000.

“There is no way for them to afford it,” he said, including himself. “Parents are stuck with the public school.”

Neither the school board nor the lawyer representing the plaintiffs responded to requests for comment.