'Just submitted to Sharia law!' MAGA lawmaker outraged over city's optional uniform patch

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) launched into an Islamophobic tirade Friday after learning that the Dearborn Heights Police Department in Michigan was considering allowing its officers to wear an “optional patch” on their uniforms that includes writing in both English and Arabic.

“Dearborn Heights just submitted to Sharia law,” Fine wrote in a social media post on X Friday, referring to a body of religious law within Islam. “They told us they were trying to establish a caliphate. Are you listening now?”

Dearborn Heights is notable for having a sizable Arab population, having become the first city in the United States to reach an Arab majority. As such, city officials often cater to its growing Arab population with signs and communications in both English and Arabic.

The city’s police department appears to have followed suit, sharing an image of the optional patch in a now-deleted Facebook post. Following reporting on the online post from Fox News, the agency released a statement clarifying that the optional patch was merely a “design mock-up idea” that it was a part of “internal discussions,” and not “an official prototype.”

The news that the patch was not being rolled out at the agency apparently had not reached Fine, or Fox News for that matter, which as of 12: 33 p.m. EST had not updated their story to note the statement.

Fine’s reference to Arab Americans "trying to establish a caliphate” refers to a form of government led by an individual with the title of “caliph,” a person deemed as the political and religious successor to Muhammad, the founder of Islam who is considered a prophet within the Islamic faith.

Fine has a long history of making Islamophobic remarks, as well as genocidal remarks directed toward Arabs. In July, he urged Palestinians suffering under Israel’s ongoing aid blockade to “starve away,” and cheerfully thanked a social media user for posting a photo of a presumed dead Palestinian infant buried in rubble.

Fine’s genocidal rhetoric was so strong that he even drew the ire of his Republican colleague Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who called him a “bloated, braindead, blithering idiot who has no business being in Congress.”