During a series of ceremonies commemorating the month of Muharram in the Shiite Hadi Institute Youth Community Center in Dearborn, Michigan on July 7 and 8, 2024, Imam Usama Abdulghani stated that Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has said that we are living in the time of Karbala and that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is the “Hussein of our time.” He said that the children raised in the community will be the “soldiers of the Mahdi” and it is the responsibility of the parents to have them understand what Nasrallah is saying in this regard. The commemoration ceremonies were streamed live on Light of Guidance on YouTube.
It is worth noting that the M.C. of these ceremonies was Michigan teacher and activist Tarek Bazzi, who was the speaker at the April Quds Day rally in which a protester led the crowd in the chant of ‘death to America.’ The series of ceremonies involved a fundraising campaign for the Hadi Institute’s Islamic school. In May 2024, the Hadi Institute held a memorial for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi who was killed in a helicopter crash.