... But Midwest Muslims share the American dream
London Times, July 31st 2005
In the suburbs of Detroit, the largest Arab city outside the Middle East pledges its loyalty to the stars and stripes, says Douglas Rogers
Drive the suburban streets and bustling freeways of Dearborn, Michigan, a city suburb of Detroit, and you could be in any fairly prosperous middle-American town.
There are sprinklers on the lawns, SUVs and Ford Broncos lining up at petrol stations and rows of low-rise shopping malls and fast-food outlets on its main streets.
Look closer, though, and you see something else. The McDonald’s is halal. A supermarket is called Al Jazeera. A bearded Arab in long robes walks past, his wife, head-to-toe in black abaya and hijab, follows yards behind.
Most astonishing, head west on Ford Road and there, looming over the freeway, its minarets and gold domes dwarfing two Christian churches that flank it, is the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in the western world.
How is it that in this time of clashing civilizations, of Al-Qaeda terror and “with us or against us” rhetoric, when many Muslims in Europe appear to believe the West is waging a war on Islam, that in the heartland of America, 300,000 Arabs and Muslims, the largest concentration for any urban area outside the Middle East, live side by side and seemingly in peace with their Midwestern neighbours?
Look closer still and you see more. Many of those SUVs and Broncos are driven by veiled women. A gleaming glass and chrome building declares itself the “Arab American Museum”. Walk into any of the dozen Lebanese restaurants on Warren Avenue and the customers — firemen, businessmen, imams in turbans — flit easily between Arabic and Midwestern drawls.
In Dearborn it is strange and somewhat inspiring to hear them talk proudly of being American and of defending their country.
“We are American first, Arab second,” said Neal AbuNab, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian businessman, film-maker and columnist on Dearborn’s Arab American News (circulation 30,000), who has lived in the US for 25 years. “After September 11 our community was under siege, we faced the backlash,” he says. “I lost a business. But I weighed my love for the country that had given me a home and the love for my faith and I found no contradiction.”
Arabs started coming to Detroit in the early part of the 20th century to work in the auto plants of Henry Ford, who established his first factories and Ford headquarters in the city.
The original arrivals were mostly Yemeni Muslims and Christians from Syria, Jordan and Iraq. A mass influx of Palestinians and Lebanese came in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s during the Arab-Israeli wars. Later, in the 1990s, more than 20,000 Shi’ite Iraqis, crushed by Saddam Hussein after the uprisings following the Gulf war, made their way to Dearborn. The Karbala Islamic Center on Main Street became the focus of exile opposition to Saddam in America.
Back in the 1980s there was barely a Dearborn Arab “community” to speak of. The city was as economically downtrodden as crime-ridden Detroit next door. Gradually, however, as Arabs have become part of the American economic system, they have made their mark.
Dearborn’s religious and business leaders — from Hassan Qazwini, the Islamic centre’s Iraqi imam, to the Lebanese oil company tycoon, Ali Jawad — are feted by presidents, courted by congressmen.
Fifteen years ago there were few Arab restaurants or businesses here. Today there are dozens, and property prices have risen by 300%. Dearborn is growing culturally, too.
The Arab-American Museum, the first in the US, opened this May. There is an Arab poetry society. Every June, Dearborn hosts the Arab International Cultural Festival (co-sponsored by Ford), which is attended by more than 200,000 Americans and beamed by Arab television networks back to the Middle East.
For AbuNab it is the open business culture of America that has made Arabs feel part of the country, invested in it and determined to protect it, something he believes Europe does not offer.
“In Europe, as a migrant you are welcomed, but it is insular, you stay in your quarters,” he says, reflecting on three years he spent working in Birmingham as an engineer for Ford in the 1980s.
“In America the economic system is based on diversity. You have to be open to every culture in order to sell them your product, otherwise you won’t survive. So, sooner or later, everyone ends up in bed together.”
Eide Alawan, the interfaith and outreach liaison officer for the Islamic centre, has no problems with loyalty to America. “We are as American as apple pie,” he said.
A second-generation Syrian American in his fifties and the son of a car factory worker, he speaks in a broad Midwest accent and wears not robes or a long beard but a blue suit, shirt and tie. When he heard that some mosques in Britain have become platforms for extremist clerics, he was appalled.
“I cannot believe this,” he said. “How did they allow that to happen? You occasionally hear about this in parts of the US but here, this would never happen. We would not allow it to happen. We police ourselves and we would turn these people in.”
Most of all, though, he reserved his anger for Muslims around the world who equivocate about suicide bombings, such as the attacks in London. “These people say they understand these bombings because of the suffering they see in Iraq. But where were they when Saddam Hussein was killing hundreds of thousands in Iraq?” he said. “And why are they not angry about the daily murder of ordinary Iraqis by extremists in Iraq?”
Drive the suburban streets and bustling freeways of Dearborn, Michigan, a city suburb of Detroit, and you could be in any fairly prosperous middle-American town.
There are sprinklers on the lawns, SUVs and Ford Broncos lining up at petrol stations and rows of low-rise shopping malls and fast-food outlets on its main streets.
Look closer, though, and you see something else. The McDonald’s is halal. A supermarket is called Al Jazeera. A bearded Arab in long robes walks past, his wife, head-to-toe in black abaya and hijab, follows yards behind.
Most astonishing, head west on Ford Road and there, looming over the freeway, its minarets and gold domes dwarfing two Christian churches that flank it, is the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in the western world.
How is it that in this time of clashing civilizations, of Al-Qaeda terror and “with us or against us” rhetoric, when many Muslims in Europe appear to believe the West is waging a war on Islam, that in the heartland of America, 300,000 Arabs and Muslims, the largest concentration for any urban area outside the Middle East, live side by side and seemingly in peace with their Midwestern neighbours?
Look closer still and you see more. Many of those SUVs and Broncos are driven by veiled women. A gleaming glass and chrome building declares itself the “Arab American Museum”. Walk into any of the dozen Lebanese restaurants on Warren Avenue and the customers — firemen, businessmen, imams in turbans — flit easily between Arabic and Midwestern drawls.
In Dearborn it is strange and somewhat inspiring to hear them talk proudly of being American and of defending their country.
“We are American first, Arab second,” said Neal AbuNab, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian businessman, film-maker and columnist on Dearborn’s Arab American News (circulation 30,000), who has lived in the US for 25 years. “After September 11 our community was under siege, we faced the backlash,” he says. “I lost a business. But I weighed my love for the country that had given me a home and the love for my faith and I found no contradiction.”
Arabs started coming to Detroit in the early part of the 20th century to work in the auto plants of Henry Ford, who established his first factories and Ford headquarters in the city.
The original arrivals were mostly Yemeni Muslims and Christians from Syria, Jordan and Iraq. A mass influx of Palestinians and Lebanese came in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s during the Arab-Israeli wars. Later, in the 1990s, more than 20,000 Shi’ite Iraqis, crushed by Saddam Hussein after the uprisings following the Gulf war, made their way to Dearborn. The Karbala Islamic Center on Main Street became the focus of exile opposition to Saddam in America.
Back in the 1980s there was barely a Dearborn Arab “community” to speak of. The city was as economically downtrodden as crime-ridden Detroit next door. Gradually, however, as Arabs have become part of the American economic system, they have made their mark.
Dearborn’s religious and business leaders — from Hassan Qazwini, the Islamic centre’s Iraqi imam, to the Lebanese oil company tycoon, Ali Jawad — are feted by presidents, courted by congressmen.
Fifteen years ago there were few Arab restaurants or businesses here. Today there are dozens, and property prices have risen by 300%. Dearborn is growing culturally, too.
The Arab-American Museum, the first in the US, opened this May. There is an Arab poetry society. Every June, Dearborn hosts the Arab International Cultural Festival (co-sponsored by Ford), which is attended by more than 200,000 Americans and beamed by Arab television networks back to the Middle East.
For AbuNab it is the open business culture of America that has made Arabs feel part of the country, invested in it and determined to protect it, something he believes Europe does not offer.
“In Europe, as a migrant you are welcomed, but it is insular, you stay in your quarters,” he says, reflecting on three years he spent working in Birmingham as an engineer for Ford in the 1980s.
“In America the economic system is based on diversity. You have to be open to every culture in order to sell them your product, otherwise you won’t survive. So, sooner or later, everyone ends up in bed together.”
Eide Alawan, the interfaith and outreach liaison officer for the Islamic centre, has no problems with loyalty to America. “We are as American as apple pie,” he said.
A second-generation Syrian American in his fifties and the son of a car factory worker, he speaks in a broad Midwest accent and wears not robes or a long beard but a blue suit, shirt and tie. When he heard that some mosques in Britain have become platforms for extremist clerics, he was appalled.
“I cannot believe this,” he said. “How did they allow that to happen? You occasionally hear about this in parts of the US but here, this would never happen. We would not allow it to happen. We police ourselves and we would turn these people in.”
Most of all, though, he reserved his anger for Muslims around the world who equivocate about suicide bombings, such as the attacks in London. “These people say they understand these bombings because of the suffering they see in Iraq. But where were they when Saddam Hussein was killing hundreds of thousands in Iraq?” he said. “And why are they not angry about the daily murder of ordinary Iraqis by extremists in Iraq?”
posted by Neal AbuNab at 8:03 PM
