We would be better served as a nation if more Americans would step outside the box of stereotypical thinking and take a look at the bigger picture when it comes to Arab Americans. Just because a person happens to be an Arab American, it does not automatically follow that this person is a Muslim. And of course, just because someone is a Muslim, it does not automatically follow that they support terrorists.There are Arab/Americans who are atheists just as there are native-born Americans who are atheists.
Using the City Council of Dearborn as an example, two of its Arab Americans are Shiite Muslims and two of them are Christians. All four of them happen to be Lebanese. The majority of the members of the City Council of Dearborn Michigan are Christians.
Another demonstration that seems to fly in the face of American stereotypes of Muslim women is Susan Dabaja, an Arab-American Muslim 36 year old lawyer who serves as President of the City Council of Dearborn. (Again as mentioned in a previous post, there is no Sharia law in effect in Dearborn. The Mayor's name is John B. O'Reilly. The majority of private schools in Dearborn are Catholic, not Muslim. An excerpt from their recent city council meeting shows an opening invocation by a minister from a Christian Church followed by the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance--not any different from most of the city council meetings here in the DFW area.)
Most of us need to lighten up, let go our suspicions and try instead to learn more about what we don't understand and then celebrate the diversity that makes our nation great. We need to stop judging the many on the basis of the behavior of a few.
How many Christians, for example, would appreciate being judged as a group on the basis of the behavior of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? Yet McVeigh professed to be a Christian just like Scott Roeder who shot Dr. Tiller inside a church.
Does it logically follow then that the 2 billion Christians in the world support the evil these men did? No, of course not. No more than it would follow that the 1.57 billion Muslims in the world support ISIS. It's insulting to the larger bodies of these religions to suggest such a thing. We need to smarten up and stop generalizing from the behavior of a few to that of the many. ________________________________________________________________________________
DID YOU KNOW THAT LOCAL AMERICAN PATRIOTS MIGHT NOT HAVE FLAGS TO WAVE IF IT WERE NOT FOR A LOCAL PALESTINE-AMERICAN.
Here is perhaps the funniest and yet most revealing findings of all my research for this article:
Yes, and right here in Dallas. Fawaz Hassan "Tony" Ismail is the founder and CEO of Alamo Flags, the country's largest retail-flag enterprise that is based here in Dallas Texas. Ismail has 42 retail stores across the country. Positioned in tourist areas of cities like Atlanta, Boston, and New York, the shops sell not only flags from every nation but also hats, bumper stickers, T-shirts, and even bikinis with flag motifs.
Born to Palestinian refugees in Aman, Jordan, Ismail moved with his family to Mesquite, Texas, at the age of 9. He supplies most government agencies and all but a few foreign embassies in Washington. He is a huge Dallas Cowboys fan.
Although a dedicated Muslim, he does not allow politics or religion to get in the way of his business. In an article about him that appeared in Fortune Magazine a few months after 9/11, Ismail was quoted as saying that he fired one of his employees who was quoted in the Atlanta Journal saying that the Confederate flag was like a Nazi flag. Ismail said that after the American flag the Confederate flag is their second top selling flag. He even once installed a flag at the Jewish Embassy in DC.
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Arab-Americans have been contributing to and shaping American culture for over a century and their contributions are to be celebrated.
James Jabara - 1923 -1966
the first American and United States Air Force jet ace in history
Jabara was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, of Lebanese American descent; his father, John, and mother came from Marjayoun, a town in South Lebanon. He fought during World War II and also the Korean War. During World War II he flew 108 combat missions.
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Ralph Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut to Nathra and Rose (née Bouziane) Nader, immigrants from Lebanon. His parents were Antiochian Greek Orthodox Christians. They raised the children in their homeland's culture with both their native Arabic and English, telling them proverbs and stories they felt would encourage independent thought, appreciation of things such as wildlife that cannot be "measured by the dollar," plus instill traits such as perseverance and inner strength.
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Paul Anka (Father Syrian and Mother Lebanese raised in the in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church.
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Michael Ellis DeBakey -world-renowned American cardiac surgeon, innovator, scientist, medical educator, and international medical statesman. He developed an essential component of the heart-lung machine.The pump provided a continuous flow of blood during operations. This, in turn, made open-heart surgery possible. He was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Lebanese immigrants Shaker and Raheeja Dabaghi (later Anglicized to DeBakey).
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American geologist, Dr. Farouk el-Baz, born in Egypt, helped plan all the Apollo moon landings and later pioneered the use of space photography to study the Earth. He was born in the Nile Delta in the village of Touqh el aklaam, El Senbellawein city, Dakahlia Governorate.
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So how did all these Arab-American Immigrants get here?
Most of them got here the same way that many immigrants arrive in the USA--by boat and legally.
Many of them are second, third and even fourth generation Americans. Many Arabs came to America as part of the Great Migration from 1880 to 1924. Why Dearborn?
There was no Muslim conspiracy for them to settle in and about Dearborn Michigan. They migrated to this area because of the promise of good jobs in the boom of the automotive industry. A second wave of immigrants came in the late 1940's and early 1950's after Israel was awarded homes and land that had belonged to Palestinians like Ismail's family for generations. What are you going to do when your home is taken from you? The best answer at the time was to migrate to the USA, the land of opportunity.
Because of our ridiculous media (whose one primary goal, please remember, is to sell advertisements and not to educate the public) many of us have the mistaken notion that we are being invaded by hordes of Muslims. This is not unlike the 1950's and early 1960's when they had us believing that we would soon be invaded by hoards of yellow people and that everyone better build and stock a bomb shelter.
The primary fuel that feeds our media is fear and panic. How long must the American public allow themselves to be jerked about by these fear mongers before we say enough? {Frankly, I think that time may be closer than many suspect. Many friends I know have stopped watching the absurd "news" channels altogether.]
Forget the Media Hype and Get a Grip on the Facts with Statistics on Arab Americans in the USA
The current USA population is 318.9 million (2014)
The current Arab/American population is estimated at approximately 4 million.
They will not be taking over our nation, people. There are not "hoards" of people from the Middle East in the USA.
Furthermore, the majority of the Arab-Americans are an integral part of the fabric of our great nation, just like me (native born) and Tony Ismail (Arab American).
Four million out of 318 million will overtake us?
I don't think so--even if by some implausible fluke they were to unite. Statistically it just ain't happening.
From the Arab American Institute: Contrary to popular assumptions or stereotypes, the majority of Arab Americans are native-born, and nearly 82% are citizens. These people are not radical terrorists.
While the Arab community in the USA traces its roots to every Arab country, the majority of Arab Americans have ancestral ties to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq.