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Go topBY: Weam Namou/Ambassador Blogger Tina Ramirez is the president and founder of Hardwired, an organization that provides legal guidance for victims of religious oppression. Ramirez visited Michigan’s Chaldean Community Foundation on Thursday to discuss with leaders her upcoming trip to Iraq in mid-October. Among other things, she is trying to help pass a resolution that … Continued
Press Release: ACCESS Dearborn, Mich. – Tonight, Wednesday, September 28, ACCESS will host its 10th Annual Domestic Violence Awareness and Treatment Program Dinner. WHAT: The event will raise awareness about, and honor survivors of, domestic violence. Justice Richard Bernstein of the Michigan Supreme Court will serve as the keynote speaker during the evening’s program. WHO: Michigan Supreme Court … Continued
Press Release: Arab American National Museum Dearborn, Mich. (Sept. 27, 2016) – “…Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me…” -From the 1883 sonnet The New Colossus by American poet Emma Lazarus, mounted inside the Statue … Continued
Advance tickets go on sale Thursday, September 29. They will be available through Missiontix.com until midnight the day before the show. No Missiontix.com sales on the day of show. We always reserve a number of tickets to be sold at the theater starting one hour before the first show, even when advance tickets are … Continued
Linda Sarsour New York Daily News Scratch me and I bleed Brooklyn. I’m a purebred New Yorker, and we New Yorkers are fast, sarcastic, brilliant, and resilient. I have never not been proud of the people in my city, people who come from all walks of life. We are black, white, Latino, Asian and Arab. … Continued
With all the anti-Arab bashing we see in the news every week, Arab America is determined to expose those who discriminate against our community. We will recognize those who vilify the positive influence and contributions Arabs have made to the fabric of American society. And we will use hummus as our weapon. By naming those … Continued
BY RAMY ZABARAH
Esquire
To be Muslim in 2016 America is to feel like eyes are always on you; like a task as simple as driving a car could end in murder; like any given day you might need to plead for your life with a racist neighbor. Imagine that people who look like you, speak like you, and pray like you are enduring horrific discrimination on a daily basis. Then, watch the man vying to be your country’s next leader add fuel to those flames. Internationally, a small group of fundamentalists dictates your culture’s public image, while in your country, a real estate mogul says you don’t belong in the one place you’ve finally called home.
The gap between liberal and conservative in this country has never been starker in my lifetime, and it seems to be reaching a boiling point. It’s been simmering for the past 15 years. I often think back to 2001, a pivotal year in my experience as an American.
I attended a Saudi-American prep school in Northern Virginia for the first half of my life—one that followed a regular American curriculum, but also required courses in the Arabic language and Islamic studies. For the most part, my school experience was wholly “normal” and “regular.” We wore uniforms, we played basketball against other schools, we even had pep rallies. Nobody treated us differently because we were an Islamic school.
Then 9/11 happened.
Our school received bomb threats on a regular basis for months after the attacks. Evacuations were common. Those days literally looked like an action movie—special police and bomb-sniffing dogs would rush in while we watched from the parking lot. And if it wasn’t some nut-job calling in a bomb threat, it was federal law enforcement harassing my friends’ parents with home raids. Then you’d come across some ultra-patriotic mom going on a xenophobic rant at a soccer game. Needless to say, my parents put me in public school the next fall out of a genuine skepticism that my Saudi-American school could provide a healthy learning environment.
The next few years were strange. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who didn’t share my cultural background. I felt like an outsider. On top of that, I was constantly being reminded—either on TV, the Internet, or at school—that the default mass perception of people like us in the United States was grim: terrorism, despotism, extremism, whatever “ism” you fancy.
By the time I moved to New York in early 2013, it seemed the post-9/11 xenophobia Arab-Americans and Muslims in the U.S. were so used to had finally started to subside. Or maybe it had been overshadowed by more pressing issues like the economy, gay rights, and gun control. Then, in 2015, the tension returned.
Ever since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President last summer, the word “demagogue” has made its way into so many thinkpieces, speeches, and social media posts, you’d think it was never used before. Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines demagogue: a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.
According to a report published by the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, there were 180 reported incidents of anti-Muslim violence between March 2015 and March 2016, a significant uptick that coincides with the rise of Trump. Additionally, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the Trump campaign “is producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom.”
As a 20-something Arab-American man, I can’t help but always be cautious when I’m talking about politics in public, or going through airport security, or stopping to get gas through rural areas in my home state of Virginia. But I don’t even practice my religion, and I’m admittedly not very involved in the Muslim community. Many Muslims in America fear for their lives and the safety of their families simply because they attend a mosque, dress a certain way, or speak a certain language.
A lot has changed since the years after 9/11, and for the first time since then, I feel like an outsider in my own country again—like I’m not quite accepted. I hope that soon we can move on to a future that embraces the American experience from all perspectives and backgrounds, instead of one that pits us against each other. Surely then we can work more productively to solve problems, rather than create them.
Source: www.esquire.com
By Joseph Gallivan Portland Tribune Arabs and non Arabs turned out under alternating blue skies and drizzle at Oaks Park for the Arab American festival called Mahrajan on Saturday. Ranked in a circle around a music stage and portable dance floor were 10 commercial vendors and tables for six non-profits. The vendors were representing pan … Continued
By Michael Jackman
Metro TImes
The Arab American National Museum is hosting a free town hall discussion on surveillance and racial and ethnic profiling. Although many communities are especially concerned about these issues, Arab Americans are perhaps more keenly concerned than most, given the way they’ve been targeted for investigation after 9/11.
It’s been this way for some time. A decade ago, a study funded by the National Institute of Justice found that Arab Americans feared racial profiling and uneven immigration enforcement, and that federal policies guiding law enforcement in their fight against “terrorism” were “poorly defined and inconsistently applied.”
When it comes to the investigations that profiling prompt, surveillance plays an early and major role, one that feeds back into the profiling. Most camera surveillance is purely visual, foregrounding how people look, or what they wear. One doesn’t even have to be suspected of committing a crime to be watched around the clock, a prospect that makes many law-abiding people understandably uneasy.
These issues and more will be aired in a special “Take On Hate” discussion on profiling and surveillance, which will include a screening, audience questions, and a panel discussion. Algerian-American journalist Assia Bounadoui will present a portion of her highly anticipated feature, The Feeling of Being Watched. Muslim civil liberties advocate Dawud Walid will also participate.
The event takes place 6-9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9, at the Arab American National Museum, 13624 Michigan Ave., Dearborn; RSVP in advance for admission.
Source: www.metrotimes.com
Press release: ACCESS Event brings attention to importance of mental health, celebrates local families ACCESS, the nation’s largest Arab American community nonprofit, today supplied over 300 students with backpacks and other school supplies at the ACCESS School-Based Mental Health Initiative Back- to-School Celebration. Participating students from six local elementary and middle schools, along with their parents, … Continued
BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer Democratic presidential nominee, Secretary Hillary Clinton, has developed an ethnic outreach effort to gain votes from various groups, including Arab Americans. Advising her campaign in Arab American outreach is Edward Gabriel, the former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco. Mr. Gabriel has been an active leader in the Arab American community for many … Continued
By Allie Conti
VICE
Stanley Vernon Majors was obsessed with the Lebanese American family next door. The Tulsa, Oklahoma, man stalked the Jabaras, called them “dirty Arabs,” and purposefully ran over the family matriarch with his car last year. And on August 12––a mere eight months after that initial felony assault––cops say he succeeded in killing one of them.
On Tuesday, 61-year-old Majors was charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime in the death of 37-year-old Khalid Jabara. The story became national news due to the apparent Islamophobic motive, but for many, the most disturbing part was that the authorities didn’t keep Majors locked up as he waited to go to trial for vehicular assault. Instead, they let him out on bail and sent him straight back to the woman he allegedly tried to murder.
“My family lived in fear of this man and his hatred for years,” the family said in a statement posted to Facebook on August 15. “Yet in May, not even one year after he ran over our mother and despite our repeated protests, he was released from jail with no conditions on his bond––no ankle monitor, no drug/alcohol testing, nothing.”
Haifa Jabara, Khalid’s mother, echoed those sentiments in a statement on Thursday, saying, “We never imagined that a man who had exhibited such cruelty and violence towards us over a five-year period would be released from prison on bond. I felt unprotected and helpless. We did everything we could to keep our family safe and our tormentor was set free. Today my son is gone, and I feel betrayed by a system that I believed in.”
Majors has pleaded not guilty to the murder; a preliminary hearing has been set for October 5.
Major’s ugly grudge against his neighbors had reportedly been simmering for years. By 2013, Majors’s campaign of harassment against the Jabaras was so severe that the mother, Haifa, filed a restraining order, the Tulsa World reported. She told authorities Majors knocked on her windows late at night, sexually harassed her, and made racist remarks. Khalid Jabara, her now-deceased son, also issued a protective order against Majors in early 2015, saying he had left notes on the Jabara house and even vandalized its interior.
Majors violated his protective order against Haifa in early 2015 by screaming, “Fuck you, and I want to kill you.” He finished chugging a beer just before officers cuffed him.
“He repeatedly attacked our ethnicity and perceived religion, making racist comments,” Khalid Jabara’s sister wrote on Facebook. “He often called us ‘dirty Arabs,’ ‘filthy Lebanese,’ ‘Aye-rabs,’ and ‘Mooslems.'”
Majors was apparently unaware the Jabaras are in fact Orthodox Christians who came to the United States in the 1980s, as the New York Times noted.
In September, he ran over Haifa with his car, giving her a bevy of injuries including a broken shoulder, a collapsed lung, and fractured ribs. When police found him, he was so drunk that he was urinating through his pants. Although he said that Haifa had jumped in front of his car, and that he fled because he was scared, he offered up a motive that might have something to do with the the fact that he had married a man in December 2014.
“Majors remarked that Mrs. Jabara and her family were filthy Lebanese and they throw gay people off roof tops,” an officer wrote in a report, according to the Washington Post.
The notion that Muslims are inherently homophobic and immigration from majority-Muslim countries should be limited has been advanced by Donald Trump in speeches. “Ever since the Orlando massacre, the far right has been going on and on about how Muslims hate gay people and how liberals wont accept that,” said Mark Potok at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “I think there’s been an attempt to stir up animosity toward Muslims on the part of American gay people.”
No one makes that attempt more explicit than Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay Trump supporter and provocateur who has become infamous for supporting a grab bag of far-right causes. “It’s a significant portion of Muslims who simply find our way of life completely unacceptable,” Yiannopoulos recently told VICE. “It’s become dangerous to be gay in America for one simple reason, and that reason is Islam.”
But if it’s dangerous to be gay in America, it’s also dangerous to be a Muslim, or even hail from a Middle Eastern country, as the Jabaras did. According to the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in the aftermath of November’s Bataclan massacre in Paris, Islamophobic violence was the highest it had been since 9/11. Specifically, it called out the rhetoric of Trump and then candidate Ben Carson. The advocacy group pointed to six incidents of violence against American Muslims in the days immediately following Paris attacks. Violence against Muslims remains a constant threat: Earlier this month, an imam and his assistant were shot execution-style, allegedly by a 35-year-old janitor from Brooklyn.
“I definitely believe that tragic incident was symptomatic of the overall rise of Islamophobia in our country,” says Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director at CAIR. “It’s all part of the same package of hate promoted by Trump and Gingrich and Ben Carson.”
A case with eerie similarities to the Tulsa killing is the shooting in February 2015 of three young Muslims by a neighbor who reportedly picked fights with them over their faith. Mohammad Abu-Salha, the father of two of the victims, told Talking Points Memo, “We felt it’s a copycat case… It’s the same story in detail: the angry neighbor, who is racist, bigoted, mad, picking fights for nothing, and then planning his murder on a day when there was no issue or problem or conflict with the family.”
In Major’s case, after he ran over Haifa, prosecutors argued that he was a danger to society. Despite this, he was allowed to post a $60,000 bail and was released. America’s criminal justice system has been increasingly criticized for trapping nonviolent offenders behind bars just because they’re too poor to afford bail, but here is the mirror image of that problem: A violent and clearly disturbed man was allowed to go right back to living next to the family he was fixated on because he was able to buy his way out of jail.
On August 12, Majors knocked on the Jabaras’s window. Khalid, who was home with his father, called 911 and said he had heard his neighbor had obtained a gun, which violated the terms of his release. About 30 minutes later, according to police, Major fired four bullets and killed Jabara. This time, the cops found Majors hiding behind a tree with a six-pack of beer.
“Today, in our pain, we are also keenly aware that this is not just another murder to be added to crime statistics,” Jabara’s sister wrote in her Facebook statement. “Our brother’s death could have been prevented. This is troubling at any time, but profoundly disturbing given the current climate of our country and the increase nationally in cases of hate crimes.”
Source: www.vice.com
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