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American Arabs are consumed with the Middle East's many conflicts, especially the conflict between Israel the brutal occupier and the occupied Palestinians. It's an important issue. But the Middle East conflict often attracts more attention than others that are just as important, including issues that are even more threatening to American Arabs. Here is a little harsh reality that we need to address if we ever intend to move beyond the purgatory we now live.
We have the usual problems of divisions between Muslims and Christians that are taboo and we are forbidden to discuss. Verboten. Haram. Whatever you want to call it but Arab Muslims and Arab Christians really don’t get along. But thankfully, I guess, the conflict is the Middle East is so bad that we often feel embarrassed to speak about those challenges that separate us. We come together to hate or cry or oppose, but not to improve ourselves.
As a consequence, Muslim organizations are slowly and steadily stripping Arab Christians of their rights to speak on behalf of “Arab” issues. The conflicts are no longer secular. They are religious. Many Muslims, in fact, who are secular, are also being intimidated into obsequious silence by the religious extremists who dominate many of the discussions.
All you have to do is look at any of the vast array of conferences and events held at any given time in the American Arab community. If it isn’t about bashing Israel or raising money (guilty American Arab gilt) for the Palestinians, the talk focuses on “Christian Zionism,” or the headlock that AIPAC – the Israeli organization that many Arabs envy for its power – has on almost all of our Congressmen and women. One Congresswoman, Jane Hartmann, doesn’t even pretend. She’s just a “political pimp” for a foreign country.
The conferences focus on the past, rarely on the future. They complain and object but rarely offer solutions. They bemoan the situation but rarely suggest how the situation can be changed. Changed realistically. Most want the American Arab community to return back to 1920 when Palestine, for example, had hope of becoming an independent Arab country where Jews, Christians and Muslims could live together in piece. Well, not really together. Christians lived among Christians. Jews lived among Jews. And Muslims lived among Muslims. But it is nice to pretend we all got along, I guess.
Pretending in the American Arab community is so much easier that addressing the reality.
And the reality of the American Arab community is horrible.
Our community is oftentimes among the largest segment of crime. In areas of the United States where American Arabs are congregated, we make up a large share of those who are arrested.
Every week, the newspapers in Chicago are filled with police reports, and almost always, as many as 20 percent involve American Arabs. Adults. Citizens. Immigrants. And even our children who have found it convenient to live in-between the two worlds of their distant parents (who live in America physically but are mentally still living in a tent back home) and in the harsh reality of an hateful, anti-Arab American where they are singled out, picked on and harassed in school classrooms, in the school yard and even at their parttime jobs.
We have a high rate of social problems, some stemming from our male-dominated and driven culture where girls are looked down upon and forced to dress perfectly and maintain “modest” lives, while the men themselves often dress like slobs, drink, gamble, swear and have affairs with girls who come into their stores in minority neighborhoods in Chicago, Detroit and elsewhere.
Of course, I have to stereotype a bit here. We don’t keep statistics on our problems. We do keep statistics on how many Jewish settlers have moved into lands stolen from our people. We keep statistics on how many dollars are donated to elected officials through AIPAC’s spider web of clout and influence. We keep statistics on bigotry and discrimination, although the focus has shifted from bigotry against Arabs – the secular side is losing – to bigotry against Muslims.
Though I am a Christian Arab, for most Americans I am just another Muslim. In fact, I am Muslim by culture. A minority living in a culture dominated by one religion. Our concerns do not count any more. And when we write things that the extremists don’t like and the silent majority would just as soon pretend doesn’t happen, we are easily targeted and ostracized.
In the Chicago suburb where I live, 13 homes were listed in the local paper as being foreclosed on by the banking industry. Four of those homes are owned by American Arabs and range from $250,000 in value to $1.2 million. We’re not a poor community, although we like to act that way when it comes to helping each other.
Our newspapers come in two categories. Those that deal with Middle East politics and those that try to also deal with other topics, like the growing social challenges undermining our community. Seniors get no services. Domestic violence is on the rise – in fact, some very young Arab girls are forced into marriage through their religious institutions, never formally married in civil society. Years later, they are tossed on the street with their children. Women that have been married and divorced wear a scarlet burden on their heads.
For years one of the most powerful street gangs in Chicago was run by Arab youth. We dealt with that by pretending it wasn’t so.
It’s in all this that we become even easier to pick on. It is because of our weakness and inability to achieve self-strengthening that we become easier targets for the mainstream news media that targets us, ignores us when we achieve and exaggerates our alleged “crimes.” The good in the Arab community is never good enough and the bad is always worse than it is.
We’re easily fired from jobs, denied jobs and demoted at our jobs. Our community organizations get little respect from the elected officials. Those members of our community who do rise to some levels of power are basically engaged in a modern form of plantation politics. They get a good job in exchange for showing support for the people who hire them in government. They tend to serve as great off-sets to claims that we are deprived of community services and are used to shove in the faces of those in the community who wonder why we never get what is our due.
Some people will look at this and say, Hey Hanania, why are you airing the dirty laundry. But maybe a few smart and intelligent members of the community might find the courage to see that we are in deep trouble. We need help. But until we are strong enough to help ourselves by becoming engaged members of the society in which we live – not as individuals but as communities – we can’t right the wrongs that take place back home.
-- Ray Hanania
