Table Of ContentArab
Detroit
9/11
GREAT LAKES BOOKS
A complete listing of the books in this series can
be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu
Editor
Charles K. Hyde
Wayne State University
Advisory Editors
Jeffrey Abt Susan Higman Larsen
Wayne State University Detroit Institute of Arts
Fredric C. Bohm Philip P. Mason
Michigan State University Prescott, Arizona and Eagle Harbor,
Michigan
Michael J. Chiarappa
Western Michigan University Dennis Moore
Consulate General of Canada
Sandra Sageser Clark
Michigan Historical Center Erik C. Nordberg
Brian Leigh Dunnigan Michigan Technological University
Clements Library Deborah Smith Pollard
De Witt Dykes University of Michigan–Dearborn
Oakland University David Roberts
Joe Grimm Toronto, Ontario
Bloomfi eld Hills, Michigan Michael O. Smith
Richard H. Harms Wayne State University
Calvin College Joseph M. Turrini
Laurie Harris Wayne State University
Pleasant Ridge, Michigan Arthur M. Woodford
Thomas Klug Harsens Island, Michigan
Marygrove College
Arab
Detroit
9/11
Life in the
Terror Decade
Edited by
Nabeel Abraham,
Sally Howell,
and Andrew Shryock
Wayne State University Press
detroit
© 2011 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.
15 14 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Arab Detroit 9/11 : life in the terror dec ade / edited by Nabeel Abraham, Sally Howell,
and Andrew Shryock.
p. cm.—(Great Lakes books series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 8143- 3500-0 (paper : alk. paper)
1. Arab Americans—M ichigan—Detroit—Social conditions—2 1st century.
2. Arab Americans—M ichigan—Detroit—Economic conditions—2 1st century.
3. Muslims— Michigan—Detroit—Social conditions—2 1st century. 4. Community
life— Michigan—Detroit—History—21st century. 5. D etroit (Mich.)—S ocial
conditions—2 1st century. 6. D etroit (Mich.)—E conomic conditions—2 1st century.
7. Detroit (Mich.)—E thnic relations—H istory—21st century. 8. S eptember 11
Terrorist Attacks, 2001—I nfl uence. 9. National characteristics, American—C ase
studies. 10. Citizenship—U nited States—C ase studies. I. A braham, Nabeel.
II. H owell, Sally. III. Shryock, Andrew.
F575.A65A73 2011
305.8927'073077434—dc23 2011016273
“Arabs Behaving Badly: The Limits of Containment in a Post-9 /11 World” by Nabeel
Abraham © by Nabeel Abraham.
Designed by George Whipple
Typeset by Westchester Book Composition
Composed in Sabon, 10/12.5
Contents
Ac know ledg ments vii
The Terror De cade in Arab Detroit: An Introduction 1
Andrew Shryock, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell
Part 1 THE SHAPE OF ARAB DETROIT
Arab Detroit after 9/11: A Changing Demographic Portrait 29
Kim Schopmeyer
Part 2 AFTERMATH CHRONICLES
Cracking Down on Diaspora: Arab Detroit and America’s War
on Terror 67
Sally Howell and Andrew Shryock
Backlash, Part 2: The Federal Law Enforcement Agenda 87
Sally Howell and Amaney Jamal
Part 3 LOCAL REFRACTIONS
Orthodox, Arab, American: The Flexibility of Christian
Arabness in Detroit 105
Matthew W. Stiffl er
Fighting Our Own Battles: Iraqi Chaldeans and the War on Terror 126
Yasmeen Hanoosh
v
vi Contents
Muslims as Moving Targets: External Scrutiny and Internal Critique
in Detroit’s Mosques 151
Sally Howell
Detroit Transnational: The Interchange Experience in Lebanon and the
United States 186
Kristine J. Ajrouch
Part 4 CIVILIAN STORIES
My Life as a Brown Person 213
Mujan Seif
Subject to Change 221
Khadigah Alasry
Going Places 239
Hayan Charara
And Then You Add the Arab Thing 254
Lawrence Joseph
Part 5 PROTECTIVE SHIELD AND GLASS CEILING
Domestic Foreign Policy: Arab Detroit as a Special Place in the War
on Terror 269
William Youmans
The Arab American National Museum: Sanctioning Arabness for
a Post- 9/11 America 287
Rachel Yezbick
Toward Electability: Public Offi ce and the Arab Vote 315
Abdulkader H. Sinno and Eren Tatari
Arabs Behaving Badly: The Limits of Containment in a Post-9 /11
World 347
Nabeel Abraham
Part 6 HARD LESSONS
The New Order and Its Forgotten Histories 381
Andrew Shryock, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell
Contributors 395
Index 399
Ac know ledg ments
This book has evolved over a period of ten years. It would be impossible
to thank all the people who coaxed it into being, but we do want to ac-
knowledge the efforts of friends, colleagues, and critics who w ere extremely
helpful to us. First, we would like to thank our contributors, both the sea-
soned Detroit hands and the young authors who are publishing for the fi rst
time. It is not easy to write about traumatic events, the lives shaped by
them, or the government policies built on them. Many of the essays in this
book took nerve to produce. We are glad brave writers came our way.
We thank Jim West for letting us use the image that graces the cover of
this book; Elena Godina for designing our map of Arab Detroit; and John
Donohue for expert copyediting and production work. We are happy to re-
peat our thanks to Kathy Wildfong and Kristin Harpster Lawrence, our
editors at Wayne State University Press, who w ere as deft in their handling
of this volume as they w ere over a de cade ago with Arab Detroit: From
Margin to Mainstream. In a book about dramatic change, a healthy dose of
professional continuity is a welcome gift! The two external reviewers, and
the press’s in- house reader, helped us improve a complex manuscript with
good advice on structure and style.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the hundreds of Arab and Chal-
dean Detroiters who have supported our research. The agendas that propel
critical scholarship are hard to fathom even in ordinary times; but in times
of crisis and vulnerability, they can seem incomprehensible. To all who un-
derstood what was important to us as scholars, and to those who w ere will-
ing to share their knowledge, contacts, and time, we say: thank you for
helping us create this chronicle of life in the Terror Dec ade.
vii
The Terror De cade in Arab Detroit
An Introduction
andrew shryock, nabeel abraham,
and sally howell
This volume is the latest in a rich tradition of scholarship on the Middle
Eastern immigrant and ethnic communities of greater Detroit, a metropoli-
tan area that is home to several of North America’s oldest and largest Leba-
nese, Palestinian, Yemeni, and Iraqi populations. Ten years ago, we pub-
lished Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream (Abraham and Shryock
2000), a study that explored the history and cultural development of these
communities, beginning in the late nineteenth century, when immigrants
from Ottoman Syria fi rst settled in the city’s nascent industrial zones, and
ending in the late twentieth century, when Arab and Chaldean Americans
dominated Detroit’s small business sector and were key players in multi-
cultural politics. The communities depicted in Arab Detroit were growing
rapidly, nearly doubling in size between 1990 and 2000. They w ere made
up of poor and working- class people, who w ere disproportionately newcom-
ers, and an energetic set of wealthy entrepreneurs, but most of the city’s Arab
and Arabic-s peaking populations w ere situated comfortably in middle-c lass
suburbs. Although they had been subjected to stereotyping and marginaliza-
tion for dec ades, the Arab community had built powerful institutions by the
year 2000, and they w ere fl exing their muscle as a local and national pol iti-
cal constituency.
The vibrancy of Arab Detroit in the 1990s guaranteed that our portrait of
it would quickly go out of date. Like Arabs in the New World (Abraham
and Abraham 1983), the fi rst book to engage with the full spectrum of De-
troit’s Arab immigrant populations, Mary Sengstock’s pioneering work on
Chaldeans (1982), and Barbara Aswad’s (1974) early accounts of Arab im-
migrants in Dearborn, Michigan, Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream
has made the inevitable passage from contemporary survey to historical
1
2 Andrew Shryock, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell
document. The essays we present in this volume will refresh and update in-
formation that appeared in the earlier work, but the effect we hope to create
is not that of a sequel or even a series. Too much has changed in Detroit
over the last de cade. In countless ways—s ize, economic clout, levels of cul-
tural inclusion, and continued po liti cal vulnerability— Arab Detroit as it
exists today would be a shock to observers from the 1990s.
A City of Easy Targets
It is tempting to attribute this discontinuity to a single, traumatic source:
the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. “Post-9 /11” is now universal
shorthand for the age in which we live, but what this period will mean in
American history and how it should be interpreted are matters still open to
dispute. Since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has introduced the world
to a new kind of war—a n overwhelming barrage of foreign military cam-
paigns, domestic security crackdowns, overhauls of international monetary
and banking protocols, and a radical reconfi guration of the rights of Ameri-
can citizens, resident aliens, and targeted communities. These projects, known
collectively as the “War on Terror,” were the policy centerpiece of the George
W. Bush administration (2001–2 009), and the Obama administration has
kept most of this apparatus fi rmly in place. Because the principal targets of
the War on Terror w ere commonly understood to be Arab or Muslim— all
of the 9/11 hijackers fi t this description, as do all of the countries the United
States has invaded since 2001—i t was inevitable that federal authorities
would turn to Detroit in their pursuit of enemies and friends. Within hours
of the 9/11 attacks, hundreds of journalists and investigators w ere on the
ground in Detroit, looking for stories, suspects, and in for mants. The fi rst
terror- related arrests were made in Dearborn on September 17, 2001; by
early 2002, Dearborn (not New York) was the fi rst American city to have a
local offi ce of Homeland Security; by 2003, Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) headquarters in Detroit was home to the largest counterterrorism in-
vestigation in U.S. history.1
Against this backdrop, the term “post-9 /11” holds ominous meaning for
Detroit’s Arab and Muslim Americans. It stands for a time/space in which
they were linked to enemy Others and w ere expected to prove their loyalty
to the nation-s tate in ways other Americans w ere not. We have decided to
call the fi rst ten years of this era “the Terror Dec ade.” This term foregrounds
the indispensible role terrorism has played in justifying key initiatives of the
Bush and Obama administrations. It also describes the climate of fear that
dominated the post-9 /11 era, in which many Americans believed they could
be attacked by terrorists at any moment; Arab and Muslim Americans be-
