Arab Detroit Research Articles

Searching for Love and Test-Tube Babies: Iraqi Refugee Men in Reproductive Exile on the Margins of Detroit

ABSTRACTIn this article, I explore the reproductive health problems faced by Iraqi refugees, one of America’s most rapidly growing immigrant populations. Based on anthropological research in “Arab Detroit,” the “capital” of Arab America, I explore the experiences of Iraqi refugee men seeking medical help for their infertility. Most required intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a variant of in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, in America’s privatized medical system—where a single cycle can cost more than $12,000—few could possibly afford this assisted reproductive technology (ART). Although Iraqi refugees had diasporic dreams of making a test-tube baby, they were stuck in a situation of “reproductive exile”—forced out of their home country by war, but unable to access costly ARTs in the country that led to their displacement. I elaborate on the concept of reproductive exile, attempting to translate Iraqi refugee men’s reproductive agency and desires, but also their profound disappointments.

How the Central Intelligence Agency recruited Arab Detroit: Government communication, interpellation and citizenship

ABSTRACTIn 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employed a multipronged communications campaign to encourage Arab Americans in Detroit, MI, to apply for employment. Adapting Althusser’s notion of interpellation, this article examines how this government agency’s communications exacerbated the conditional, incomplete status of Arab American citizenship in post-9/11 America. At this precarious time, facially inclusive gestures can be understood as exclusive practices. This beckons more scholarly attention to how government communication implicates citizenship.

The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship

The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship

The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship

The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship

Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade by Nabeel Abraham, Sally Howell, and Andrew Shryock, eds. (review)

Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade by Nabeel Abraham, Sally Howell, and Andrew Shryock, eds. (review)

"Flying While Arab": the Experiences of Arab Americans in the Wake of 9/11

Book Review| July 01 2012 "Flying While Arab": the Experiences of Arab Americans in the Wake of 9/11 Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit after 9/11. By Detroit Arab American Study Team. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009. x + 299 pp. Graphs, tables, index, and bibliography. $42.50 (cloth).Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience after 9/11. By Louise A. Cainkar. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009. xii + 325 pp. Graphs, tables, notes, index, and bibliography. $35 (cloth). Akram Fouad Khater Akram Fouad Khater Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2012) 31 (4): 74–79. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.31.4.0074 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Akram Fouad Khater; "Flying While Arab": the Experiences of Arab Americans in the Wake of 9/11. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2012; 31 (4): 74–79. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.31.4.0074 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Reviews

92 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXV, No.2, Winter 2012 Book Reviews Edited by Nadia Barsoum TOGETHER THEY FOUGHT: Gandhi-Nehru correspondence 19211948 , edited by Uma Iyengar and Lalitha Zackariah. Published by Oxford University Press, 2011, 558pp. Carefully selected, judiciously annotated and chronologically arranged, this book takes the readers on a journey through the political arena of a nation in pangs of birth and into the inner workings of two brilliant minds of the twentieth century. MONUMENTAL MATTERS: The Powers, Subjectivity, and Space of India’s Mughal Architecture by Santhi Kavuri-Bauer, Published by Duke University Press, 2011, 216pp. The author focuses on the prominent role of Mughal architecture in the construction and contestation of the India National landscape. She examines the representation and eventual preservation of the monuments, from their disrepair in the colonial past to their present status as protected heritage sites. Since independence, the state has attempted to construct a narrative of Mughal monuments as symbols of a unified, secular nation. ARAB DETROIT 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade edited by Nabeel Abraham, Sally Howell, and Andrew Shryock. Published by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 2011, pp. 413. This Volume is the latest in a rich tradition of scholarship on the Middle Eastern immigrant and ethnic communities of greater Detroit is a metropolitan area that is home to several North America’s oldest and largest Lebanese, Palestinian, Yemeni, and Iraqi populations. CHURCHILL’S SECRET WAR: The British Empire and The Ravaging of India during World War II by Madhusree Mukerjee Published by Basic Books( a member of the Perseus Books Group, New York, 2010, pp. 332. In this historical study Mukerjee combines close research with a vivid narrative to place this overlooked tragedy into the largest context of the Second World War, India’s fight for freedom and Churchill’s legacy. AN ARAB’S JOURNEY TO COLONIAL SPANISH AMERICA: The travel of Elias al-Musili in the Seventeenth Century. Translated from the Arabic and edited by Caesar E. Farah. Published by Syracuse University Press, New York 2003, pp.117. This study is historically important; it is a document for scholars of early modern history and of the church in Latin America. Al-Musili shares his perceptions of native peoples, their customs , beliefs and treatments by Spanish conquistadors. CITY OF STRANGERS: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain by Andrew M. Gardner. Published by Cornell University Press, New York 2010, pp.188. Gardner has produced a useful analysis of labor migration both in Bahrain and elsewhere in the region. The book sheds light on a population of skilled and unskilled workers in the Middle East’s fastest growing region. The author examines the labor’s life and the many ways they adapt and resist, as well as the ways they are beaten down. FAITH AND POWER: Religion and Politics in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis. Published by Oxford University Press, New York 2010, pp.208. Lewis examines the role of religion in the Middle East, revealing how it has shaped society for good and for ill. To realize this, Lewis has brought together writings on religion and government in the Middle East, highlighting an interrelationship quite different than in the Western world. The collection includes previously unpublished writings, English originals of articles published before only in foreign languages, and an introduction to the book by Lewis. ISLAM’S QUANTUM QUESTION: Reconciling Muslim Tradition and Modern Science by Nidhal Guessoum. Published by I. B. Touris, New York 2011, pp.403. Guessoum suggests that the Islamic world, just like the Christian, needs to take scientific questions with the utmost seriousness if it is to recover its true heritage and integrity. Islam’s “Quantum Question” , he argues can be answered by a credible harmonization of Qur’anic belief and scientific truth. ENGAGING EXTREMISTS: Trade-offs. Timing and Diplomacy edited by I. William Zartman and Guy Oliver Faure. Published by United States Institute of Peace, Washington 2011, pp.315. This volume explores the actual complexity of the subject of terrorism. In the face of terrorism and militant extremism, states must strike a delicate balance between isolation and engagement. This study provides valuable insight...

The Columbia sourcebook of Muslims in the United States

to an Muslim PanoramaChapter 1. Whispers and Echoes: Before World War 1. Omar ibn Sayyid, Autobiography of Omar ibn Sayyid (1831) 2. Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb, in America (1893) 3. Edward Wilmot Blyden, Islam in the Western Soudan (1902) 4. George L. Root, Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (1903, revised 1916) 5. WPA Interviews with Mary Juma and Mike Abdallah (1939)Chapter 2. Contact and Divergence: Immigrant and African from World War to 1965 1. Pir Inayat Khan, 1910-1912 (c. 1925) 2. Sunrise, I Am a Moslem (1921), True Salvation of the 'American Negroes': Real Solution of the Negro (1923), Crescent or Cross: Negro May Aspire to Any Position Under Without Discrimination (1923), and Flora-And Dead (1924) 3. Noble Drew Ali, Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple (1927) 4. Shaikh Daoud Ahmed Faisal, Al-Islam: Religion of Humanity (1950) 5. Imam Vehby Isma'il, Our Prophet, (1959) 6. Abdo Elkholy, Arab Moslems in the United (1966) 7. Piri Thomas, God, Ain't You for Everybody? from Down These Mean Streets (1967) 8. Elijah Muhammad, What the Want and What the Believe, from Message to the Blackman in America (1965) 9. Malcolm X, Interview with Al-Muslimoon (1965)Chapter 3. After 1965: Racial, Ethnic, and Religious Diversities 1. Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, The Inner Qur'an, from and World Peace (1987) 2. W. D. Mohammed, Historic Atlanta Address (1978) 3. Nation of Gods and Earths, What We Teach, Allah, and Supreme Mathematics (1992) 4. Frances Trix, Prologue to Spiritual Discourse: Learning with an Master (1993) 5. Minister Louis Farrakhan, Million Man March Address (1995) 6. Jeffrey Lang, Struggling to Surrender: Some Impressions of an Convert to (1995) 7. Sally Howell, Finding the Straight Path: Conversation with Mohsen and Lila Amen About Life, and Family in Dearborn, in Arab Detroit: Margin to Mainstream (2000) 8. Damarys Ocana, Our Stories: Leap of Faith, in Latina Magazine (2004) 9. Horizons, Matrimonials (2005) 10. Asra Q. Nomani, Standing Alone in Mecca: Woman's Struggle for the Soul of (2005)Chapter 4. Women, Gender, and Sexuality in 1. Leila Ahmed, From Abu Dhabi to in Border Passage: Cairo to America-A Woman's Journey (2000) 2. Carol L. Anway, Daughters of Another Path: Experiences of Women Choosing (1996) 3. Tarajee Abdur-Rahim, Interview in Jihad: After Malcolm X (1993) 4. Asma Gull Hasan, Muslims: New Generation (2000) 5. Azizah al-Hibri, An to Muslim Women's Rights, in Windows of Faith: Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America (2002) 6. Amina Wadud, Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's (1999) 7. Khalida Saed, On the Edge of Belonging, in Living Outloud: Muslim Women Speak (2005) 8. Imam Zaid Shakir, An Examination of the Issue of Female Leadership (2005) 9. Laury Silvers, Islamic Jurisprudence, 'Civil' Disobedience, and Woman-Led Prayer (2005) 10. Ingrid Mattson, Can a Woman Be an Imam? Debating Form and Function in Muslim Women's Leadership (2005)Chapter 5. Muslim Politics and Civic Engagement After 9/11 1. Council of American-Islamic Relations, The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States (2005) 2. Laila Al-Marayati, American Muslim Charities: Easy Targets in the War on Terror, in Pace Law Review (2005) 3. United of America v. Earnest James Ujaama (2002) 4. Fiqh Council of North America, Fatwa Against Terrorism (2005) 5. Omid Safi, Muslim, Being After 9/11, in Taking Back Islam: Reclaim Their Faith (2002) 6. Yaphett El-Amin for [Missouri] Senate District 4 (2006) 7. Khaled Abou El Fadl, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (2003) 8. Shamim A. Siddiqui, Islamic Movement in America-Why? in and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects (1999) 9. Congress, A New Guide to Muslim Interfaith Dialogue (2006) 10. Patricia S. Maloof and Fariyal Ross-Sherriff, Challenges of Resettlement and Adaptation of Muslim Refugees, in Muslim Refugees in the United States: Guide for Service Providers (2003)Chapter 6. Muslim Spirituality and Religious Life 1. Betty Hasan Amin, Hajj in a Wheelchair, Azizah Magazine (2002) 2. Abdul Rauf, Who Is God? in Qur'an for Children (1995) 3. Shakina Reinhertz, Women Called to the Path of Rumi: Way of the Whirling Dervish (2001) 4. Tazim R. Kassam, The Daily (Du'a) of Shi'a Isma'ili Muslims (2001) 5. Aminah McCloud and Frederick Thaufeer al-Deen, Question of Faith for Muslim Inmates (1999) 6. Suhail Mulla, Online Advice About Muslim Youth (2004 and 2005) 7. Medical Association of North America (IMANA), Islamic Medical Ethics: IMANA Perspective (2005) 8. Yahia Abdul-Rahman and Abdullah S. Tug, Introduction to LARIBA Financing (1998) 9. Capital D, Culture of Terrorism, from Insomnia (2004) 10. Hamza Yusuf, to Purification of the Heart (2004)AcknowledgmentsGlossary of TermsFurther Reading

Cracking Down on Diaspora: Arab Detroit and America's "War on Terror"

[Note to Readers: This essay was submitted to Anthropological Quarterly on March 14, 2003. Since then, U.S. has invaded Iraq, deposed Saddam Hussein, and commenced its military occupation of that country. We have decided not to update our arguments, largely because recent events support our original conclusions ways we had not entirely anticipated. In a brief postscript, we will try to explain how.] Introduction It is hard now to portray Arab Detroit outside framework provided by attacks of September 11, 2001. idea, popular not so long ago, that Arabs of metropolitan Detroit had finally entered cultural mainstream, producing U.S. senators (Spencer Abraham) and union bosses (Steve Yokich, President of UAW) and captains of industry (Jacques Nasser, CEO of Ford), is likely to be dismissed today as wishful thinking. Once hailed as immigrant success story, as the capital of Arab America, image of Arab Detroit changed within hours of 9/11 attacks. Suddenly, it was a scene of threat, divided loyalties, and potential backlash. In suburb of Dearborn, home to 30,000 Arab Americans, began, after 9/11, to describe their neighborhoods as ghettoes and enclaves, a terminology of Otherness that was popular 19th century newspaper accounts of Detroit's newly arrived immigrants from Mt. Lebanon. Non-Arabs, for their part, began to use terms like you people when talking to Arab neighbors, relatives, and friends. In language of polite society, you people is replaced by unctuous, incessant references to the Muslim American or the Arab American community, a double-edged jargon that effectively subordinates individual citizens to a logic of collective responsibility even as it protects them from accusations of collective guilt. The 9/11 attacks, Arabs Detroit tell set us back a hundred years. collapse of history is a powerful motif. It captures much of what is happening Detroit. Arab community has played a critical role development of Detroit's economy and culture throughout 20th century, and its influence on high politics and everyday life Arab homelands-which are linked to Detroit by an irregular flow of money, information, ideas, and people-is so pervasive, so taken-for-granted, that scholars of Arab immigration to Americas are only now beginning to study it systematically (Khater 2000). As Bush administration's War on Terror expands, however, Arab Detroit's rich history of domestic integration and transnational connection is truncated, questioned, re-politicized, Americanized, and selectively erased. This radical transformation is rooted anxiety about boundaries: Arabs and Muslims are clearly in Detroit, with us, but their hearts might still be over there, with them. opposition is stark, and unrealistic, yet having it both ways, cultivating an identity that is both here and there-a sensible option that, an era of multicultural tolerance, is still possible for many immigrant and ethnic Americans-is no longer a position Arabs Detroit can easily embrace. defense of boundaries, we will argue, only accentuates centrality of state placing them; it also points to moral dimension of boundary maintenance, to being on right side of line and law. Rules, regulations, security protocols, and law enforcement technologies are never adequate to task of moralizing national boundaries. Loyalty to state (also known as patriotism) is affective medium which proper identity placement is made and measured. In aftermath of 9/11, Arab and Muslim Americans have been compelled, time and again, to apologize for acts they did not commit, to condemn acts they never condoned, and to openly profess loyalties that, for most U.S. citizens, are merely assumed. Moreover, Arabs Detroit have been forced to distance themselves from Arab political movements, ideologies, causes, religious organizations, and points of view that are currently at odds with U. …

New Images of Arab Detroit: Seeing Otherness and Identity through the Lens of September 11

Dans le sillage des attaques terroristes du 11 septembre 2001, les images et les representations de et sur la communaute arabe-americaine de Detroit, en l'espace d'un instant, furent profondement alterees avec, notamment, la resurgence d'une imagerie de l'alterite et de la marginalisation centree sur l'identite musulmane. En tant qu'anthropologue ayant depuis une quinzaine d'annees contribue a travers son travail d'anthropologie visuelle a la representation de la communaute arabe de Detroit, l'A. juge que son propre travail de representation, et sa capacite de representer, ont egalement ete radicalement alteres par le 11 septembre. Il propose un bref commentaire de cette alteration et de ses effets.

Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream

Metropolitan Detroit is home to one of the largest, most diverse Arab communities outside the Middle East, yet the complex world Arabic-speaking immigrants have created there is barely visible on the landscape of ethnic America. In this volume, Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock bring together the work of twenty-five contributors to create a richly detailed portrait of Arab Detroit. The book goes behind the bulletproof glass in Iraqi Chaldean liquor stores. It explores the role of women in a Sunni mosque and the place of nationalist politics in a Coptic church. It follows the careers of wedding singers, Arabic calligraphers, restaurant owners, and pastry chefs. It examines the agendas of Shia Muslim activists and Washington-based lobbyists and looks at the intimate politics of marriage, family honor, and adolescent rebellion. Memoirs and poems by Lebanese, Chaldean, Yemeni, and Palestinian writers anchor the book in personal experience, while over fifty photographs provide a backdrop of vivid, often unexpected, images. In their efforts to represent an ethnic/immigrant community that is flourishing on the margins of pluralist discourse, the contributors to this book break new ground in the study of identity politics, transnationalism, and diaspora cultures.

Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream

Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream

Arab Detroit: from margin to mainstream

Arab Detroit: from margin to mainstream

Mainstreaming Arabs: Filmmaking as image making in tales from Arab Detroit

The documentary video, Tales from Arab Detroit, is enjoying a rare blend of critical and popular success. This essay is an attempt to explain why the video is so popular with American audiences (Arab and non‐Arab alike). Special attention is given to (1) the representational strategies the makers of Tales used to shape their video; (2) the identity politics underlying these strategies; and (3) how interpretive differences among the filmmakers culminated in a video that resembles, in unforeseen ways, the Arab community it depicts. The essay doubles as a critique of “main‐streaming,” a representational technique that dominates sympathetic portrayals of Others in American popular media. Tales, it is argued, possesses all the strengths and weaknesses of this technique.

Cultural resilience through change: Finding the theme for tales from Arab Detroit

In this essay, I will discuss issues that guided me throughout the making of the documentary video, Tales From Arab Detroit. (1) Problems of re‐presentation of individuals from an Arab American community of great diversity, with reference to race/ethnicity, social values, class, age, religion, differences in national background and generational presence in the U.S. (2) Attempts to reconcile the divergent expectations of funders, co‐producer, sponsors, participants and audiences in producing this documentary. (3) How to effectively challenge racist notions of Arabs propagated in popular media and educational texts, and which have probably influenced audience preconceptions of the community.

From the delta to Detroit: Packaging a folk epic for a new folk

This paper provides a narrative account of the making of the video, Tales from Arab Detroit: Abu Zayd Comes to America. It focuses upon the original project which involved bringing Egyptian epic‐singers to Detroit to perform selections from the epic of the Banî Hilâl tribe and their hero, Abu Zayd, in September 1993. The paper offers a brief background to the epic tradition itself, an analysis of two of the Detroit performances, a critique of the portrayal of the singers found in the final version of the video, and concludes with a textual ethnographer's thoughts about ethnographic filmmaking.

Picturing women, class, and community in Arab Detroit: The strange case of Eva Habib

This essay explores the on‐going struggle to reveal and conceal the image of Eva Habib, an Arab American woman who worked in a Detroit factory and was photographed in her coveralls circa 1925. Eva's image has been a source of controversy in Detroit's Arab community since it first became public in the 1980s. I chart the evolution of this controversy, examine the interests of the parties involved, and draw conclusions about how this controversial image simultaneously undermines and reinforces popular notions of women, work, and class among Arab Americans.