Arab-Americans Tell Their Own Story
A visit to Michigan’s new immigrant museum.
BY PAUL M. BARRETT
Thursday, May 5, 2005 12:01 a.m.
DEARBORN, Mich.–In a compact stone and glass building here, the creators of the Arab American National Museum seek to set the record straight.
…On the museum’s second floor are three galleries concerning immigration, life in America and the contributions of the likes of surgical innovator Michael DeBakey, Kinkos founder Paul Orfalea (whose kinky hair led to the famous copy-store name), former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, consumer-rights activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader and prominent Republicans John Sununu, Spencer Abraham and Mitch Daniels–Arab-Americans all. You might have guessed zany rocker Frank Zappa, but how about Tiny Tim, whose real name was Herbert Khaury? Overall, there are 4.5 million Arab-Americans, according to the museum–far more than the 1.2 million estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000. For a variety of reasons, many people don’t check the box for “Arab,” Mr. Ahmed said."
A lot of us in Windsor like going into Deaborn for the Arab restaurants, as we do going into Mexican Village for the same reason. Also Detroit and suburban Detroit have the largest population of Caldeans outside of the Middle East.
Chaldeans and Assyrians are Christian Arab populations. Then there are other Christian groups, too. There happens to be a thriving Maronite church with a BIG congregation not far from where I live. Although I’ve not attended, I understand that the liturgy used to be conducted in Arabic if it still isn’t.
Indeed. It bothers me to no end that people seem to equate being Arab with being Muslim. There are plenty of Arab Jews and Christians and Muslims come in all different colors.
Personally, I find it bothersome that we continue to look for and find ways to separate ourselves from each other rather than to find our similarities and common grounds.
I am what I am, you are what you are, but we are both humans, with far more in common than different.
I am all for remembering our heritage, and celebrating diversity, but I would sure like to see some coming together rather than all this heightened differentiation that has been building.
In Syriac, actually, which is a dialect of Aramaic (the “classical” form of which was the language Jesus spoke). There are a couple of lines of Aramaic in the KJV Bible. The one I remember is “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtni?” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It’s a Semitic language (some others being Arabic, Hebrew, and Amharic). The grammar of that quote, and part of the vocab (except for the last word), is very close to the Arabic version. I think that Syriac is almost extinct as a spoken language, but it was very widespread at one time.
I have a Syriac Bible around somewhere, I think. Several letters of [u]he alphabet[/u] are very similar to their Hebrew equivalents in certain handwriting styles. There are several other styles show [u]here[/u].
As for Christians, don’t forget the Copts–mostly in Egypt. One of my Arabic instructors was a Copt. Another was Greek Orthodox–lots of Greek influence in Alexandria.
