The Arab American News
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FL Attorney General agrees to Muslim advisory group
TALLAHASSEE In a meeting this week with state and national Muslim leaders in Tallahassee, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum agreed to establish a Muslim community advisory group. The meeting came following a controversy in which McCollum's office reportedly directed staff throughout the state to view the controversial anti-Islam...Sheriff highlights problem of teen dating violence
DETROIT Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans is trying to raise public awareness around the issue of dating violence among teenagers. According to recent studies, 20 percent of teenage girls and young women have experienced some form of dating violence and even more endure emotional abuse. "This is something...SMART bus system charged with ethnic harassment
Hearings to be held in March before the Michigan Civil Rights Commission will determine whether a Farmington Hills man will be compensated for lost wages and humiliation as a result of harassment he allegedly faced as an employee of SMART, metro Detroit's bus system. A bus mechanic for 15 years, Mazyn Barash quit his job in 2004 after...Students focus on global warming
DEARBORN Students at the University of Michigan Dearborn and Henry Ford Community College joined tens of thousands of others across the nation to focus on the problem of global warming on Jan. 30th and 31st. As part of a national initiative called "Focus the Nation," UMD and HFCC students aired an interactive webcast called "The...Former Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Sr. dies
DEARBORN Former Dearborn Mayor John B. O'Reilly, Sr., father of the current mayor of Dearborn, who led the City through two terms from 1978-1985, died on Wednesday, February 6 at his Lakeport, MI home. He was 89. Remembered for his phrase: "Good neighbors make good neighborhoods," as mayor he moved Dearborn forward in a time...Zaha Hadid’s design selected for MSU’s Broad Art Museum
LANSING World-renowned architect Zaha Hadid of London has been selected as the winner in the design competition for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Hadid joined the Broads at two public events where MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon announced the winner. Zaha Hadid "With today's announcement of...PBS special to premier in Detroit
International pop star Chantal Chamandy is no ordinary international pop star. She speaks six languages, has released hit songs in Canada and throughout Europe and has recorded a grand concert at the Pyramids in Egypt to be aired on U.S. television in March. Chantal Chamandy She's a very international pop star. Her father is...
Arab Americans getting close to Obama?
February 9th, 20080 United States' politics have become intimately tied to Arab politics since 9/11 and the start of the ongoing war in Iraq. In a 2007 Zogby poll, sixty one percent of Arab American voters cited Iraq as the top issue in the election. Sixty six percent of Arab American voters also ranked Palestine very high on the list of issues of...Kilpatrick must resign
There's simply no question that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick should resign his post as mayor of the city of Detroit. Kilpatrick's public philandering, as bad as it is, is no surprise. But public officials are expected, are elected, to uphold the law and to set high moral standards. We expect our public officials to be...Harkat jailed
Mohamed Harkat, one of the five Muslim men subjected to security certificates in Canada because of suspected links to terrorism, was arrested on January 29 and thrown into jail. The five are resisting deportation to countries where they risk mistreatment and death. Police and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) agents took...Ottawa woman makes modern hijabs
The hijab will never be the same, not after what Abeer Al-Azzawi has done to it. She has produced a form-fitting hijab, which Jessica Stewin, writing in the University of Manitoba student paper, says should put an end to sports bodies' concerns about safety. Abeer's hijabs are all made in Ottawa, and so naturally she produces...Trial for terror suspect
Moroccan Saοd Namouh was in a Quebec court on January 31, charged with editing jihadist propaganda videos, including some showing the interrogation and execution of Iraqi police and others how to make suicide belts. He is said to have received $800 from a contact in Vienna to buy a weapon. An RCMP officer claimed that he was...Israel blamed in death of Canadian
Israel was at fault in the deaths of four observers from the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization, including Canadian Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener. That was the finding made public February 1 by a Canadian Forces Board of Inquiry. The incident occurred during the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict. The observers were killed by...Khan is back
Welcome back, Wajid Khan. MP Wajid Khan was forced out of the Conservative parliamentary caucus when he was faced with charges of overspending during his campaign for office. He was elected as a Liberal but after serving Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper as an envoy to bring back a report on the Middle East and...Afghan torture scandal widens
After the Conservative Harper government admitted that it had stopped transferring prisoners to Afghan authorities last November following evidence of torture, new evidence has surfaced showing that Canadian officials were aware of torture at least as far back as April, 2007. As with the earlier revelations, the new information......
The tragic future of Iraq
Any analysis of the current state of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq that relied solely on the U.S. government, the major candidates for president or the major media outlets in the United States for information would be hard pressed to find any bad news. In a State of the Union address which had everything except a "Mission...
Arab Americans and Obama’s false hope
February 9th, 20080 At what point does an individual stop supporting the lesser of two evils? The question has become particularly important in the Democratic primary race, as one man has ascended to political stardom, ostensibly breaking free from the evils of mainstream politics and creating a platform based on hope and change. This transcendent figure is...‘Persepolis’ provides window on lives of Iranians
In recent years, there's been a crop of memoirs from young to middle-aged Iranians recounting their experiences growing up under the Shah and witnessing the revolutionary transition from a monarchy to a theocracy. These stories vary, but many of them contain similar themes: Life was good under the Shah, the revolution happened for no...Dimona signals Palestinian defiance
Moral judgments notwithstanding, the suicide bombing in Dimona on Monday is another chink in the siege imposed on all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and it represents a continuity of the Palestinian rebellion that breached the wall between Gaza and Egypt last week. The fact that two fighters succeeded in reaching Dimona in......
Hordes of street kids no longer ignored
Cairo Kareem and Mustapha were little more than toddlers when their parents sent them onto Cairo's streets to sell mints and tissues. They had begun on the path trod by Cairo's growing thousands of street kids sleeping on streets, joining gangs for protection, underfed and covered with the filth of a city packed with 18 million...Democracy charade undermines rights
Washington The established democracies are accepting flawed and unfair elections for political expediency, Human Rights Watch said this week in releasing its World Report 2008. By allowing autocrats to pose as democrats, without demanding they uphold the civil and political rights that make democracy meaningful, the United States, the......
Love yourself this Valentine’s Day
Yardley, PA Valentine's Day is fast approaching and if you listen closely you'll hear America heave a collective sigh of resignation (from the couples who must run out and buy obligatory gifts) and gloom (from the singles who feel like hiding sulkily under the covers). Yes, many people dread this seemingly benign holiday more than a...Speak for Peace Tour in Detroit
CHICAGO The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) will be a hosting a Speak for Peace Tour that will include Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi who was featured in several speaking tours organized by AFSC, as well as Iraq War veteran Patricia McCann, currently a resident of Chicago. They will be talking about their experiences in Iraq, about......