A framework for lasting immigration reform
This week Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Harry Reid (D-NV), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) and John Kerry (D-MA) introduced the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2011," a bill that seeks to fix a system that has been broken for...
Can Obama walk the walk?
May 20th, 20110 President Obama's historic speech this week at the State Department on the political changes sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa made it very clear that facilitating the Arab World's transition to freedom and democracy is a priority concern for the United States. Saying so, and simultaneously releasing...
DREAM Act should become law in 2011
May 13th, 20110 This week, Senators Richard Durbin, Harry Reid, and Robert Menendez re-introduced the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. Last fall, the DREAM Act passed the House of Representatives, and garnered the support of a majority in the Senate, but was ultimately defeated when...
Dearborn rejects extremism, nation should follow lead
April 22nd, 20110 History was truly made here in Metropolitan Detroit this week. As "Pastor" Terry Jones flew into town from Gainesville, Florida to demonstrate in front of the Islamic Center of America, an unprecedented show of interfaith unity and solidarity closed in around the Muslim community. The various interfaith events held to...
Looming storm threatens ‘Arab Spring’
April 18th, 20110 A very dangerous situation is developing in the Arab World. It behooves everyone who is truly concerned with the future of the Middle East to look past the 'Arab Spring' or the 'Arab revolution' and understand the mighty storm gathering in the region. Fears of the regional Persian giant Iran are guiding U.S. foreign policy much...
Protecting the civil rights of American Muslims
April 2nd, 20110 @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } The United States Senate Committee of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human...
A Mediterranean Alcatraz?
April 1st, 20110 @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Israel is seriously considering building a man-made island off the coast of Gaza to provide Palestinians an...Terry Jones visit to Dearborn an opportunity
@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Florida Pastor Terry Jones, who is widely known for threatening to burn the Qur'an last year on the anniversary of 9/11,...
Proud to be an Arab
February 4th, 20110 We are at one with the people of the Arab world who are now standing up for their individual and collective rights. The Tunisians, the Egyptians, the Palestinians, the Jordanians, the Yemenis, the Lebanese - all of them and the others in the Arab world fighting for democracy and human rights have our full support as they attempt to break...As Arab regimes are shaken, allies and foes ponder the future
Palm Beach Gardens — The Arab political coma is over. The spirit of Tunisia is in the Arab psyche. The knees of Arab despots are shaking in North Africa, West Asia and the Gulf states. A woman walks near a wall with graffiti which reads "Long live for Freedom" in Tunis February 1, 2011. Tunisia's security forces must be...Special Tribunal for Lebanon recipe for failure
American democracy has often perplexed me, because it has a number of times trampled on democracy. Richard Nixon spied on his adversaries. Ronald Reagan sold arms to the Iranians and George W. Bush invented the Patriot Act. And now the Obama administration expects the Special Tribunal for Lebanon indictment to be unrelenting because it...
Praise for passing Amer Act
December 18th, 20100 Last week the Michigan legislature passed the so-called "Relative Placement Bill," House Bill 4118, which requires DHS to place foster children with relatives before strangers, as long as the best interests of the child are not harmed by doing so. The law grew out of the nightmare experienced by Ahmed and Rehab Amer, who had three of...
WSU should reverse decision to pull Thomas diversity award
December 10th, 20100 We strongly disagree with Wayne State Univeristy's decision last week to pull its Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in the Media Award following comments she made at a diversity conference in Dearborn. Thomas, an Arab American, is perhaps the best-known alumna of WSU, having covered every President of the United States from the last...Pass the DREAM Act
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) this week released a report that paints a misleading financial portrait of the DREAM Act, federal legislation that would grant legal immigration status to certain undocumented immigrants who meet "good citizenship" requirements, like attending institutions of higher learning and serving in...Michigan’s children deserve more
This was the last week that the so-called "Relative Placement Bill," House Bill 4118, could be put to a vote in the Michigan Senate, making it into law. The bill would require DHS to place foster children with relatives before strangers, as long as the best interests of the child are not harmed by doing so. The bill grew out of the......
Wikileaks saga: While Western hubris exposed, Arab leaders most despicable
December 4th, 20100 The leaked diplomatic cables that have caused such consternation among heads of state should cause much greater concern in the general public. What the cables reveal is a vastly misguided foreign policy in the Middle East, the continued implementation of which is the greatest danger on earth to America. How much of this policy is...
IRS should revoke AIPAC’s tax exemption status
November 27th, 20100 This week the Internal Revenue Service received a 1,389 page filing demanding that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC's) tax exempt status be retroactively revoked. The filing, submitted by the IRmep Center for Policy and Law Enforcement, spans nearly 60 years, from the moment AIPAC's founder left the employment...Arab poet: Empowered women build nations
When the Egyptian poet Hafiz Ibrahim declared that "the mother is a school; empowering her is nation building," she expressed a dream: if women were offered the social and economic opportunities they deserve, they would build strong nations. Do poets today provoke the conscience of society as they did in the past? For several...Religious harmony existed before Iraq invasion
One day before we went to press this week, a spate of early morning bomb and mortar attacks on homes of Christians in Baghdad left at least three people dead and 26 wounded, according to an interior ministry official. The day before that, three homes in the Mansur district of western Baghdad belonging to Christians were firebombed......
Let’s build on our success
A decade after 9/11, the situation in America for Arabs and Muslims is perhaps the worst it has ever been. There are community civil rights and political activism groups everywhere struggling to find a way to make it better, yet little improvement is seen. If anything, we're regressing. The far right political and media...Waiting 25 years for justice for Alex Odeh
October 11, 2010, marks the 25th anniversary of the murder of Alex Odeh. Alex was killed on October 11, 1985, when a powerful pipe bomb exploded as he unlocked and opened the door of the American-Arab anti-Discrimination Committee office in Santa Ana, California. In addition to killing Alex Odeh, the bomb injured several......
Oath of loyalty to Israel will destroy talks, peace
Right-wing politicians have welcomed plans to introduce an oath of loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish" state for anyone wanting to become a citizen, a move likely to further jeopardize direct peace talks with the Palestinians. The controversial move would amend the current citizenship law to include the phrase: "I swear to respect the laws...The Ground Zero synagogue in Lebanon
"There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over." – Newt Gingrich Lebanon rebuilt that Ground Zero Synagogue because its......
