April 13th, 20180NEW YORK CITY — Last Thursday, a group of Muslim owned-businesses, mosques, individuals, and student groups reached a settlement with the New York Police Department (NYPD) in a federal lawsuit challenging the discriminatory surveillance of American Muslims in New Jersey.
Filed in 2012 in federal court in New Jersey, in Hassan v....
DETROIT – A federal jury in the Eastern District of Michigan has found in favor of former Ford engineer Faisal G. Khalaf, ruling that his superiors discriminated against him — based on his heritage and accent— and fired him after he’d attempted to come forward about what had happened to him.
Khalaf, who was awarded $16.8...
February 20th, 20181MELVINDALE, Mich. — WXYZ Channel 7 reports that a fifth grade teacher could have been forced out because she wears a hijab.
A lawsuit was filed last week against Melvindale/Northern Allen Park School District.
Amirah Mosed, the teacher, alleges she was mistreated while working at Allendale Elementary School, saying she was...
February 16th, 20180WASHINGTON — President Trump's travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries violates the U.S. Constitution by discriminating on the basis of religion, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday in another legal setback for the policy.
The Richmond, Virginia-based Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on a 9-4 vote,...
December 8th, 20170WASHINGTON — A growing number of Americans hold favorable opinions of Arabs and Muslims, a new survey by the Arab American Institute (AAI) shows.
The survey released Tuesday found attitudes toward Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have risen to the highest levels in a decade.
Conducted two months after the White...
October 6th, 20170DEARBORN — To those who are regularly held for questioning at airports or border crossings and believe they may be wrongfully placed on a federal watch list, the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center has news: You are most likely a terrorist or somehow connected to a suspected terrorist.
In Dearborn, where about half of residents are...
October 6th, 20170DEARBORN — East coast media outlets have been accused of being out of touch with middle America, so The Huffington Post embarked on a multi-city bus tour on September 12 titled "Listen to America."
In each city, HuffPost partnered with a news organization to host an event so that it could record stories from local residents.
The...
October 4th, 20170With a large population of Muslim and Arab Americans, Dearborn has the most per capita residents on a shadowy and unaccountable watchlist. It is nearly impossible to find out if you’re on it, let alone get your name off.
By Christopher Mathias, Rowaida Abdelaziz, Hassan Khalifeh, and Afaf Humayun
DEARBORN, Mich. — There’s...
September 22nd, 20171DETROIT — Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh, was deported to Jordan and left the U.S. from Chicago O'Hare Airport on September 19. Odeh was convicted of lying on immigration forms and sentenced last month.
Federal prosecutors said Odeh lied about being convicted in Israel in the late 60s for two bombings, one of which killed two...
September 22nd, 20170DEARBORN — The cries of a local mother's children as they were dragged away by state officials still echo after three decades.
Wrongfully accused in 1985 of murdering her 2-year-old son, Rehab Amer relives the horrors of trying to bring her other children back every day. Now, she's making sure other children's distress calls do not...
September 22nd, 20170KALKASKA — In the wake of several anti-Muslim sentiments posted by Kalkaska Village President Jeff Sieting, a group of Kalkaska County residents have formed a nonprofit organization to promote education and understanding.
Established in July, Kalkaska for Peace (KFP) came about because of the negative image the village received,...
September 12th, 20172WICHITA ― Sattar Ali, a Dearborn man who moved his family to Kansas says he regrets the decision, after he, his wife, and daughter were all in handcuffs while attempting to deposit a large check that was acquired through the sale of their home.
According to the Kansas-based TV station, the Ali family recently sold their Dearborn...
September 3rd, 20170Since his presidential campaign last year, President Trump stirred controversy with his racist and hateful rhetoric towards minorities. Then, his election pulled the trigger on an abysmal spike in racism and hate crimes— making the country’s years of shameful discrimination and bigotry acceptable again.
On Wednesday, Aug. 30, Fox...
September 3rd, 20170NOVI — On August 8, a Muslim family was accosted in the parking lot of Twelve Oaks Mall by a White man in his 30s who hurled epithets and derogatory slurs at them. The mother, out of fear for her two children, called the Novi Police Department.
After driving past the family, the assailant parked his car and approached the family...
August 30th, 20170DETROIT ― Following the events of the Charlotesville, VA. attacks, the Wayne County Commissioners took a unanimous stand against racism and bigotry and called for investigations of domestic hate groups.
On Thursday, the commission denounced all forms of bigotry in a resolution introduced jointly by Commission Vice Chairman Alisha...
August 18th, 20171DEARBORN HEIGHTS — Dearborn's neighboring city seems to be tackling drastically similar types of reckless driving on its roads and has found no better way to control it than to heighten traffic enforcement.
The Dearborn Heights Police Department kicked off the crackdown in July, According to Police Chief Lee Gavin, it's been a...
August 18th, 20171WASHINGTON, D.C. — On July 25, the Pew Research Center released a report on Muslim Americans and their concerns regarding their place in society; despite the data showing high concern from U.S. Muslims, 92 percent of them are proud to be American.
The survey was conducted between January and May. It showed that half of Muslim...
August 4th, 20172DEARBORN HEIGHTS — Debbie Schlussel, an attorney known for her anti-Muslim rhetoric, filed a lawsuit against Dearborn Heights and its officials on May 15 for being denied access to booking photos and videos of resident Malak Kazan without her hijab.
Police had arrested Kazan for driving on a suspended license on July 9, 2014....
July 21st, 20170HAMTRAMCK — When the voters of Hamtramck elected four Muslims to the City Council in 2015, it made headlines nationally and internationally on media outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, CNN, Fox News and more as a seemingly oxymoronic move in an "American city"— as if those public officials' Islamic faith...
July 7th, 20171DEARBORN — The daughter of Yemeni immigrants who'd fled war and poverty a couple decades ago and found home in Metro Detroit grew up feeling like she always had to prove herself more than others.
Hanan Yahya, a 23-year-old recent college graduate and current administrator at a Dearborn-based education organization, said as long as...
June 30th, 20170LANSING — On election night last November, Dearbornites celebrated a triumph. Abdullah Hammoud, 27, became the first Arab Muslim male to represent the city in the state legislature.
He told The AANews he felt relieved to win the race, but knew that struggle still lay ahead because "Trump might win Michigan."
Donald Trump not only...
June 16th, 20171SOUTHFIELD — On Monday, June 12, dozens gathered outside the Mother of God Chaldean Catholic Church in Southfield to protest a recent wave of ICE raids that targeted, captured and detained dozens of Iraqi immigrants at multiple locations across Metro Detroit, including local churches, homes and even a hospital.
Shocked and outraged...
June 10th, 20171SEATTLE- Protesters held rallies across the United States on Saturday to denounce sharia law, the Islamic legal and moral code that organizers say poses a threat to American freedoms, but critics believe anti-Muslim hatred is behind the condemnation.
ACT for America, a self-described grassroots organization focusing on national...
May 8th, 20170WASHINGTON ― A video of a woman appearing to tell off a Muslim shopper went viral, in which the woman told her, “I wish they didn’t let you in the country."
The encounter allegedly took place at a Trader Joe’s in northern Virginia over the weekend, according to a South Carolina-based comedian who posted the video and claimed...
DETROIT — A paramedic in Detroit asserted that he was subjected to discrimination in the workplace.
On May 4, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on behalf of the paramedic who works for the Detroit Fire...
April 13th, 20170Baltimore– In response to a controversial voter ID law struck down by a Texas judge for being discriminatory, NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks issued statement supporting Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos’ ruling that SB 14 intentionally discriminates against African-American and Latinos.
The statement held that the law, SB...
April 8th, 20172Former Mayor Orville Hubbard's statue stood in front of the Dearborn City Hall on Michigan Avenue and Schaefer Road from 1989-2015. After much community debate, the sale of the building and national events like the Charleston massacre in 2015, the statue was removed and placed into storage. Many said it was for good reason.
Hubbard...
March 23rd, 20170NEW YORK- A white man who police said traveled to New York City to harm black people turned himself in with knives in his pocket at a Manhattan police station on Wednesday, a day after authorities say he fatally stabbed a black man on a city sidewalk.
James Harris Jackson, 28, told police he left his home in Baltimore on Friday and...
