Arab American Heritage Month

Americans of Arab heritage have made major contributions to U.S. society, and this is a timely and unique overview of their immigration patterns, settlement, adaptation, and assimilation for a general audience. The first wave of Arab immigrants, mostly Christian men from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1925. This book discusses their history as it looks at the successive waves of immigrants, including the post-1965 immigrants, who have brought more diversity to the Arab American community. The latest immigrants have included more Muslims, many are from Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. The continuing interest in the Middle East, Islam, and the Muslim way of life make this a must-have source for those seeking to understand current events and our multicultural society. Americans of Arab heritage have made major contributions to U.S. society, and this is a timely and unique overview of their immigration patterns, settlement, adaptation, and assimilation for a general audience. The first wave of Arab immigrants, mostly Christian men from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1925. This book discusses their history plus looks at the successive waves of immigrants, including the post-1965 immigrants, who have brought more diversity to the Arab American community. The latest immigrants have included more Muslims and many are from Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. The continuing interest in the Middle East, Islam, and Muslim way of life make this a must-have source to help understand current events and our multicultural society. The book begins by giving a broad political and social history of the Arab world since the advent of Islam in 632 CE. Kayyali also takes care to be inclusive of the different groups who can be classified as Arab, and the discussion of who these people are, with their different religions and beliefs, is an enlightening base to understand their experiences as Arab Americans. Early immigrants typically became peddlers or worked in the new factories and mills. As they gave up thoughts of returning to their home countries, they fought to be classified as white to gain citizenship, and the impact of the Census on their struggle is discussed in detail. Their assimilation and adaptations are discussed, and readers will learn about family issues, women's issues, food, media, and religious practices in the Arab American communities. Within the larger Arab American community, the main issues of pan-Arab identification, Christian and Muslim identities, and generational differences are covered, along with their social networks and celebrations. A final chapter focuses on the impact of Arab Americans on U.S. society, from the arts to politics, with insight into intergroup relations and the impact of 9/11. A sampling of noted Arab Americans, such as Ralph Nader, a glossary, statistical tables, and photos are included as well.

In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles among Arab communities. Contributors hail from multiple geo­graphical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist issues and highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces: within families and communities; in anticolonial and antiracist struggles; in debates over spirituality and the divine; within radical, feminist, and queer spaces; in academia and on the street; and among each other. Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the restoration of Arab Jews to Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belong­ing when the country in which they live wages wars in the lands of their ancestors. Arab and Arab American Feminisms opens up new possibili­ties for placing grounded Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives at the center of gender studies, Middle East studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.

For the first time, all the major works of this beloved writer are gathered together in one hardcover volume. Poet, artist, and mystic, Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 to a poor Christian family in Lebanon and immigrated to the United States as an adolescent. His masterpiece, The Prophet, a book of poetic essays that he began while still a youth in Lebanon, is one of the most cherished books of our time and has sold millions of copies in more than twenty languages since its publication in 1923. But all of Gibran's works--essays, stories, parables, and prose poems--are imbued with equally powerful simplicity and wisdom, whether they are addressing marriage or children, friendship or grief, work or pleasure. Perhaps no other twentieth-century writer has touched the hearts and minds of so remarkably varied and widespread a readership. Included in this volume are The Prophet, The Wanderer, Jesus the Son of Man, A Tear and a Smile, Spirits Rebellious, Nymphs of the Valley, Prose Poems, The Garden of the Prophet, The Earth Gods, Sand and Foam, The Forerunner, and The Madman.

Drawing on US Census data and a national poll of ethnic groups to situate Arab-American women in a broader immigrant context, Read (sociology, U. of California-Irvine) expands the demographic profile and understanding of a group often viewed stereotypically. In this study of cultural and class influences on workforce participation as correlates of

In Imperfect Strangers, Salim Yaqub argues that the 1970s were a pivotal decade for U.S.-Arab relations, whether at the upper levels of diplomacy, in street-level interactions, or in the realm of the imagination. In those years, Americans and Arabs came to know each other as never before. With Western Europe?s imperial legacy fading in the Middle East, American commerce and investment spread throughout the Arab world. The United States strengthened its strategic ties to some Arab states, even as it drew closer to Israel. Maneuvering Moscow to the sidelines, Washington placed itself at the center of Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Meanwhile, the rise of international terrorism, the Arab oil embargo and related increases in the price of oil, and expanding immigration from the Middle East forced Americans to pay closer attention to the Arab world. Yaqub combines insights from diplomatic, political, cultural, and immigration history to chronicle the activities of a wide array of American and Arab actors?political leaders, diplomats, warriors, activists, scholars, businesspeople, novelists, and others. He shows that growing interdependence raised hopes for a broad political accommodation between the two societies. Yet a series of disruptions in the second half of the decade thwarted such prospects. Arabs recoiled from a U.S.-brokered peace process that fortified Israel?s occupation of Arab land. Americans grew increasingly resentful of Arab oil pressures, attitudes dovetailing with broader anti-Muslim sentiments aroused by the Iranian hostage crisis. At the same time, elements of the U.S. intelligentsia became more respectful of Arab perspectives as a newly assertive Arab American community emerged into political life. These patterns left a contradictory legacy of estrangement and accommodation that continued in later decades and remains with us today.

In the West, we tend to think of Islamic law as an arcane and rigid legal system, bound by formulaic texts yet suffused by unfettered discretion. While judges may indeed refer to passages in the classical texts or have recourse to their own orientations, images of binding doctrine and unbounded choice do not reflect the full reality of the Islamic law in its everyday practice. Whether in the Arabic-speaking world, the Muslim portions of South and Southeast Asia, or the countries to which many Muslims have migrated, Islamic law works is readily misunderstood if the local cultures in which it is embedded are not taken into account.             With Islam and the Rule of Justice, Lawrence Rosen analyzes a number of these misperceptions. Drawing on specific cases, he explores the application of Islamic law to the treatment of women (who win most of their cases), the relations between Muslims and Jews (which frequently involve close personal and financial ties), and the structure of widespread corruption (which played a key role in prompting the Arab Spring). From these case studie the role of informal mechanisms in the resolution of local disputes. The author also provides a close reading of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was charged in an American court with helping to carry out the 9/11 attacks, using insights into how Islamic justice works to explain the defendant's actions during the trial. The book closes with an examination of how Islamic cultural concepts may come to bear on the constitutional structure and legal reforms many Muslim countries have been undertaking.

Khalil Gibran (/dʒɪˈbrɑːn/; Full Arabic name Gibran Khalil Gibran, sometimes spelled Kahlil;[a] Arabic: جبران خليل جبران‎ / ALA-LC: Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān or Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān) (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer of the New York Pen League.

Kahlil Gibran sees love as a burning fire, creating and destroying. Though it is at the center of life, it is for many a wellspring of strife and unsolved problems. Indeed, it seems that the more we write about it, the more mysterious it becomes. Yet there are those rare authors who can shine the light of truth on the subject--authors like Gibran. In this volume, Gibran scholar Andrew Dib Sherfan explores the various aspects of love according to the famous Lebanese poet and philosopher. Gibran's writing is full of mystic symbolism and metaphors, many of which reveal profound insights into the nature of love between man and woman, parent and child, God and human, and individual and society.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Detroit's large and nationally prominent Arab and Muslim communities have faced heightened prejudice, government surveillance, and political scapegoating, yet they have also enjoyed unexpected gains in economic, political, and cultural influence. Museums, festivals, and cultural events flourish alongside the construction of new mosques and churches, and more Arabs are being elected and appointed to public office. Detroit's Arab population is growing even as the city's non-Arab sectors, and the state of Michigan as a whole, have steadily lost population. In Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade, a follow-up to their volume Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream (Wayne State University Press, 2000), editors Nabeel Abraham, Sally Howell, and Andrew Shryock present accounts of how life in post-9/11 Detroit has changed over the last ten years. Abraham, Howell, and Shryock have assembled a diverse group of contributors whose essays range from the scholarly to the artistic and include voices that are Palestinian, Iraqi, Yemeni, and Lebanese; Muslim and Christian; American born and immigrant. The book is divided into six sections and begins with wide-angle views of Arab Detroit, looking first at how the community fits within greater Detroit as a whole, then presenting closer portraits of Arab Detroit's key ethnonational and religious subgroups. More personal, everyday accounts of life in the Terror Decade follow as focus shifts to practical matters such as family life, neighborhood interactions, going to school, traveling domestically, and visiting home countries. Finally, contributors consider the interface between Arab Detroit and the larger society, how this relationship is maintained, how the War on Terror has distorted it, and what lessons might be drawn about citizenship, inclusion, and exclusion by situating Arab Detroit in broader and deeper historical contexts. In Detroit, new realities of political marginalization and empowerment are evolving side by side. As they explore the complex demands of life in the Terror Decade, the contributors to this volume create vivid portraits of a community that has fought back successfully against attempts to deny its national identity and diminish its civil rights. Readers interested in Arab studies, Detroit culture and history, transnational politics, and the changing dynamics of race and ethnicity in America will enjoy the personal reflection and analytical insight of Arab Detroit 9/11.

While conventional wisdom points to the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 as the gateway for the founding of the first Arab American national political organization, such advocacy in fact began with the Syrian nationalist movement, which emerged from immigration trends at the turn of the last century. Bringing this long-neglected history to life, The Making of Arab Americans overturns the notion of an Arab population that was too diverse to share common goals. Tracing the forgotten histories of the Free Syria Society, the New Syria Party, the Arab National League, and the Institute of Arab American Affairs, the book restores a timely aspect of our understanding of an area (then called Syria) that comprises modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. Hani Bawardi examines the numerous Arab American political advocacy organizations that thrived before World War I, showing how they influenced Syrian and Arab nationalism. He further offers an in-depth analysis exploring how World War II helped introduce a new Arab American identity as priorities shifted and the quest for assimilation intensified. In addition, the book enriches our understanding of the years leading to the Cold War by tracing both the Arab National League?s transition to the Institute of Arab American Affairs and new campaigns to enhance mutual understanding between the United States and the Middle East. Illustrated with a wealth of previously unpublished photographs and manuscripts, The Making of Arab Americans provides crucial insight for contemporary dialogues.

A new collection of distinctive writings from the pen of Kahlil Gibran, rendered into English by Joseph Sheban, also a Lebanese living in the United States. From the wealth of poetic prose left behind by the latter-day prophet of the Middle East, Mr. Sheban has selected some of the most meaningful, yet unfamiliar. The volume is prefaced by a biographical study of Gibran, including the women in his life.

An early collection of Kahlil Gibran's writings showcases the many styles of this prolific thinker, all profoundly beautiful Kahlil Gibran reveals his vision of the soul and understanding of the world-past, present, and future-in this rich sampling of more than twenty works. Prose tales, fables, and poems evoke the mystic East and form a world at once powerful, tender, joyous, and melancholy. This collection, penned when Gibran was still a young writer, reveals many of the themes and styles plumbed throughout his life, including his lifelong struggle against injustice in "The Crucified," his heart-wrenching lament for a Lebanon shackled by tradition and politics in "My Countrymen," and his masterful use of symbolism and simile in "The Secrets of the Heart." A writer with infinite abilities and an eye to the immortal, Gibran continually seeks true beauty no matter the form. Kahlil Gibran, by Aryanpur.--The return.--A counselor of men.--On love.--The way of marriage.--On reason and knowledge.--On joy and sorrow.--On the perfection of man.--On man's divinity.--On the promise of the future.--Thoughts and meditations

An early collection of Kahlil Gibran's writings showcases the many styles of this prolific thinker, all profoundly beautiful Kahlil Gibran reveals his vision of the soul and understanding of the world-past, present, and future-in this rich sampling of more than twenty works. Prose tales, fables, and poems evoke the mystic East and form a world at once powerful, tender, joyous, and melancholy. This collection, penned when Gibran was still a young writer, reveals many of the themes and styles plumbed throughout his life, including his lifelong struggle against injustice in "The Crucified," his heart-wrenching lament for a Lebanon shackled by tradition and politics in "My Countrymen," and his masterful use of symbolism and simile in "The Secrets of the Heart." A writer with infinite abilities and an eye to the immortal, Gibran continually seeks true beauty no matter the form. Verse and prose: The creation -- Have mercy on me, my soul! -- Two infants -- The life of love -- The house of fortune -- Song of the wave -- A poet's death is his life -- Peace -- The criminal -- The playground of life -- Song of fortune -- The city of the dead -- Song of the rain -- The widow and her son -- The poet -- Song of the soul -- Laughter and tears -- Song of the flower -- Vision -- The victors -- Song of love -- Two wishes -- Song of man -- Yesterday and today -- Before the throne of beauty -- Leave me, my blamer -- A lover's call -- The beauty of death -- The palace and the hut -- A poet's voice -- The bride's bed

Middle Easterners: Sometimes White, Sometimes Not - an article by John Tehranian The Middle Eastern question lies at the heart of the most pressing issues of our time: the war in Iraq and on terrorism, the growing tension between preservation of our national security and protection of our civil rights, and the debate over immigration, assimilation, and our national identity. Yet paradoxically, little attention is focused on our domestic Middle Eastern population and its place in American society. Unlike many other racial minorities in our country, Middle Eastern Americans have faced rising, rather than diminishing, degrees of discrimination over time; a fact highlighted by recent targeted immigration policies, racial profiling, a war on terrorism with a decided racialist bent, and growing rates of job discrimination and hate crime. Oddly enough, however, Middle Eastern Americans are not even considered a minority in official government data. Instead, they are deemed white by law. In Whitewashed, John Tehranian combines his own personal experiences as an Iranian American with an expert's analysis of current events, legal trends, and critical theory to analyze this bizarre Catch-22 of Middle Eastern racial classification. He explains how American constructions of Middle Eastern racial identity have changed over the last two centuries, paying particular attention to the shift in perceptions of the Middle Easterner from friendly foreigner to enemy alien, a trend accelerated by the tragic events of 9/11. Focusing on the contemporary immigration debate, the war on terrorism, media portrayals of Middle Easterners, and the processes of creating racial stereotypes, Tehranian argues that, despite its many successes, the modern civil rights movement has not done enough to protect the liberties of Middle Eastern Americans. By following how concepts of whiteness have transformed over time, Whitewashed forces readers to rethink and question some of their most deeply held assumptions about race in American society.