Welcome to little Araby, aka Dearborn!

Submitted by Halina Minadeo (United States), Mar 28, 2003 at 20:25

After having read the article on the Mideastern infiltrators of academe, as well as the readers' comments, I fell into a state of panic.

You see, I teach French, Latin and Spanish at the University of Michigan at Dearborn. The offices around mine are occupied by professors who teach Arabic or Arabic culture. We are establishing a Center for Arab American Studies. Many of my students are Arabs, some Christian, some Muslim, mostly hard-working and very respectful to me. Many of the Moslem girls wear the hijab and long flowing robes. All over the area, there are Arabic shops, restaurants, businesses and mosques.

A huge, domed and minareted Islamic center is rising slowly, ensconced between the Bulgarian-Macedonian Orthodox church of St. Clement Ochridski and the Armenian Apostolic church of St. Sarkis. At the university, we have Islamic week, when the students share knowledge of Islam with their non-Muslim schoolmates. We have never had any problems, I have associated for many years with my Arabic colleagues, I eat at the restaurants, go to their businesses, attend talks on Arabic issues. Now I am terrified that Dearborn might be invaded and even bombed by the alerted government of the United States. BTW, I am definitely not a liberal, just an individual who speaks eight languages, a World War II survivor from Central Europe, a student of history, religion,anthropology, a devout Orthodox Christian and a lover of human beings.

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