Hate Crime Investigation Continues of Fire at Building Connected to Dearborn Mosque

Some advocacy groups have called for the incident to be investigated as a possible hate crime.

Dearborn police and FBI officials are still investigating a fire and graffiti discovered Tuesday at a storage building at the Dearborn Woods Community Center on Pelham, as community reaction to the incident continues to grow. The Council for American Islamic Relations of Michigan called on law enforcement officials to investigate the incident as an anti-Muslim or anti-Arab hate crime, citing similar cases in Michigan and beyond over the past few months. The affected building is owned and operated by the American Muslim Center, located nearby out Outer Drive in Dearborn. A fire destroyed the storage space Tuesday morning, which was also found to be spray painted with obscene graffiti, along with the word “Arabs.” FBI Detroit spokesman Simon…

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Authors With Dearborn Ties Among Arab American Book Award Winners

Winners will be honored in at the Arab American National Museum on Sept. 29.

The winning titles of the 2012 Arab American Book Award, presented by the Arab American National Museum, have been announced. Among the winners is a book by three scholars with ties to Dearborn. They include Rabab Abdulhadi, director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn; Evelyn Alsultany, guest curator of the AANM's online exhibit, Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes; and Nadine Naber, a professor at UM-Ann Arbor who has previously organized conferences at the museum. Together, the women edited Arab & Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, & Belonging, the winner of this year's Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award. All Arab American Book Award winners will be honored at a ceremony on …

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Feds Tell Dearborn Schools to Increase Services to ESL Parents, Students

A review by the U.S. Office of Civil Rights has found that Dearborn Public Schools is not adequately meeting the needs of parents and students with limited English proficiency.

A review by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights will result in more services for non-English-speaking parents and students in the Dearborn Public Schools, the district said this week. A complaint issued from a Dearborn school led to a full review of the district. The review, released Thursday, found that the district was not meeting the needs of parents and students whose primary language is not English, as required by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This includes access to important school documents, as well as students’ access to activities and services. DPS will be required to submit a written plan to the Office of Civil Rights by June 29 to “provide language assistance to limited English proficient parents/…

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Leaders of Sunday's Anti-Islam Conference Slam Dearborn Imam

Armed with footage of Friday's sermon at the Islamic Center of America, Pamela Gellar and Robert Spencer claim that requests to join their conference in Dearborn are coming in 'fast and furious.'

Two commentators leading a conference in Dearborn this weekend–protesting what they say is evidence of honor killings in the Islamic faith–spoke out against Islamic Center of America Imam Sayed Qazwini in advance of the event on their respective blogs. Citing video footage of the imam's Friday sermon to worshippers at the ICA, Pamela Gellar and Robert Spencer call Qazwini "pro-honor killing." "If the mainstream media narrative about Islam were true, this imam and others would be standing with us against Islamic honor killing," Spencer wrote in his blog, Jihad Watch. Spencer and Gellar are heading up the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference, being held Sunday at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dearborn. Mokdad, for whom the conference was …

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Local, National Groups to Host Islamophobia Town Hall Sunday in Dearborn

The event is being planned to counter an anti-Islamic conference being held in Dearborn at the same time.

Local and national Arab American and Muslim groups will gather this Sunday at the Doubletree Hotel just outside of Dearborn in hopes of counteracting an anti-Islamic conference being held at the same time. In a statement sent out Wednesday, the Arab American Institute announced that they will host a community town hall on Islamophobia at 1 p.m. on Sunday with a slew of local and national speakers–including religious leaders, media representatives, and political leaders. The event they seek to fight is the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference, also taking place Sunday at Dearborn's Hyatt Regency Hotel. Hosted by political commentators and outspoken critics of Islam Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, the conference aims to expose what they …

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Clothing Company Strikes Up Controversy with Arabic Dearborn Shirt

A shirt made by the company Down with Detroit features a screenprint of "Dearborn" written in Arabic.

A T-shirt design released Wednesday by local clothing company Down with Detroit has stirred up conversation that the design is racist. The design shows the word "Dearborn" written in Arabic. Posted on the company's Facebook page Wednesday evening, the photo immediately sparked debate over whether the design is offensive. "Maybe not racist ... maybe tasteless," wrote fan Dion Pallone. "Not a fan of it." "Well, never bought a DWD shirt, and unless this ridiculous shirt is removed, I will never endorse it," added Jillian Christine. "Dearborn is the largest Islamic area in the U.S.," contested fan Jeremy Welker. "If this is racist then so is having a brew on an Irish shirt, or having a rapper on a Detroit shirt." As of Thursday morning, the …

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Ask Patch!

How Did Dearborn's Arab American Population Develop?

Got questions? We've got answers.

Dearborn Patch reader Lisa Wood Rodgers asked us via Facebook: How did the city of Dearborn become the largest Arabic city in the United States? Indeed, Dearborn has the most concentrated Arab American population in the country–and the state of Michigan ranks second overall in the size of its population, too, according to the Arab American Institute. The U.S. Census estimates that more than one-third of Dearborn's population of 98,000 identify as having some Arab heritage. Many Arabs first came to America as part of the Great Migration from 1880-1924, according to the Arab American National Museum. But why Dearborn? Like many people, they came first for the jobs promised by the boom of the automotive industry in the early to mid 1900s. A …

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UM-Dearborn Announces Addition of Minor in Arab American Studies

The new program grew out of increasing popularity of classes in the field, plus the university's desire to serve its diverse community of students.

The University of Michigan-Dearborn this month announced the beginning of a new minor: Arab American studies. The 15-credit program, launched for the winter 2012 semester, includes intensive study on history, politics, culture, arts, economics and other factors affecting and shaping the lives of Arab Americans locally and abroad. It is believed that UM-Dearborn is the first institution in America to establish such a minor. “This is really the only minor that stands on its own in the entire country, so it’s historic,” said Ismael Ahmed, associate provost for Integrated Learning and Community Partnerships. “The more cultural competence people have, the more they can work with, do business and live with people in the community. It’s a great …

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ACCESS Health Dept. Receives $65K Breast Cancer Awareness Grant

The Avon Foundation Award will assist the Dearborn nonprofit with community awareness and screening programs.

A grant announced this week will assist continued efforts of cancer awareness and detection within Dearborn’s Arab-American community and beyond. The $65,000 grant from the Avon Foundation’s Breast Health Outreach will provide funding to the Community Health and Research Center arm of Dearborn nonprofit ACCESS, aimed at increasing awareness of the lifesaving benefits of early detection of breast cancer. It is the 14th year running that ACCESS has received funding from the Avon Foundation for Women. The Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program at ACCESS Community Health and Research Center will educate women older than 40 who reside in metro Detroit and refer them to low-cost or free mammograms and clinical breast exams in their own …

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Halal Meals Increasing in Dearborn Schools

As Dearborn Public Schools introduce halal options to four new schools this year, providing meals that meet religious needs can be a complex matter.

The last thing Dearborn Public Schools’ Food Service Director Jeff Murphy wants to see is students not eating, or tossing out food because they feel like they don’t have any lunch time options. But that was exactly what was occurring 11 years ago, when the schools introduced a pilot program offering halal meats at a school building. Today, the program has grown— with more more than half of Dearborn’s 32 schools offering halal options for Muslim students, with Haigh, Howard, Lindbergh and Dearborn High being added to that list this year. But making provisions for menus is a complex matter—one that’s decided on several factors, including the population of the school and the needs of an ethnically diverse community. “I expect that the number …

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Lee Jacobsen

7:56 pm on Friday, December 21, 2012

After re-reading my comment on peanut butter...it is lacking and ignorant..... Regarding peanut butter, reseach now suggests that the more affluent a family is, the more likely a child may become allergic to peanut butter. Why? Affluent families tend to live in cleaner surroundings, lowering exposure to microbes, which lowers the body's immune system since it does less work, which increases the …   more ›