Thursday June 28, 2012
The Arab Young Organization, a project of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, has produced entitled “TURATH: Teaching, Understanding, and Representing Arabs Throughout History.” It aims to uncover the representation of Arab identity, culture, and history in high school curricula, using survey findings, and on the ground research. Read More »
Thursday June 21, 2012
AAI President Jim Zogby participated in a four person debate panel today addressing the question of whether or not there is a double standard in the response to anti-Semitism against Arab Americans compared with the response to anti-Semitism directed against American Jews. Read More »
Tuesday June 19, 2012
Every June, Dearborn, Michigan, a Detroit suburb with one of the country’s most concentrated Arab American populations, holds an Arab International Festival, a celebration of Arab food, culture, music and Dearborn’s thriving Arab American community. In the last few years, though, the festival has also attracted all manner of anti-Muslim protesters, from Islamophobes warning of the imminent Sharia takeover to Christian missionaries interested in converting Muslims. Read More »
Wednesday June 06, 2012
Arab Americans came out in large numbers for yesterday’s Democratic primary between veteran Congressmen Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman. The newly redrawn 9th District of New Jersey pitted the two candidates against each other, with Arab Americans rallying in support of Bill Pascrell. For years Pascrell has courted and made friends of the Arab American community, and in this highly contentious election was paid back in the form of high Arab American voter turnout in his favor. Read More »
Tuesday June 05, 2012
Sometime between the beginning and end of their busy schedules today, residents of New Jersey's newly-drawn 9th congressional district will cast their ballots for one of two candidates in the Democratic primary. Arab Americans in the district, including residents of Clifton, Paterson and Passaic counties, will do their civic duty as well. Many of them, however, are unaware of an attempt to question the motives for their political participation in the primary. Arab Americans in NJ-9 are mobilizing for this election and are throwing overwhelming support behind Bill Pascrell, a candidate they’ve known and respected for years. Read More »
Tuesday May 29, 2012
Mitt Romney is proving, once again, to be the political shape-shifter he is often accused of being. Throughout the race for the nomination, which is likely to end today in Texas, Romney positioned himself as the most electable candidate, and the most “presidential.” He refrained from pandering to some of the popular issues other candidates pounced on, playing to the passions of their base constituents. In New Hampshire and Iowa, Romney struck down attempts by supporters to seek validation of their anti-Muslim, bigoted viewpoints. Read More »
Thursday May 24, 2012
AAI President Jim Zogby and Executive Director Maya Berry co-host the latest episode of Viewpoint with James Zogby and discuss a wide-range of issues, including the roots and driving forces of Islamophobia in the United States as well as the use of surveillance and infiltration techniques used by local and federal law enforcement agencies to spy on ethnic and religious minorities. Guests include, Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress, Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches, and MIke German from the ACLU. Read More »
Tuesday May 22, 2012
Today the New America Foundation hosted an informative discussion on the use of infiltration and surveillance by law enforcement in preventing homegrown terrorist attacks. The discussion primarily focused on the New York Police Department, and the efficacy of the vast counterterrorism unit which has drawn criticism since the Associated Press revealed that the NYPD was spying on American Muslims and Arab Americans. Read More »
Tuesday May 15, 2012
The tide is finally turning against racial profiling and Islamophobia, but it won’t happen without your help. Read More »
Monday May 14, 2012
The most effective way to dispel misconceptions, break down barriers and expose injustices facing any community or group of people is to tell individual, real life stories - stories of sacrifice, hardship and triumph. And that is precisely what a young group of filmmakers are trying to do with their new and inspiring film, “Adeela.” Read More »
Monday May 14, 2012
In an amendment to an appropriations bill being considered last week, Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) [pictured left] attempted to strip federal funding from police departments that use ethnic or religious profiling, as the NYPD has done against American Muslims and Arab Americans in and around New York City. Read More »
Thursday May 10, 2012
by Omar Baddar and Omar Tewfik
Today, Spencer Ackerman and his colleague at Wired Noah Shachtman released the contents of a recently-terminated DoD training course for senior military officers. The course, entitled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” was terminated late last month by General Martin Dempsey, Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces. As expected, the outrageous materials released today show exactly why the course was shut down. Read More »
Tuesday May 08, 2012
Anti-immigrant fervor has been building for years in France and throughout Europe, where a significant portion of immigrants come from North and West Africa and parts of the Middle East. We have seen the shadows of a similar trend here in the United States, where a post-9/11 world has brought Islamophobia into the spotlight of election politics, and a troubled economy has done the same with anti-immigration policies. Read More »
Thursday May 03, 2012
Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert has yet again displayed his creative ability to completely flip an issue to reflect a viewpoint directly counter to conventional wisdom or reason. Yesterday, an article in The Washington Examiner gave us a glimpse of what Congressman Gohmert is likely to focus on when the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security – Gohmert is Vice Chair –hears testimony from FBI director Robert Mueller. As the article alluded, Gohmert will likely express concern that criticism in the wake of the months-long controversy involving the FBI’s use of bigoted anti-Muslim and anti-Arab training materials may be leading the FBI to overcompensate and appease critics , which Gohmert believes will compromise the FBI’s ability to effectively fight terrorism. Read More »
Thursday May 03, 2012
Not only were we barred from entering, but we also watched as virtually all Arab American women (the people this conference was supposed to be about) were turned away. And to top things off, we caught Pamela Geller telling a few lies. The following video tells the amusing and eye-opening story of our visit to their conference: Read More »
Monday April 30, 2012
Despite repeated attempts to incite a media frenzy surrounding their “Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference” in Dearborn, Michigan this Sunday, the Islamophobes did not succeed this weekend in garnering the press attention they wanted, and now they are crying about it. On her website, Pamela Geller, the conference’s main organizer, vents about her event’s lack of media coverage: “There is something fundamentally broken in our culture. Imagine a society that extols the supremacist tyranny of the sharia while smearing and defaming human rights activists fighting for freedom and individual rights over gencdercide [sic] and gender apartheid.” Read More »
Monday April 30, 2012
Yesterday, more than a hundred people gathered at a town hall at the Doubletree Hotel in Dearborn, Michigan to stand in solidarity with the Arab American and American Muslim communities against Islamophobia. The town hall, organized by AAI and local community groups, was held in response to an anti-Muslim conference at the Hyatt in Dearborn, organized by Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and other leading Islamophobes. Read More »
Sunday April 29, 2012
This week, we’re faced with the latest challenge when Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer bring their so-called “Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference” to Dearborn on Sunday. Along with a tremendous group of local organizations, AAI has organized a community town hall on Islamophobia on the same day as their conference this Sunday, April 29 at 1pm at the Doubletree Hotel in Dearborn (5801 Southfield Road). AAI President Jim Zogby will be there, along with Eli Clifton, the co-author of a groundbreaking report on Geller and friends called Fear Inc., and prominent journalist and blogger Sarah Posner. Read More »
Wednesday April 25, 2012
By Jeffrey Wright
Spencer Ackerman, Wired’s intrepid national security correspondent, broke yet another important story yesterday evening, revealing that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has ordered a top-to-bottom review of military training materials to ensure that they do not contain Islamophobic content. Dempsey’s order came after military brass learned that a class intended for senior military officers had used Islamophobic course materials. The class, entitled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” was offered as an elective at the military’s Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) in Norfolk, Virginia. JFSC was founded after the Second World War with the goal of training military officers to work cooperatively, and it educates mid-level officers, many of whom will spend their careers in the military and eventually rise to the highest ranks of their branches. Read More »
Tuesday April 24, 2012
Last Friday, several New York news outlets reported that John Brennan, President Obama’s top National Security Advisor, praised NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly for striking an appropriate balance “between our security and our freedoms and our rights as citizens.” These comments engendered a storm of criticism from American Muslim and Arab American groups who contend that such remarks put the White House “seal of approval” on the NYPD's controversial policing and surveillance program. Pulitzer Prize-winning AP reports have revealed that the NYPD has been spying on American Muslims and Arab Americans without criminal predicate. Read More »
#NC lawmaker equates Islamic prayer w/ terror http://t.co/G9sp1NeLC1 @mostrolenk @aaiusa h/t @ozzyformayor
about 2 hours, 9 minutes ago.
Latest poll to be released Friday finds Americans are divided on continuing aid to #Egypt: http://t.co/1spZM1m9d2
about 4 hours, 49 minutes ago.
RT @MaiE_89: In the 1990’s, #Egypt had a 60% favorable rating among Americans, while today only 36% of US views the country positively via @AAIUSA
about 4 hours, 53 minutes ago.
Looking at Iran by James Zogby
Kahlil Gibran Awards Gala - April 16, 2013President Obama got it just about perfect in his Jerusalem speech when he urged Israelis to see the world through the eyes of Palestinians. That portion of his remarks was so compelling it deserves to be quoted in full: Read More »
Air Date: 5/31/2012
Fellows from Syracuse University’s “Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program (LDF); Bill Press, Host of the “Bill Press Show” and author of the new book, The Obama Hate Machine: The Lies, Distortions, and Personal Attacks on the President---and Who Is Behind Them. Read More »
The story of Arab Americans coming of age as an organized community is a classic American tale of immigrants seeking opportunity, benefiting from America’s freedoms, but also experiencing, at times, the dark side of exclusion and discrimination that has so often been a part of our nation’s history. Read More »
Apr 16 2013
Apr 27 2013
Jul 19 2013
