‘Unlike 9/11, we’re fighting back’: Arab Americans in Dearborn are resilient in the face of Islamophobia

On the main street of Michigan Avenue in Dearborn, it’s common to see business signs in both Arabic and English script. A Lebanese grill sits across from a Yemeni coffee house, and next door a store sells hijabs. The Arab American National Museum, the only such institution in the US, is a half mile away from a playground and public elementary school in the third largest district in Michigan.

The Arab American presence touches every corner of Dearborn – more than half of its nearly 110,000 residents are of Middle Eastern or north African origin. And that unique cultural blend is what draws many to this growing city just 10 miles west of downtown Detroit.

But recent anti-Arab and Islamophobic rhetoric brought on by the Israel-Gaza war has fostered a sense of fear in the tight-knit community. A Wall Street Journal op-ed on 2 February called Dearborn the “jihad capital” of the US, which resulted in a rise in discriminatory online language aimed at Dearborn. On the same day, the New York Times published its own column that compared the US to a lion and Middle Eastern countries to insects, a choice that many criticized as dehumanizing and racist.

Soon thereafter, Dearborn’s mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, announced an increased police presence around “places of worship and major infrastructure points”, which he called “a direct result of the inflammatory [Wall Street Journal] opinion piece”.

Abdullah Hammoud, then a state representative, rallies for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in Dearborn on 7 March 2020. Photograph: Paul Sancya/AP

Residents who spoke to the Guardian said that the fearmongering and discriminatory attacks in the media reminded them of the time after 9/11, when threats were made against Muslim Americans, and mosques and personal properties were vandalized. Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), said that even though that period of hatred was more extreme, “today, many people feel on edge, because of the heightened anti-Muslim rhetoric … and violence against Muslims”. Just a few days ago, he noted, a 23-year-old Palestinian American in Texas, Zacharia Doar, was brutally stabbed in what police say was a hate crime.

Despite some people’s increased concerns about safety, others spoke about their community’s resilience and ingenuity in protecting themselves. Young Palestinian Americans in Dearborn are organizing rallies and urging residents to sign a pledge demanding that the New York Times retract its column. Volunteers are also hosting anti-doxing trainings to help pro-Palestine locals who are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to retain their jobs and school status without fear of their personal information being revealed online.

Dearborn’s Arab American residents say that the community has become stronger in the past 20 years since 9/11, and the people who came of age in the 2000s have now grown into leaders. In light of recent bigoted headlines and editorials, hate crimes, and other instances of Islamophobia, many of them feel empowered – more than ever – to fight back.

Palestinian Americans pray at a mosque in Dearborn on 4 February. Photograph: Dieu-Nalio Chery/Reuters

Outside the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in the nation, Malak Kabalan, a 27-year-old Lebanese American, told the Guardian: “We’ve been targeted … and we have to stand together to show the true image of our community.”

Unprecedented political solidarity

The Wall Street Journal article is not the first time that Dearborn has been publicly targeted. Terry Jones, a Florida pastor known for burning copies of the Qur’an, led anti-Islam demonstrations in the city several times in 2011 and 2012. Since Dearborn is home to the largest Arab American population in the US, Walid said that residents have long been a target for attacks when Islamophobic rhetoric or anti-Arab animus appears in the media. “We can almost predict when some threats are going to come to the community,” he said. “It’s like clockwork.”

Dearborn is a typical American town with industrial roots. In the late 19th century, the first wave of Arab Americans, mostly merchants from current-day Lebanon, arrived in the area. That wave was followed by an influx of Palestinian, Yemeni and Syrian immigrants in 1914, after the Ford Motor Company doubled worker wages to $5 a day. The construction of the Ford Rouge Factory, a 2,000-acre vehicle assembly plant along the Rouge River, drew more Arab Americans throughout the first half of the 20th century. And over the past three decades, immigrants from these countries have settled in Dearborn after fleeing conflict in their homelands.

The city has become a hub of Arab American political power, with many of the residents’ views informed by their own family’s experiences of escaping oppressive governments and wars. As such, the community’s stance on the Israel-Gaza war is clear: they want an immediate and permanent ceasefire. But President Joe Biden, whose re-election prospects could be defined by the support of Arab Americans, has refused to call for an end to the war.

People rally in support of Palestinians in Dearborn on 14 October 2023. Photograph: Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images

On Thursday morning, senior advisers to the President met with local Muslim and Arab American leaders in a Dearborn hotel. According to the New York Times, Jon Finer, a deputy national security adviser, admitted to “missteps in the course of responding to this crisis since Oct. 7”.

The meeting came two weeks after some of those same leaders, including Mayor Hammoud, rejected a prior invitation to attend a discussion with Biden’s campaign. They had been pushing the administration to facilitate policy – not election – discussions about the war in Gaza, where more than 27,000 Palestinians have been killed since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed.

“This meeting was held to ensure that the White House and those with the ability to change the course of the genocide unfolding in Gaza very clearly hear and understand the demands of our community – directly from us,” Hammoud wrote on X.

According to a 2023 Arab American Institute survey, only 29% of Arab Americans approved of Biden, compared with 74% in 2020. That dwindling support could hurt his chances of winning in swing states that may determine the results of the election. Some 278,000 Arab Americans live in Michigan, which Biden won by 154,000 votes in 2020.

Mohamed Ayoub, a 53-year-old Lebanese American real estate broker, believes that the political solidarity among Arab Americans today is unprecedented. He said that the discrimination the Arab American community endured after 9/11 helped prepare them to stand up against hatred. “Unlike 9/11, we’re fighting back,” Ayoub said, referencing the politicians, school board members, organizers and business owners who have been vocal in their support of a ceasefire.

Mohamed Ayoub. Photograph: Melissa Hellmann/The Guardian

Despite that increased sense of community, some Dearborners still feel that the backlash to speaking out against the US-backed war has had a chilling effect. Rima Meroueh, the director of the National Network for Arab American Communities, said the climate today is actually worse than after 9/11, when government agencies targeted Muslims and Arab Americans. Born in Senegal to Lebanese parents, Meroueh said that now the anti-Arab animus and Islamophobia “feels like it’s everywhere. We’re literally watching a genocide happening. We’re watching the bodies of children being blown apart, and then we’re hearing our neighbors and co-workers say ‘Israel has a right to defend itself no matter the cost.’”

And though she praised the mayor’s swift action in protecting Arab American residents, she said: “Increased law enforcement in a community that is overly surveilled is not a great thing to see.”

Soujoud Hamade, a business and real estate attorney and president of the Michigan chapter of the National Arab American Bar Association, echoed Meroueh’s comparison to the post-9/11 climate.

Soujoud Hamade. Photograph: Melissa Hellmann/The Guardian

Hamade, who’s of Lebanese and Greek descent, recalled feeling excluded when her mother forbade her from trick-or-treating on Halloween in 2001 out of fear for her safety. “Now we have a new generation of Arab Americans who are going to experience the same stigmatization,” she said. “And they’re going to feel a sense of not being included in their own country.” Since 7 October, she said that she’s also received hateful messages on social media for voicing her support of Palestine.

‘People are uninformed’

As elected officials met with Biden’s advisors in Dearborn on Thursday, activists, including the 31-year-old Palestinian American Lexis Zeidan, protested the president’s support of Israel outside.

Lexis Zeidan. Photograph: Melissa Hellmann/The Guardian

The protest was led by Project 1948, which Zeidan and other young Palestinian Americans in the Detroit area founded after 7 October to dispel myths about the conflict and to express support of Palestine’s right to statehood. The group recently launched ongoing screenings of films made by Palestinians, often on their phones, of life under occupation.

“More often than not, people are uninformed,” Zeidan told the Guardian at the local Yemeni coffee shop. “It’s my duty to lean into that education, because if we don’t, then we let false narratives win. And it’s really important for our community to reclaim that narrative in the face of a country that is trying to paint us in a false light.”