Writer Daniel Denvir does a deep dive into the character and controversies surroundings Dearborn's Arab-American culture. From the ugly anti-Muslim agendas of bigots to the city's unique culture of assimilation, the article is a must-read.
Excerpt:
"When Henry Ford moved production to Dearborn's vast Rouge plant, Muslim workers followed—though the Arab-American population was still largely Christian. The city's American Moslem Society, founded in 1938, is now the area's oldest continuously operating mosque. Chaldeans, Iraqi Catholics who often do not identify as Arabs, joined a tide of more well-to-do immigrants after World War II. After 1970, Muslim immigrants arrived from Iraq and Yemen, alongside many Lebanese fleeing that country's bloody civil war. The Gulf and Iraq wars have dispatched a new wave. The immigrants have found opportunities in a changing and troubled local economy, excelling in the sort of small business entrepreneurship that Jewish immigrants, and earlier Arabs, had skillfully managed a generation before. In Detroit, Chaldeans run most supermarkets and liquor stores, in part because they were tasked with handling alcohol in Muslim-majority Iraq. Lebanese own many gas stations."
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