The Opening of the Arab American Museum:

 A Testament to Assimilation

Dearborn, MI (5/5/04): The Arab-American museum opens in the heart of Dearborn just across the street from City Hall. Like most museums, this one tells a story about people and their cultures. What does this institution say about Arabs in America? 

Does it tell a story of the Arab peoples, who are mostly Muslim, coming to this country to offer Islam as a solution to capitalism’s problems? Or does it record the Deen’s influence on the American public? In fact, the museum doesn’t do anything but rehash the successful assimilation of yet another minority in the USA, more immigrants who retained some religious beliefs while adopting the American way of life.

In a way, the Arab-American museum is yet another tribute from the Arab community’s elite to Washington. It heralds the success of the local community here in order to show Arabs overseas how America can be good to them. It also highlights how American values help shape the Arab-American community, and supposedly bring it success.

At the ribbon-cutting ceremony were guests like Amr Moussa, Secretary General of the Arab League, and former ambassador from Egypt. We remind you that Mr. Moussa serves a relentless regime that tortures Muslims in the jails of his homeland. He presides over the Arab League, a British creation based on the idea that being Arab is the basis for changing the Middle East. Our “great” mayor, Michael Guido, was there too. You might recall that the slogan for his first campaign was, “Let’s Talk About the Arab Problem.” In an article he wrote at the time, he cited, among other things, the allegedly bad hygiene of Arabs. Mayor Kilpatrick of Detroit came too: he’s been accused, at the very least, of running his city incompetently and misusing its money. The organizers said, “What an honor to have the presence of these three at the grand opening of the Museum.”

Have we sunk so low that we must jump for joy for anybody who shows up to pay us some attention at one of our functions?

$15 million was spent on this museum. Will having it here in Dearborn save the Muslims of Iraq who still must endure America’s “help”? Will it feed the many Muslims under American occupation in Afghanistan? Will it help us forget about everything the US has done to our people?

The American campaign for dominance in the world is not just about projecting its military might. An even more important part is the struggle to win the hearts and minds of the people. Joseph Nye eloquently reminds us of the importance of “soft power” in his book, Paradox of Power. Soft power, as opposed to the military kind, works by making your opponents value the same things that you desire. For example, if the Muslim world starts desiring American culture for itself, then the US has won over it already. There is no need for Washington to fight people who want what you are bringing them. Already, there are opportunists in the Arab community, hoping to gain a small advantage by helping the US sell its “goods,” both material and cultural, here and abroad. To all appearances, this is what the Arab-American Museum is all about. It will succeed for a time, very likely, while the funding lasts.

But the organizers for the Museum should remember that the Movers, Shakers, and Moneymen of the USA are not reliable friends and patrons. For now, the Arab community has a relatively safe haven in Dearborn, provided it remains useful to Pharaoh. But we are still losing many, if not most of our children; and, depending on political climate changes both here and abroad, we might yet—God forbid—live to see the 1940’s repeated anyway, with barbed wire fences encircling the Arab community from Wyoming St. to Telegraph, turning its safe haven into a concentration camp.