Trump is not all bad!

Loathsome remarks of Donald Trump claiming that Muslims should be barred from entering the US and that Muslim Americans should register similarly to way Jews had a special registry in Nazi Germany fuelled a reaction in the Arab world. Trump is not the candidate with an anti-Muslim stance. Ben Carson said that a Muslim should not be elected president and Jeb Bush commented that only refugees who can prove to be Christian, hence, non-Muslim, should be allowed asylum in the US. Several intellectuals argued that targeting the Arab American and the Muslim American communities will alienate them from their environment and make their members prone to terrorists’ callings. However, few examined the surge in Arab American activism resulting from these hateful remarks, which in the long run, if sustained, will help empower the community.

The National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC) , a consortium of independent Arab American community-based organizations started the” Take On Hate” campaign, under the leadership of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), the largest Arab American human services non-profit in the United States. Launched a year ago, to fight bigotry, the campaign gained a huge momentum following the racial remarks of presidential candidates. Nadia Tonova (NNAAC )Director explained that, as discrimination is no longer a secondary matter, more and more people are becoming interested in taking part in the campaign. Hate has become a forefront issue facing members of the community, on a daily basis.

Anti -Arab and Anti-Muslim discrimination that started in the aftermath of September 11 reached a new high with the rise of ISIS and the events that followed it. According to Hasan Jaber, the Executive Director of (ACCESS):“Arab Americans and Muslim Americans are now the primary target of hate and intolerance”. Recent examples of hate and institutional discrimination toward Arab and Muslim Americans include numerous unwarranted bank account closures across Detroit, the burning of Qurans in the vicinity of a mosque in Dearborn, as well as discriminatory hiring practices against Arab Americans within a Dearborn Heights school district, a veiled woman was thrown out of a presidential rally, to name a few.

The campaign works on the grassroots level and operates in the key cities of San Fransisco, New York, Chicago and Detroit. The campaign that has attracted so far 14000 participants uses various methods to influence public opinion as well as policy makers. Methods include petitions, encouraging participants to send letters to their representative and to reach out to the media asking for a fair representation of the issue. Additionally, several members of the campaign have brought up the issue in to their local communities by including the subject in their respective town hall programs.

A month ago, the Campaign held a conference to block a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in which Syrian and Iraqi refugees are halted from accessing the country.

Tonova added that events in the Middle East and their spill over in the West have led some members of the community to distance themselves from the Arab World, however a large portion of Arab Americans are becoming more active and have a yearning to take pride in their heritage and want to showcase the “beauty of the Arab culture” to their American compatriots. She noted that a large percentage of their participants are high school and college students. She added that the new generation of Arab Americans are very “engaged and outspoken”. She told me with a sense of pride: “We, Arab Americans are coming together around these issues of discrimination against us and against people from the Arab World, and we are working hard to dispel those myths and show who we truly are.”

The campaign was able to garner support from outside the community; it appealed to civil liberties group as well to other communities facing discrimination such as the Blacks, Latinos and Asians. The press conference in support of refugees in Detroit included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Detroit Hispanic Consortium, Michigan United, the United Auto Workers Union, as well as elected officials. The campaign was even able to take on board, among many, a coalition of Jewish organisations: Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition (JAIC).

According to Jaber: “The Take On Hate campaign is the leading national campaign in the fight against xenophobia. The campaign has built large grassroots movement and a large network of alliances”

There is nothing that galvanises a community as much as a threat! One main reason behind the power of the Jewish community inside the US is the discrimination it faced in earlier times. It gave its members a sense of solidarity and nurtured the spirit of activism in them. Arab Americans are realising more and more that they cannot dissociate themselves from events in the region and that their image and their standing in society are related to the image of the Arab World in the psyche of the American public and the political elite. As their efforts become more institutionalised and their coalition more deep rooted, the community will become more influential and this would indirectly allow the Arab World to have a better standing inside the US. The question is: Will any of the Arab countries support such an effort?

Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab Gulf relations and in the effect of lobbying on foreign policy in the US. She is the author of “The Arab lobby and the US: factor for success and failure” by Routledge.