Arabs in
America are a vibrant community with many activities and social organizations
that cater to the needs of people coming from different countries; however, they
do not have an organization that represents all of them, not even a small portion
of the estimated 2-3 million Arabs. All pan-Arab associations and organizations
established in the past 2 to 3 decades were unable to capture the imagination
of the young Arab Americans and lead them to become an effective community; a community
that knows its rights and recognizes its limitations as well as its potentials;
and is able to learn from its own mistakes and successes. One of the questions
that bother many people in the Arab world is why Arabs in America have so far
failed to develop an effective lobby. This is a difficult question for anyone
to answer with confidence; nevertheless, I will try to provide some clues to
answering this seemingly puzzling question in the hope that others will do the
same. Writing about an issue of concern to us helps us to understand ourselves
and what we need to know and do as a community to claim our rights, promote our
interests, and defend our causes.
Before we
begin to answer this question, we need to ask first certain important
questions; why Arabs left their homes in the first place and decided to
immigrate to America. This question has two parts; what are the reasons for
leaving, or what are the forces that pushed millions of Arabs to leave their
countries; and what are the reasons for going to America and Canada and other
western nations. Or, to put it differently, what are the push and pull forces
that forced millions of Arabs to leave the Arab world and go to the West. Other
questions include; Are most Arabs able to abandon their people and old homelands
and traditional cultures? Are they able to embrace the new homeland and its
culture instead? How do they see themselves in the new land? How do they
conduct their lives? What do they really want? Do they feel happy living where
they are and are satisfied with what they do? These are big and important
questions; yet, they have to be answered in order to measure our successes, our
failures, and how to develop a community with specific goals and practical
means to reach them.
If one
considers communities that do have effective lobbies, he will find that almost
all such communities have lived as minorities in the countries from which they
came, some of them had endured living under such conditions for centuries; Jews
are a good example, and so are the Armenians. In contrast, Arabs in general did
not live as a minority in any of the countries from which they came. Minorities,
wherever they may live, tend to feel threatened by the majorities and therefore
to organize to protect their interests and strengthen their cultural and
business ties. Christian Arabs living in America are better at organizing
themselves than Muslims because of their minority status in almost all Arab
states. Minorities that succeeded in forming effective lobbies tend to have one
single issue, or a major cause to unite them and motivate them to act. Arab
Americans, in contrast, have several issues; the Palestinian cause may be the
most important one for most Arabs; but it is not the only one. Religiously conservative
Arabs see the protection and promotion of Islam as the most important issue,
while liberals give priority to issues related to political reform. Some see
human rights in the Arab world as a significant issue, while less educated
people do not understand the true meaning of this issue and how it affects
scientific progress and economic development in the Arab world.
In addition,
Arabs in America are unable to communicate with each other effectively; they
generally do not read and, because of this handicap, they have failed to
develop printed means of communications where they could talk about issues of mutual
concerns, express their opinions, and try to help each other and develop an
American subculture of their own. In fact, while most Arabs I know do help
their families back home and even the poor there, they are unable to see the
need to establish an organization to help the new immigrants and the needy among
them. Jews, for example, have many organizations and several funds to help new
immigrants settle, get good training to find rewarding jobs and help them build
new lives in America. Philanthropy in Arab history does not exist; we tend to
help in emergencies only. Without institutionalizing such a system, new
immigrants will not find the assistance that usually need to settle and lead normal
lives and feel being an integral part of a caring community that shares with
them their joy and pain and hopes. Creating a sense of community through the
development of shared interests and ties and effective means of communications is
the only way to create the right conditions for the development of an active
lobby to help Arabs in America to claim their rights, promote their shared
interests, and defend their causes.
Dr. Mohamed
Rabie
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